American Art and Architectural History
PhD
Boston University
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Faculty
Faculty
Melanee C. Harvey, Ph.D. (She/her)
Associate Professor & Coordinator of Art History
Department/Office
- Art Department
School/College
- College of Fine Arts
Biography
Melanee C. Harvey is associate professor of art history in the Department of Art in the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University. She earned a BA from Spelman College and pursued graduate study at Boston University where she received her MA and PhD in American Art and Architectural History. In addition to serving as coordinator for the art history area of study at Howard, she has served as programming chair for the James A. Porter Colloquium on African American Art and Art of the African Diaspora at the university since 2016. She has published on architectural iconography in African American art, Black Arts Movement artists, religious art of Black liberation theology and ecowomanist art practices. Melanee was in residence as the Paul Mellon Guest Scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art during the 2020-2021 academic year. In 2023, she was awarded the Genevieve Young Fellowship in Writing by the Gordon Parks Foundation. She is the curator of Wherever There is Light (Fall 2024, TILT: The Center for the Contemporary Image, Philadelphia, PA), Gordon Parks: Pastor E.F. Ledbetter and Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church (Spring-Summer 2025, The Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery, Pleasantville, NY) and Temples of Hope, Rituals of Survival: Gordon Parks and Black Religious Life (Fall 2025), Howard University Museum, Dorothy Porter Room, Washington, DC). She is the author and editor of the accompanying exhibition catalogs for Wherever There is Light (2025) and Gordon Parks: Pastor E.F. Ledbetter and Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church (Fall 2025). Melanee is currently writing her first book entitled, Patterns of Permanence: African Methodist Episcopal Architecture and Visual Culture.
Education & Expertise
Education
American Art and Architectural History
MA
Boston University
BA
Spelman College
Expertise
Research Interests
American art and architecture; art of the African Diaspora; American photography; Black religious visual culture
Publications
Works-In-Progress
Books
Patterns of Permanence: African Methodist Episcopal Architecture and Visual Culture (Book Manuscript in Progress).
Book Chapters and Exhibition Catalog Essays
“Where Art & Science Meet: Eugenia V. Dunn and the Social Fabric of Mid Century Modern Negro Art,” Black Louisville Avante Garde (Louisville: Speed Museum, forthcoming )
“‘She Was Always There’: Samella Lewis in the History of African American Art Convening”,” Samella Lewis Anthology, Clint Fluker, Rebecca Peabody and Kristin Juarez, eds. (Anthology convened by Emory University and the Getty Research Institute; Under Review by Getty Publications)
“African Methodist Episcopal Architectural Discourse as Momentum toward a Denominational Building Boom, 1876-1920,” Rewriting the American Present: Race and the Historiography of American Architecture, Charles Davis, Kathryn Holliday, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury (Under Review with University of Texas Press)
“Gathering Southern Recollections: Place and Memory in the Paintings of Floyd Newsum” Floyd Newsum: Evolution of Sight, Mark Cervenak, ed. (College Station: Texas A& M University Press, forthcoming 2025)
“Jeff R. Donaldson, Eminence (1976),” Roll Call: 200 Year of Black American Art, (Birmingham: Birmingham Museum of Art, forthcoming)
“John N. Robinson, Reclining Woman (Gladys) (1952),” Roll Call: 200 Year of Black American Art, (Birmingham: Birmingham Museum of Art, forthcoming)
Accepted Publications
Exhibition Catalogs & Edited Volumes
Editor, Gordon Parks: E.F. Ledbetter & Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, (Gordon Parks Foundation, Howard University & Steidl, May 2025). <https://steidl.de/Books/Pastor-E-F-Ledbetter-and-The-Metropolitan-Missionary-Baptist-Church-1953-0413202659.html>
Co-Editor with Larry W. Cook, Wherever There is Light: Philadelphia (TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image, 2024).
Journal Publications
“Larry W. Cook” Contact Sheet, Light Work Annual 2022, 217 (New York: Light Work, 2022)
“Object Lesson: Aaron Douglas’s Building More Stately Mansions,” commissioned by Manual 14 Fall/Winter 2020, 23-35.
“Preserving the Will to Adorn: African American Stained Glass Art Traditions,” International Review of African American Art, Vol. 29, No. 3, Spring 2020.
“Constructing and Circulating Black Madonnas as Black Power: Charting the Aesthetic and Cultural Influence of Shrine of the Black Madonna, #1.” Black Theology Papers Project, 2(1), Nov 2019. <https://doi.org/10.7916/btpp.v2i1.3853>.
“The Rhythmic Synergy of James Phillips: Assessing a Legacy of Black Collective Art Practice,” International Review of African American Art, Fall 2018.
“Biography: Jeff Donaldson,” Callaloo, Vol 40, Art 2017.
“Sustaining a Catalytic Tradition: the James A. Porter Colloquium Approaches 30,” International Review of African American Art, Fall 2017.
“Who I Am and Why: Faith Ringgold & A Multi-Generational History of Artistic Creation,” International Review of African American Art Plus, Oct. 2013 <http://iraaa.museum.hamptonu.edu/page/Who-I-Am-and-Why>.
Book Chapters and Exhibition Catalog Essays
“Foreword,” GATEWAYS: African American Art from the Key Collection (Washington DC: International Arts & Artists, Winter 2025)
“Becoming an Artist-Activist at Howard University,” Elizabeth Catlett” A Black Revolutionary and All That It Implies, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press with the National Gallery of Art & Brooklyn Museum, 2024)
“‘Ev'ry round goes higher, higher’: Kevin Cole at the Intersection of Synthesis, Nature, Spirituality and Activism” Pushing Forward: Politics, Social Conflict and the Racial Divide in the Art of Kevin Cole, Eric Key, ed. (University of Maryland, Global College Art Gallery:2024)<https://www.umgc.edu/content/dam/umgc/documents/arts-and-diversity/art-catalogs/kevin-cole-exhibition-catalog.pdf>
“‘Think and Pray’: Verbrycke Spiritual Church and Ella Watson’s Religious Worldview,” American Gothic: Gordon Parks and Ella Watson, Casey Riley, ed. (New York: The Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl, 2024)
“Motion” (Section Introduction), Double Exposure, (Washington, DC: Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, 2023)
“Benny Andrews: Critically Constructing the American Figure,” Unforgettable: American Artists Reconsidered, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2022).
“Afro-American Images: 1971 as Evidence: Charting Mid-Century African American Artists Networks,” Afro-American Images 1971: The Vision of Percy Ricks, Margaret Winslow, ed. (Delaware Art Museum, October 2021).
“Alma Thomas & St. Luke’s Episcopal Church,” Alma Thomas: Everything is Beautiful, Seth Feman and Jonathan Waltz, eds. (The Columbus Museum of Art, The Columbus Museum of Art, July 2021).
“People, Places and the Spirit World: Suzanne Jackson's Ecowomanist Art Practice,” Suzanne Jackson: Five Decades, Rachel Reese Ed. (Telfair Museum, Savannah, GA, October 2019).
“‘AfriCOBRA is a Continuum’: the 50 Year Legacy of the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists,” AfriCOBRA: Evolution of a Movement, (Baltimore: Galerie Myrtis, September 2018)
“James Phillips: A Retrospective,” James Phillips: Swirling Complexity into Culture, (College Park: University of Maryland College Park Art Galleries, 2017). <https://issuu.com/umucachiever/docs/james_phillips_catalog_2017>.
“Black Power and Black Madonna: Charting the Aesthetic Influence of Rev. Albert Cleage, Glanton Dowdell & the Shrine of the Black Madonna, #1,”Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr. and of the Black Madonna and Child, Jawanza Clark, editor, (New York: Palgrave McMillian, 2016).
Publications Affiliated with Art Exhibitions
“Biography: Martha Jackson Jarvis,” 2019 By the People Festival Catalog (Washington DC: Halcyon, June 2019).
Book Reviews and Art Exhibition Reviews
Review of AFRICOBRA: Experimental Art toward a School of Thought by Wadsworth Jarrell, College Art Association Review (CAAReview.org) 30 Mar 2021, < http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/3778#.YOcV7uhKiUk >.
Review of Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Mara Ambrožič and Simon Njami, College Art Association Review (CAAReview.org) 21 Oct 2016 <http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/2807#.WCjUhfkrJPY>.
“John Wilson in Mexico: Searching for Universal Artistic Vocabularies Below the Border,” Exhibition Review: John Wilson: Mexico, 1950-1956 at Martha Richardson Fine Art Gallery, Boston, MA, International Review of African American Art Plus. Spring 2013.
Scholarly Presentations
Scholarly Presentations
Invited Presenter, Study Day for The Harlem Renaissance and TransAtlantic Modernism, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Presentation Title: “Architectural Iconography & the Landscape of Black Architects in Aaron Douglas’ Building More Stately Mansions,” June 26, 2024.
Invited Keynote Lecture, Black History Month Programing, African American Studies Program, Salisbury University, Paper Title: “African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Portraiture, 1785-1926: Black Formalist Aesthetics in Three Acts,” February 8, 2023.
Invited Panelist, Fellows Panel for the opening of Jammie Holmes: Church Folk Exhibition, Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery, February 7, 2023.
Invited Featured Lecture, African American Art History: Present Coordinates Symposium, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Boston University, Paper Title: “Call & Response: Contemporary Reflections on James A. Porter’s ‘Four Problems in the History of Negro Art’ (1942),” November 2022.
Introductory Lecture, The Art of Politics and the Politics of the Public Lorraine Hansberry Symposium, Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts, Howard University, Paper Title: “Shaping Space, Making Place: Towards a History of Black Public Art”, November 18, 2022.
Paper Presentation, Phillips Collection- Howard University Symposium on Alma W. Thomas and David C. Driskell, Paper Title: “Situating Alma W. Thomas & David C. Driskell in Washington, DC’s Mid-Twentieth Century Religious Art Landscape,” November 2021.
Paper Presentation, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery PORTAL Speakers Series, Paper Title: “Toward an African Methodist Episcopal Aesthetic Idyll: Art and Images at Wilberforce University, 1863-1914,” October 5, 2021.
Paper Presentation, 2021 John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art: Artists and American Communities, Then and Now, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Paper Title: “St. Luke's Episcopal Church as Cultural and Spiritual Capital in the Life of Alma Thomas,” September 23, 2021.
Keynote Address, Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) Center for Collaborative Teaching & Learning, Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, “Invisible Ink across Archival Pattern,” July 28, 2020.
Paper Presentation, 2019 John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art: Artists and American Communities, Then and Now, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Paper Title: “Between Myth, Evidence and Propaganda: Comparing Twentieth Century Approaches to Photographing the African American Church,” February 8, 2019.
Paper Presentation, Presenter for 50th Anniversary Symposium for the Shrine of the Black Madonna, Renaissance Center, Detroit, Michigan, Lecture Title: “Black Madonna and Child Mural as Catalyst” April 29, 2017.
Academics
Academics
Undergraduate
Art Appreciation (ARTH 161)
Black Art and Culture (ARTH 163)
Internship in Art History (ARTH 168)
Topics in Art Criticism (ARTH 167)
African American Art I (ARTH 178)
African American Art II (ARTH 179)
Research in Art History I (ARTH 181)
Research in Art History II (ARTH 182)
Trends and Ideas in African American Art (ARTH 189)
Black Women in Visual Culture (ARTH 195)
Contemporary Art (ARTH 197)
Graduate
Black Women in Visual Culture (ARHI 200)
African American Art I (ARHI 286)
Trends and Ideas in African American Art (ARHI 278)
Contemporary Art (ARHI 312)
Research
Research
Specialty
Gordon Parks and the History of PhotographyFunding
Supported by Moorland Spingarn Research Center at Howard University and the Gordon Parks Foundation, 2023 Genevieve Young Writing Fellow
Group Information
Upcoming 2025 Gordon Parks exhition at Howard University Museum in Founders Library curated by Melanee C. Harvey
Accomplishments
Accomplishments
2023 Genevieve Young Fellow in Writing, The Gordon Parks Foundation & Howard University
2020-2021 Paul Mellon Guest Scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington. DC.
Publications and Presentations
Publications and Presentations
Publications
Works-In-Progress
Books
Patterns of Permanence: African Methodist Episcopal Architecture and Visual Culture (Book Manuscript in Progress).
Book Chapters and Exhibition Catalog Essays
“Where Art & Science Meet: Eugenia V. Dunn and the Social Fabric of Mid Century Modern Negro Art,” Black Louisville Avante Garde (Louisville: Speed Museum, forthcoming )
“‘She Was Always There’: Samella Lewis in the History of African American Art Convening”,” Samella Lewis Anthology, Clint Fluker, Rebecca Peabody and Kristin Juarez, eds. (Anthology convened by Emory University and the Getty Research Institute; Under Review by Getty Publications)
“African Methodist Episcopal Architectural Discourse as Momentum toward a Denominational Building Boom, 1876-1920,” Rewriting the American Present: Race and the Historiography of American Architecture, Charles Davis, Kathryn Holliday, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury (Under Review with University of Texas Press)
“Gathering Southern Recollections: Place and Memory in the Paintings of Floyd Newsum” Floyd Newsum: Evolution of Sight, Mark Cervenak, ed. (College Station: Texas A& M University Press, forthcoming 2025)
“Jeff R. Donaldson, Eminence (1976),” Roll Call: 200 Year of Black American Art, (Birmingham: Birmingham Museum of Art, forthcoming)
“John N. Robinson, Reclining Woman (Gladys) (1952),” Roll Call: 200 Year of Black American Art, (Birmingham: Birmingham Museum of Art, forthcoming)
Accepted Publications
Exhibition Catalogs & Edited Volumes
Editor, Gordon Parks: E.F. Ledbetter & Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, (Gordon Parks Foundation, Howard University & Steidl, May 2025). <https://steidl.de/Books/Pastor-E-F-Ledbetter-and-The-Metropolitan-Missionary-Baptist-Church-1953-0413202659.html>
Co-Editor with Larry W. Cook, Wherever There is Light: Philadelphia (TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image, 2024).
Journal Publications
“Larry W. Cook” Contact Sheet, Light Work Annual 2022, 217 (New York: Light Work, 2022)
“Object Lesson: Aaron Douglas’s Building More Stately Mansions,” commissioned by Manual 14 Fall/Winter 2020, 23-35.
“Preserving the Will to Adorn: African American Stained Glass Art Traditions,” International Review of African American Art, Vol. 29, No. 3, Spring 2020.
“Constructing and Circulating Black Madonnas as Black Power: Charting the Aesthetic and Cultural Influence of Shrine of the Black Madonna, #1.” Black Theology Papers Project, 2(1), Nov 2019. <https://doi.org/10.7916/btpp.v2i1.3853>.
“The Rhythmic Synergy of James Phillips: Assessing a Legacy of Black Collective Art Practice,” International Review of African American Art, Fall 2018.
“Biography: Jeff Donaldson,” Callaloo, Vol 40, Art 2017.
“Sustaining a Catalytic Tradition: the James A. Porter Colloquium Approaches 30,” International Review of African American Art, Fall 2017.
“Who I Am and Why: Faith Ringgold & A Multi-Generational History of Artistic Creation,” International Review of African American Art Plus, Oct. 2013 <http://iraaa.museum.hamptonu.edu/page/Who-I-Am-and-Why>.
Book Chapters and Exhibition Catalog Essays
“Foreword,” GATEWAYS: African American Art from the Key Collection (Washington DC: International Arts & Artists, Winter 2025)
“Becoming an Artist-Activist at Howard University,” Elizabeth Catlett” A Black Revolutionary and All That It Implies, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press with the National Gallery of Art & Brooklyn Museum, 2024)
“‘Ev'ry round goes higher, higher’: Kevin Cole at the Intersection of Synthesis, Nature, Spirituality and Activism” Pushing Forward: Politics, Social Conflict and the Racial Divide in the Art of Kevin Cole, Eric Key, ed. (University of Maryland, Global College Art Gallery:2024)<https://www.umgc.edu/content/dam/umgc/documents/arts-and-diversity/art-catalogs/kevin-cole-exhibition-catalog.pdf>
“‘Think and Pray’: Verbrycke Spiritual Church and Ella Watson’s Religious Worldview,” American Gothic: Gordon Parks and Ella Watson, Casey Riley, ed. (New York: The Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl, 2024)
“Motion” (Section Introduction), Double Exposure, (Washington, DC: Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, 2023)
“Benny Andrews: Critically Constructing the American Figure,” Unforgettable: American Artists Reconsidered, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2022).
“Afro-American Images: 1971 as Evidence: Charting Mid-Century African American Artists Networks,” Afro-American Images 1971: The Vision of Percy Ricks, Margaret Winslow, ed. (Delaware Art Museum, October 2021).
“Alma Thomas & St. Luke’s Episcopal Church,” Alma Thomas: Everything is Beautiful, Seth Feman and Jonathan Waltz, eds. (The Columbus Museum of Art, The Columbus Museum of Art, July 2021).
“People, Places and the Spirit World: Suzanne Jackson's Ecowomanist Art Practice,” Suzanne Jackson: Five Decades, Rachel Reese Ed. (Telfair Museum, Savannah, GA, October 2019).
“‘AfriCOBRA is a Continuum’: the 50 Year Legacy of the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists,” AfriCOBRA: Evolution of a Movement, (Baltimore: Galerie Myrtis, September 2018)
“James Phillips: A Retrospective,” James Phillips: Swirling Complexity into Culture, (College Park: University of Maryland College Park Art Galleries, 2017). <https://issuu.com/umucachiever/docs/james_phillips_catalog_2017>.
“Black Power and Black Madonna: Charting the Aesthetic Influence of Rev. Albert Cleage, Glanton Dowdell & the Shrine of the Black Madonna, #1,”Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr. and of the Black Madonna and Child, Jawanza Clark, editor, (New York: Palgrave McMillian, 2016).
Publications Affiliated with Art Exhibitions
“Biography: Martha Jackson Jarvis,” 2019 By the People Festival Catalog (Washington DC: Halcyon, June 2019).
Book Reviews and Art Exhibition Reviews
Review of AFRICOBRA: Experimental Art toward a School of Thought by Wadsworth Jarrell, College Art Association Review (CAAReview.org) 30 Mar 2021, < http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/3778#.YOcV7uhKiUk >.
Review of Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Mara Ambrožič and Simon Njami, College Art Association Review (CAAReview.org) 21 Oct 2016 <http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/2807#.WCjUhfkrJPY>.
“John Wilson in Mexico: Searching for Universal Artistic Vocabularies Below the Border,” Exhibition Review: John Wilson: Mexico, 1950-1956 at Martha Richardson Fine Art Gallery, Boston, MA, International Review of African American Art Plus. Spring 2013.