Floyd Newsum, a visionary African American artist and professor of art at the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) community, died last week at 76. In the community, he had been a visionary who was one of the seven founders of the Project Row Houses in Third Ward, one of the city’s oldest African-American neighborhoods, in 1993.
His funeral service will be held on Tuesday, Aug. 27, at 11 a.m. at the Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church (3826 Wheeler Avenue) in Houston.
Newsum joined the UHD faculty in 1976 and taught various courses, such as drawing, painting, printmaking, and art appreciation, for over 48 years. As a tribute to Newsum, UHD plans to establish an endowed scholarship called the Floyd Newsum Visionary Artist and Humanitarian Scholarship to focus on art and social justice.
“Professor Newsum was more than an artist, more than a teacher,” said Loren J. Blanchard, president of the university. “He was a connector, a motivating force who worked to touch lives every day and who brought people together in remarkable ways. His art was intricately linked with his desire to nurture young artists and invest in the next generation of change agents, not only here at UHD but also in the historic Third Ward of Houston and even in communities he visited when his art was on view.”
The life and works of Floyd Newsum
Newsum was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and graduated from Memphis College of Art with a BFA in 1973 and an MFA from Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1975.
His work has been displayed in more than 100 exhibitions in the U.S., the University of Maryland College Park, the Taft Museum in Cincinnati, the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
Newsum’s art is also in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
His contributions to visual art also comprise public art pieces, like two Houston Metro Light Rail Station art designs, seven sculptures for Houston’s Main Street Square Station, four paintings in the UHD Commerce Street Building, a suspended sculpture for the lobby of the Acres Home Multi-Service Center in Houston, a relief sculpture in the Cathedral Atrium at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston and five suspended sculptures for the lobby of the Hazel Harvey Peace Building in Fort Worth, Texas.
From May to October 2023, Newsum also received his first large-scale retrospective, “Evolution of Sight,” at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Madison, Wisconsin.
“A comprehensive museum exhibition of Floyd Newsum’s art is long overdue. With a career emerging from the heart of the Civil Rights Movement in Memphis in the 1960s, Newsum’s layered works have consistently included both overt and subtle responses to civil rights issues. Newsum’s father, one of the first African American firefighters in the South, set an example and provided the impetus for one of Newsum’s primary symbols in the form of a ladder,” said co-curator Mark Cervenka during the “Evolution of Sight” exhibition.
Newsum and Project Row Houses
Project Row Houses is a nonprofit organization that originally comprised 22 Row Houses, aimed at preserving Black culture through community engagement, art, culture, and neighborhood development.
Newsum worked alongside James Bettison, Bert Long Jr., Jesse Lott, Rick Lowe, Bert Samples, and George Smith to build PRH as a co-founder.
“Our hearts have cracked wide open learning that our dear founder Floyd Newsum has gone to be with the ancestors. Floyd was vibrant, insightful, and ready with a challenging question or unexpected suggestion followed by a smile and a laugh to let you know he was pushing you because he felt you were worth pushing,” wrote PRH. “Rest well, Floyd. You are forever part of this place. We treasure your memory, a blessing to us all.”
The organization recalled a heartwarming memory — last year, Newsum accompanied a few Third Ward high school students on a trip to Washington, D.C. When they saw his painting at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture and saw, they were awestruck. Their beloved Mr. Floyd from church was a renowned artist whose work hung in front of them!
This year, PRH named its Summer Studios program for Newsum, recalling how he toasted to PRH’s 31st year and students’ art the week before he passed.
