William MAJORS (1930-1982)
ESSAYS
1. William Majors, by Susan Stedman
pp. 6-18
2. Shapes at Play, by Chenoa Baker
p. 20
3. Between a Rock and a Hard-Edged Place: The Blackness of William Majors’ Abstraction, by Thom Pegg
pp. 38-45
©2024 BLACK ART AUCTION/ William Majors Estate
William MAJORS (1930-1982)
Untitled, New York Series, 1968-1969 oil on canvas 58 x 72 inches unsigned accompanied by a letter from Susan Stedman, the widow of the artist, confirming this work to be by her former husband
William MAJORS
Essay by Susan Stedman
A more humane experience
When the Italian flagship Christoforo Colombo, arrived in Naples, September 1960 William (Bill) Majors disembarked with his new ship-board friends for a brief visit to Capri, Positano. Years later he often recalled his response to the intoxicating beauty of Italy’s Amalfi coast (including feminine pulchritude sunning on its beaches). His experience in Italy, and brief travels to Austria and France at that time, shined in stunning contrast with his initial thirty years, living in Indiana and Ohio. He described himself “unprepared for what hit me.” He spoke out about his reaction to the reality of a Black American artist’s positive reception in Europe in contrast with barriers confronting him in the United States. He would note, paraphrasing James Baldwin, that he found himself in a place where he could be treated more humanely than his society had treated him at home.
He traveled to Florence, his destination, where he planned to stay for at least a year, through 1961. His residence there, at Pensione Bartolini on the Arno River, had been arranged through the assistance of the John Hay Whitney Foundation which had awarded him, in 1960, a $3,000 grant for independent study in Italy. (The grant was supplemented by a Wolcott Travel grant of $500, awarded when he received his BFA from John Herron Art Institute, in the same year.) Fourteen years later a generous fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation made it possible for him to return to Florence, where he and I stayed at the same Pensione before we continued
our lengthy trip visiting numerous museums and collections in other Italian cities as well as in Denmark and Holland during the summer of 1974. Deep looking at the work of Masaccio, Giotto and other Renaissance artists, who had been “profoundly transformative” in his first visit was again creatively renewing. He also recognized the experience helped replenish his reservoir for teaching art. Lessons learned studying these masters further intensified his devotion to craftsmanship, quality materials, media, fine papers and patient processes, whether in drawing, etching, painting, or creating collages.
In the 1992 Hunter College, New York, solo Majors exhibition catalogue, curator and artist Anthony Panzera, who had personally known the artist well, observed:
“Each line, each color, each shape, each tone was the result of a carefully orchestrated arrangement…[Majors] works seemed to have come at the end of a sustained and thoughtful process. There was also something of his demeanor in the works…meticulous and thoughtful. He was a well-trained artist and practiced his craft as a confident professional. He took the greatest care about his tools and materials, paying the greatest attention to quality and perfection. He loved beautiful papers, the finest copper and the best canvas. All these elements combined to create an image of a man whose work methods and habits were highly traditional.” [“William Majors. Distinctions. Approaches to Drawing.” City University of New York, 1993.]
His craftsmanship developed early. Even before attending John Herron School of Art (1953-56, 1958-60) and Cleveland School of Art (1956-68) he had focused on his observation and drawing skills: he was assigned to make anatomy and pathology drawings to assist the medical staff at Marion County, IN, Sunnyside Sanitarium where he was a patient, 1946 – 1953, in treatment for tuberculosis. In 1953, when he finally graduated from Crispus Attucks High School, age 23, he enrolled in John Herron, with the benefit of scholarships secured with the help of a devoted Sanitarium social
service staff member. He acknowledged key faculty at Herron, as well as Cleveland, with providing him with a solid, traditional foundation in figurative, representational art, design fundamentals and knowledge of media and tools. He readily acknowledged this foundation served him well in his studio practice and teaching throughout his life. He called upon this core training, later, in preparing syllabi for college students he instructed. He insisted his students “learn their craft” while he witnessed basic techniques being abandoned in the academy.
William Majors, Untitled Landscape, 1958; oil on canvas, Michael and Marian Butler Collection
While studying at Herron and Cleveland schools he primarily followed the traditions of landscape, still life, figurative and portrait painting. He rejected the advice of some instructors to develop subjects representing his ethnic heritage. His highly personal, abstract interpretations of Biblical themes appear early and prevail in his work throughout his life. Soon, his painting in the period before 1960 also began to reflect his growing attraction to abstract expressionism. Occasional traveling exhibitions of works by artists such as Rauschenberg, Diebenkorn, Motherwell, Kline suggested new creative possibilities. Filled with painterly, vigorous brush strokes Majors’ compositions also demonstrated his pleasure in applying colorful palettes which he continued to pursue in his abstract paintings and collages for the next twenty years.
Photo: William Majors, Untitled #3, 1958; oil on canvas, private collection.
Until the age of 30, Indianapolis had been his home base. He and his younger sister, Patricia, were raised by their mother, Fannie, following his father’s death from illnesses in 1931. A housekeeper, caterer and soloist in Wings Over Jordan choir, she moved her family into the new Lockefield Gardens housing complex. The family remained close until Bill was hospitalized in 1946. After he left for Cleveland to live and work in factories, while studying two years at the Art School, Bill commuted to Indianapolis to be with his wife, Janet Burt, whom he had married in 1955, and with their new son, Joseph. Their daughter, Kelley, was born when Bill returned to Indiana from Italy. “After the cosmopolitan life of Europe, cultural activity in Indianapolis seemed sparse…Lack of support, coupled with his perception that racial prejudice within the community was keeping him from achieving his potential, made Majors realize that if he was to grow as an artist, it would not be in this city.”
[William E. Taylor, pg 179. A Shared Heritage 1996] By 1962 he permanently left Indiana for life in New York. (New England became his final home in 1971.)
Photo: Majors, c. 1958-59; Courtesy of Susan Stedman
New York. “Art Horizon of His Day”
Without the benefit of introductions or connections, Bill spent his first months in New York seeking brief jobs such as selling art supplies. A quick study visually, after a few trips to the public library to investigate lacemaking he convinced a lace manufacturer to hire him. Fortuitously, a chance encounter on the street in the Lower East Side, with Richard (Rick) Mayhew’s wife led to resuming a long-lasting friendship with the family. (In my May 2021 phone conversation with Rick, he once again recounted the legendary story how he and Majors first met. He, his wife Dorothy and two children were also living at the Pensione Bartolini, Florence. Both artists, recipients of John Hay Whitney Foundation Fellowships, immediately became friends.) Rick offered to share his 22nd Street New York studio, temporarily, until Bill found housing. He also invited him to join the newly-formed Spiral artists’ collective (1963-65). Bill enjoyed making valuable new friends among the collective’s 15 artist members, in addition to Rick – Charles Alston, Emma Amos, Romare Bearden, Reginald Gammon, Felrath Hines, Earl Miller, Merton Simpson, Hale Woodruff, and especially Norman Lewis. Our friend Norman and he shared many of the same aesthetic principles, and a tenacious temperament about their convictions and studio practice. Many of their more lyrical works revealed common sensibilities. Candid but sensitive toward each other they were mutually supportive through the years. Bill, and I, also valued special friendships
with many other artists we met in New York during the 60s: Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight, Mary Ellen and Benny Andrews, Jack and Mary Whitten, Earl Miller and his family and Ernest Crichlow. Mel Edwards, in particular, was a loyal, supportive friend through the years.
“William Majors represented the younger generation of African-American artists who were drawn to Spiral. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not view his art as a political weapon. His primary emphasis, much like Ellison, was on the transcendency and universality of art. The Spiral years helped Majors to consolidate his aesthetic convictions and affirm and follow the artistic course he had set for himself.”
“Though Majors was often impatient with the discussions at Spiral meetings because of his strong commitment to making art [in common with Lewis] rather than talking about it, his two years with the Spiral group were important to his development as an artist. He brought to the group an expertly honed voice that cut across the poetics of visual language. Truly a product of the Midwest, Majors reflected through his work the directness, honesty, and commitment to craftsmanship that made him one of the important young artists of the 1960s. Though not blessed with long life, Majors cut a decisive path across the art horizon of his day.” [Floyd Coleman. “The Changing Same: Spiral, the Sixties, and African-American Art.” pgs. 156, 157, A Shared Heritage 1996.]
Nanette Carter, William Majors, and Romare Bearden at Merton Simpson Gallery, NY, c. 1966-67. Photo by Anna Kaufman.
On May 14, 1965 a lively array of artists, families, friends gathered in Spiral’s West Village small gallery space, spilling out onto the Christopher Street sidewalk in the warm early evening as we talked about the group’s first, and only exhibition.
“I felt that as protest art the [Spiral] exhibition was totally ineffective. I believe the Spiral group as a whole became closer knit through participation in the exhibition.” Majors added: “There’s a lot of talk … about the Guernica, and people loving it and ….standing there crying. I only relate
to that picture in the beautiful way in which it was painted and yet I hear this business about war, protest. Rather, I would like for…. historians and artists to look at Picasso’s Old Guitarist, look at the sensitivity in which this artist has recognized humanity in an old man who has been neglected.” [William Majors comments in a 1967 WBAI radio conversation with Romare Bearden, Al Hollingsworth and art critic, Jeanne Siegel, documented in “How Effective is Social Protest Art? (Civil Rights)”, pgs 87, 90 ArtWords. Discourse on the 60s and 70s 1992.]
Spiral exhibition announcement, Long Island University, 1965
After the Spiral artists gave up their meeting space, soon after their only exhibition closed, Bill joined occasional, informal gatherings at Romare Bearden’s Canal Street studio. At that time, and until 1969, he often invited Spiral artists, Bearden, Miller, Gammon, Lewis as well as Andrews, Crichlow and Edwards, to his new studio loft, 7th Avenue & 30th Street (his first, and only New York studio) to learn about printmaking on the etching press we had just acquired. These highly animated weekend discussions (with libations) were an extension of Spiral gatherings. (My recorded, online video conversation with Mel Edwards, March 2018, at Brandywine Workshop & Archives, Philadelphia, on site at the exhibition, “Survey of Prints by William Majors”, includes Mel’s entertaining accounts of the Majors studio sessions.)
For three years, beginning 1962, Bill was one of numerous other artists, writers and musicians who worked as guards at The Museum of Modern Art. The collection and exhibitions offered a banquet of visual insights and inspiration. Special exhibitions such as a survey of Arshile Gorky’s work deeply moved him. He felt deep affinities with this artist’s interpretations and language of forms. While not directly influenced by other artists, Majors’ appreciation of a diverse range of art and art traditions motivated him: Matisse, Bonnard, Lawrence, Kandinsky, LeBrun, Klee, Lam, Morandi, Miro, Schwitters, Goya, Matta, the Cubists. Ancient calligraphic scripts, Chinese and Japanese scrolls, Dogon reliefs, the art of First Nations peoples as well as the
complexity of forms in nature and anatomy -- all were resources. And, he described how choreography, mime, and even figures in motion on the streets, as he watched from his New York loft windows, were subjects. Musical experiences – Duke Ellington, Mahalia Jackson, a J.S. Bach Partita, Saint Saens cello concerto – were equally, spiritually meaningful. These “sources” appeared in his work and entered into his teaching practice, encouraging students to observe and listen closely. When he created, in 1973, a series titled River Niger, he commented: “The River Niger series have evolved out of the black experience. They are addressed to the uniqueness of that experience. Thematically, water in all its variety of forms denotes both the constant as well as the ever-changing nature of our common experience and I have utilized a wide range of graphic techniques in these series to make visible this concept.”
Photo: Majors, NY, c. 1966-67; Courtesy of Susan Stedman
Excited by learning new skills in a 1962 etching workshop with artist John Ross, he discovered the medium in which he excelled for the next twenty years. Painting, drawing (pen and ink, graphite, silverpoint) and constructing collages, occasionally wood carving, he was constantly working on intricate, densely etched copper and zinc plates. His work in the 60s and 70s reflects how he continually chose to interrelate all media. New abstractions and imagery emerged. His distinctive idioms of biomorphic forms, calligraphic shapes, surface textures and emphasis on the edge, line and space became further refined. While he did not make preparatory sketches, many of his vivid collages (1964-76) composed of coloraid and other paper fragments which he mounted on panels he carefully prepared with layers of gesso, evolved into large-scale canvas paintings.
William Majors, In Evening, 1964-65; etching and aquatint, © William Majors Estate.
William Majors, River Niger Suite, 1974-76; etching and aquatint, © William Majors Estate.
In 1965, on the encouragement of MoMA’s illustrious director, René d’Harnoncourt, Bill’s portfolio of eighteen etchings and our text was published in a limited edition by the Museum’s Junior Council. He and I had begun the design of “Etchings from Ecclesiastes” a year earlier. He printed the entire edition of 100 copies during an excessively humid summer on our studio etching press. Scholar and artist, Fritz Eichenberg offered to write an introduction: “Ecclesiastes has certainly spoken to William
Majors, an artist of talent and perception searching for truth. The prints speak of a love for man and for the work of his hands. [Majors] is a gifted artist guided by profound convictions.” An unprecedented Museum commission, the portfolio attracted critical acclaim and was widely exhibited and acquired by collectors. It also led to curatorial attention beyond MoMA, representation in national and international exhibitions and museum acquisitions of his work, in general.
William Majors, In the Studio, 1966; oil on canvas, 49-5/8 x 59-3/4 inches. Photo courtesy of Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, Gift of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Indianapolis Chapter, 2000.68 © William Majors.
Museum of Modern Art, NY press release, 1965, for the publication of Etchings from Ecclesiastes Portfolio by William Majors.
Grand Prize, Graphic Arts, award letter to William Majors. The US Committee for the First World Festival of Negro Arts, 1966
Majors was awarded the Grand Prize in Graphic Arts by Senegal’s President Leopold Sedar Senghor. In 1970 his work including “Ecclesiastes” was exhibited in the U.S. Pavilion, 35th Venice Biennale. Five years later, through an introduction by our friend Jacob Lawrence, he was commissioned to create a lithograph edition, on site at Tamarind Institute, New Mexico.
Artist as Educator
As early as mid-1950s in Indianapolis, Bill taught art, primarily to youth. By 1964 and for the next eighteen years, just prior to his death, he devoted as much time to teaching as he did to his studio work. In contrast with many other artists, teaching was not only pragmatically important; he emphasized that given his background, it was purposeful and meaningful to be an educator. Visiting artist, lecturer and faculty in nearly 20 art centers, a community college, and universities in New York, California, New Hampshire, Iowa, Rhode Island and Connecticut often made it difficult, or impossible, to re-establish studios, especially for developing his painting; consequently, he often worked in our kitchen, bedrooms, and any other living spaces on smaller-scale collages, drawings, etchings. By the end of the 60s higher education had just begun, minimally and cautiously, to recruit Black and other artists of color. Bill welcomed the new teaching openings. At one juncture, in the late 60s he taught concurrently in three institutions. He was ready for us to leave New York, as did Jake and Gwen Lawrence at the same time in 1969, to teach in California. Two years later, we moved again, this time to New Hampshire for teaching positions. Ultimately, the frustrations and competing interests of classroom and studio negatively affected him while his health was declining. One of the last series he developed in 1979-81, was an etched tryptich after observing seasonal changes from year to year of the tall ash tree in our backyard. v
© 2021 Susan Stedman
William Majors, Ray Saunders, Roger Barr, and Jacob Lawrence, 1969. Faculty, California State College, Hayward.
William Majors, Artist-in-Residence, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Photos courtesy of Susan Stedman.
Shapes at Play
Essay by Chenoa Baker
Many of William Majors’ works have a collagelike sensibility but are in fact large-scale oil paintings. The negative space, jagged edges of the cobalt blue forms, as if ripped from the source and reassembled, employs trompe l’oeil. It causes a sense of rhythmic unity. The saturated color palette with this effect is reminiscent of artists like Henri Mattisse’s dancing cutouts in his late career, Jacob Lawrence’s geometric shapes and three color approach, and Romare Bearden’s reassembly (most specific nod is in Ghetto on 7th Avenue and 30th Street), whom Majors would be in conversation with as a younger member of The Spiral Collective. Bearden’s reassembly is informed by jazz and the idea of improvisation through reconstitution which shines through Majors’ work, as well.
Majors employs a tricolored palette of mostly black, cobalt blue, and the complimentary orange. Some variations replace the orange with a magenta or yellow. What remains constant is that blue is the most prominent color. According to La Prairie Switzerland, “cobalt blue is the epitome of purity and brilliance, evoking both mystery and opulence.”
In lieu of a figure, this striking hue serves as the protagonist of Majors’ compositions. In a pairing of blue and black, it resurfaces how blue-black is significant for Black visual culture. It echoes the memory of indigo dye, cobalt coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the depths of black skin, and most of all, the watery blue depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
For example, Untitled, NY Series (1968–1969)
depicts six rectilinear shapes moving from the uppermost left corner to the bottom right corner. As they move, they increase in size. Most notably, the black can be read as a layer on top of the blue as it overlaps with the blue section and does not have the contrasting white negative space surrounding it. The last and first color in the series of forms are navy with black gestural marks. By noticing this pattern, it becomes apparent that the black on blue middle rhombus deviates from the navy and forms in the slightest variation that it’s a fugue. But most of all, the eye dances to and lingers on the orange concave rhombus. It is the smallest part of the work yet a strong statement of understanding the other colors in relation to it. It launches forward and enhances the contrast of the blues, blacks, and whites. More than likely, the movement, contrast, and pop forward, alludes to the choreographic chaos of New York all becoming fixtures in the melody of the mundane.
Big Blue #4 (1968) showcases the complex layering of Majors’ visual language. Rectilinear forms are stacked onto each other with a bit of that cobalt blue peeking through on the left. On the right, large royal blue forms interplay with navy and the smallest slivers of red and pink.
Overall each oeuvre dances across the canvas and draws in the viewer to make their own connections, ask deeper questions, and resonate with this collage-like visual style. There’s something calming and familiar about each composition with geometric shapes that are callbacks to the motherland. v
Big Blue #4, 1968 oil on canvas
60 x 85 inches signed and dated William Majors Loft address label verso; Hahn Brothers label verso
Exhibited: New Voices: 15 New York Artists, American Greetings Gallery, Pan Am Building, NY, March-May 1968; 30 Contemporary Black Artists, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1968.
The Gold Collection, Courtesy of Black Art Auction, St. Louis, MO
39 X 50-1/2 inches signed Majors 68
Untitled, 1968 oil on canvas
The Gold Collection, Courtesy of Black Art Auction, St. Louis, MO
Untitled, c.1968 oil on canvas
37 X 47-1/2 inches Estate Stamp
The Gold Collection, Courtesy of Black Art Auction, St. Louis, MO
Untitled, c.1968 oil on canvas
70 X 60 inches Estate Stamp
The Gold Collection, Courtesy of Black Art Auction, St. Louis, MO
61
83 inches
Estate Stamp
Untitled, c.1968 oil on canvas
X
The Gold Collection, Courtesy of Black Art Auction, St. Louis, MO
1968 oil on canvas 48 X 60 inches signed Majors 68
Gold Collection, Courtesy of Black Art Auction, St. Louis, MO
Untitled,
The
79
Estate Stamp
Untitled, c. 1968 oil on canvas
X 103 inches
The Gold Collection, Courtesy of Black Art Auction, St. Louis, MO
78-1/2 X 106-3/4 inches Estate Stamp
Untitled, c. 1968 oil on canvas
The Gold Collection, Courtesy of Black Art Auction, St. Louis, MO
52 x 60 inches Estate stamp
Untitled, 1969 oil on canvas
The Gold Collection, Courtesy of Black Art Auction, St. Louis, MO
, 1969 oil on canvas
61-1/2 x 84 inches signed and dated
Gold Collection, Courtesy of Black Art Auction, St. Louis, MO
Untitled
The
48 x 60 inches signed and dated
Untitled, 1969 oil on canvas
The Gold Collection, Courtesy of Black Art Auction, St. Louis, MO
Between a Rock and a Hard-Edged Place: The Blackness of William Majors’ Abstraction
Essay by Thom Pegg
At a time when it seemed the Black abstract artist could do no right; at least, in the eyes of both the white “art establishment”, as well as many of their fellow Black artists, writers, and critics, they originated significant work. After decades of operating under Alain Locke’s treatise of the New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance, (either adhering to or suffering the consequences of ignoring it; many abstract works were refused entry into important exhibitions such as the Atlanta annuals and some Harmon Foundation opportunities favored artists working in the New Negro aesthetic), some Black abstract artists began to feel that agenda (which at it’s basic meaning espoused that the Black artist should approach subject matter focused on either “ancestralism”, or a person’s African heritage, or his or her specific experience as an African American) was limiting and increasingly ineffective in combatting racial inequalities.
In the catalog accompanying Kenkeleba Gallery’s seminal exhibition, The Search for Freedom, African American Abstract Painting 1945-1975, Ann Gibson points to Norman Lewis’ thoughts on this topic:
“Lewis argued that Social Realism was not an effective way to counter race prejudice. ‘I used to paint Black people in their struggle for existence,’ Lewis told Vivian E. Browne in the late sixties, ‘but soon found out that
this was a waste of time because the very people who you want to see this kind of thing don’t see it. I don’t think this helps the struggle.’” 1
Gibson continues: (These) “artists claimed that their right to operate outside ancestralist or obvious references to African American experience constituted an important aspect of their freedom as individuals and, therefore, of their aspirations to artistic excellence.” 2
In the summer of 1963, a group of New York-based African American artists began meeting weekly at Romare Bearden’s loft; in addition to Bearden, these included Charles Alston, Emma Amos, Calvin Douglass, Perry Ferguson, Reginald Gammon, Felrath Hines, Alvin Hollingsworth, Norman Lewis, Earl Miller, James Yeargans, Richard Mayhew, Merton D. Simpson, Hale Woodruff, and William Majors. Initially, the group was interested in organizing bus passes to Washington, D.C., to participate in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (August, 1963), but they remained connected and turned their energy into discussing the role of the artist in the Civil Rights Movement and current issues involving art, race, politics, and culture.
In the early Sixties, many of these artists were just beginning to experiment with abstraction. The group, which became known by the same title as their first and
1 Ann Eden Gibson, “Two Worlds: African American Abstraction in New York at MidCentury,” in The Search for Freedom: African American Abstract Painting, 1945-1975 (New York, NY: Kenkeleba House, 1991), 35.
2 Ibid, 37
only exhibition, Spiral, agreed to put on an exhibit of works in Black and white from May through June of 1965. The theme, according to Bearden, would address both their formal artistic as well as their sociopolitical concerns. As Susan Stedman points out in her essay (p. 6), Majors was not in complete agreement with the latter part of this agenda, insofar as viewing it as a prerequisite to any and all art produced by a Black person. His concerns, echoed by Lewis and others, were directed toward the formal aspects of abstraction, and specifically, the universality the genre afforded.
Implied was the notion that abstraction was a sanctuary and within the work itself, all artists were equal. Of course, this did not extend to the art world—Black artists, abstract or otherwise, were ignored, dismissed, and deliberately denied gallery and institutional representation.
In A Shared Heritage, Art by Four African Americans, Susan Stedman remarks, “His [Majors’] work shows joy, not gloom, and he was interested in universal expression, not something that related to one group of people at a particular time.” 3
This sentiment was met with vehement criticism by other African American artists
and activists. A passage in Mark Godfrey’s essay, Abstraction in Tryin’ Times, 19671980 illustrates this dynamic:
A few voices from this period give a vivid sense of the pressure these artists faced. In 1971, Emory Douglas of the Black Panther Party demanded that "all progressive artists take up their paints and brushes in one hand and their gun in the other…[B] ridges, buildings, electric planks, pipelines, all of the Fascist American empire must be blown up in our pictures." By implication, this made abstraction “reactionary”, rather than progressive, but there were worse accusations, of selling out and even selfdenial. In 1970, Margaret G. Burroughs penned the essay “To Make a Painter Black,” in which she attacked the “many Black artists [who] have felt they can make it by being as non-Black as possible. They are not Black artists. They do not handle ‘Black’ subject matter. The have painted themselves into a corner away from their Black soul people. They have carried this meaningless non-objectivism to a fine point and often are touted and lauded by the ‘establishment’ for this nonsense.” 4
As a response to this, Mark Whitten argued his work was, in fact, infused with Black “sensibility” and Sam Gilliam argued, “figurative art doesn’t represent
3 Harriet G. Warkel and William E. Taylor, “William Majors: Aspirations and Beliefs,” in A Shared Heritage: Art by Four African Americans (Indianapolis, IN: Indianapolis Museum of Art, with Indiana University Press, 1996), 115.
4 Mark Godfrey, “Abstraction in Tryin’ Times, 1967-1980,” in Four Generations: the Joyner Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art, ed. Courtney J. Martin (New York, NY: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2019), 83-85.
Blackness any more than a non-narrative media-oriented kind of painting, like what I do.” 5 Regardless of exactly how it is described, Majors’ work from this time illustrates Whitten’s remark about abstract compositions revealing Black sensibilities. Harriet Warkel writes about Majors’ painting, Liberation, painted in 1967:
"[Liberation] reveals a calligraphic figure encased in a multi-layered impenetrable cell. Title and imagery allude to Major’s feelings about the barriers people must breach to achieve their full potential. Here he encircles the figure in dark and somber colors. The artist adds a lighter blue area on the left side of the canvas to suggest a brighter world outside the realm of the confined figure.” 6
Surprisingly, these artists did not forget they were Black; unsurprisingly, they would have liked to pursue their artistic concerns with the same freedoms enjoyed by their white counterparts. To a significant degree, the act of creating an abstract work was emancipating, precisely because there was no prerequisite. While the Black abstract artist could elect to infuse the
5 Ibid.
work with “Black sensibilities” or directly address socio-political issues within a given composition, he or she could also choose not to. Abstention may be seen as an act of “artistic disobedience”. Godfrey references a quote by William T. Williams about Russian Constructivism: “It seemed to me there was a revolutionary intent that those artists had in terms of changing the way people perceived the world…The abstract art had a revolutionary posture that paralleled political rebellion.” Lenin had set the stage after the Russian Revolution of 1917, by declaring that art belonged to the people, and that idea on the surface seems innocent enough, but he meant that all art must be about the masses and enjoyed, appreciated, and understood by the masses and the practical manifestation of that was state-sponsored realism, and any exception was seen as a betrayal of the people. Stalin proceeded to take that one step further, making Social Realism the state imposed style of art by 1934. Stalin hated avant-garde art precisely because of it’s free nature and implied sanctuary. This was seen again in Nazi Germany, culminating in 1937, with the exhibition, Degenerate Art, in which avant-
6 Harriet G. Warkel and William E. Taylor, “William Majors: Aspirations and Beliefs,” in A Shared Heritage: Art by Four African Americans (Indianapolis, IN: Indianapolis Museum of Art, with Indiana University Press, 1996), 113.
Illustrated: William Majors: Aspirations and Beliefs, A Shared Heritage: Art by Four African Americans, Harriet G. Warkel, 1996, p. 113, fig. 71.
William Majors, Liberation, 1967; oil on canvas, 72 x 62 inches. Collection of the Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A.
garde works by various artists were shown accompanied by labels disparaging each one. Similarly to Stalin, Hitler feared modern art as chaotic and a threat to “order”. In 1960s New York, Black abstractionists were exercising a personal freedom, superseding both their white and Black critics.
Phillip Hampton (1922-2016) described how an abstract style was potentially more effective at communicating concerns of Black artists beyond formal issues:
Viewers, once having experienced my work may allow composites of my shapes to take hold in their minds, which by their own set of circumstances become genuine reality. With my having knowledge of this transformation, I may derive a sense of accomplishment and surmise in the process that as a painter and creator of shapes and structures, I have not merely regurgitated imagery from my limited dimension, but that I have provided forms attending a broader essence of reality, a reality which engages the innermost part of human thoughts and feelings.7
Hampton also pointed out that an abstract painter has an advantage over the narrative
painter because of the ability to represent several, equally viable, definitions of reality pertaining to a single composition simultaneously. Majors’ Ghetto on 7th Avenue and 30th Street, N.Y.C., 1975-77, represents a uniquely Black experience, but by presenting this “scene” as an abstraction, the artist transforms the specific into a universal. The composition resembles a sequence of time-lapse images, thereby turning a few figures into the entire neighborhood…into a representation of Black people in New York City in the seventies. Harriet Warkel describes the image:
Majors often looked down from his third floor New York loft on Seventh Avenue and observed the patterns people made on the street as they stood and talked together. Here the artist creates the feeling of a crowded, noisy, densely populated area by overlapping the shapes in several layers. He groups his elements into rhythmic arrangements of form and color, making use of the principles of color interaction. 8
Norman Lewis often created this type of visual with his Procession paintings.
7 Thom Pegg, “Revolution in Symbolic Interaction,” in Feels Like Freedom: Philip J. Hampton (1922-2016), Telfair Museums and Black Art Auction, 2022: 49-56.
8 Harriet G. Warkel and William E. Taylor, “William Majors: Aspirations and Beliefs,” in A Shared Heritage: Art by Four African Americans (Indianapolis, IN: Indianapolis Museum of Art, with Indiana University Press, 1996), 111-115.
William Majors, Ghetto on 7th Avenue and 30th Street, 1967; oil on canvas, 72 x 62 inches. © William Majors Estate
Illustrated: William Majors: Aspirations and Beliefs, A Shared Heritage: Art by Four African Americans, Harriet G. Warkel, 1996, p. 120, fig. 78.
Kleeblatt and Partman describe Lewis’ depiction of figures in these works as “amorphous and atmospheric” and “universal and existential”. 9 Lewis’ abstraction frequently employed both multiple (possible) meanings and the passing of time as Hampton described as possible working in that style.
In discussing Lewis’ painting Harlem Turns White, 1955, Jeffrey C. Stewart writes:
Abstraction as a painterly project allows Lewis to keep his meaning elusive, keeping multiple possibilities in play like the trickster he often seems to be—and prefers to be, rather than a literalist or propagandist 10
Similar in formal composition to Majors’ Ghetto on 7th Avenue and 30th Street, N.Y.C., Stewart suggests Lewis’ paintings, Processional and Untitled (Alabama), “suggest architectural structures of people queuing up to move through space and time, with improvisational brilliance in undulating cadences, despite the twisting effects of the fight for human rights” 11
The large canvases by Majors, executed in the late 1960s through the early 1970s, informally referred to as the New York Series, share several formal concerns in palette and composition. Predominantly black, blue and white, with occasional use of ochre and in a rare instance, pinkish-red, the artist creates a unique environment , and the large format size of the works envelops the viewer. The artist, the subject and the viewer all become participants in that environment, not unlike standing on the sidewalk in New York City and looking at the city and its inhabitants and inherently being a part of the composition yourself. Whereas viewing a narrative, or social realist painting might be akin to seeing an image of a particular incident in the newspaper, Majors’ abstract compositions place one in the scene, and the universal quality of the forms—seen by critics as colorless and meaningless— allow the viewer to, as Hampton explained, substitute one’s own reality into the scene.
According to Susan Stedman, Majors emphasized “exacting craftsmanship” in his paintings and collages, “not only in
9 Norman L Kleebatt and Lucy H. Partman, “The Edge of Abstraction Norman Lewis and the Joyner/Giuffrida Collection,” in Four Generations: the Joyner Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art, ed. Courtney J. Martin (New York, NY: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2019), 20.
10 Jeffrey C. Stewart, “Beyond Category: Before Afrofuturism There Was Norman Lewis,” in Procession: the Art of Norman Lewis, ed. Ruth Fine (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2015), 175. 11 Ibid, 177
palette but also process.” He placed great importance on “interrelationships of colors, close hues (he spoke for example, about Albers, Matisse, Kandinsky, Lawrence, et al), and space as an active element in his compositions, intentional emphasis on the edges (linear aspect) of contours and forms.” He was also concerned with “surface, building up layers and layers of gesso in many stages and selecting paints and Behlens dyes.” 12
“By the end of 1968, William adamantly declined to participate in exclusively Black artists exhibitions. He rejected curators and even withdrew his work.” 13 One such work was Big Blue #4, 1968. This painting, featured in The Art Gallery Magazine, April 1968, was included in the exhibition, New Voices: 15 New York Artists (March 12May 3, 1968) sponsored by The American Greetings Corporation in cooperation with the Studio Museum in Harlem. It was then illustrated in the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts 1968 brochure for its traveling exhibition, 30 Contemporary Black Artists; but Majors demanded it be returned, objecting to the theme of an exclusive Black artists exhibition.
at Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College (New Hampshire), 1977, saying an artist is “sensitive to everything that goes on around him”. His works capture “the rhythms of peoples and societies” and chronicle “the course of events of the streets and the world at large”; they are “stimulated by nature both seen and unseen.” 14
Majors successfully navigated the sharkinfested waters in which the Black abstractionist swam during the Civl Rights Movement. He exercised personal freedom in his choice of style while simultaneously making thoughtful critiques of the establishment and racial conditions. He arrived at his position by way of personal consideration and priority, not because he was expected to as a Black person. He rejected the reverse segregation of exclusively Black art exhibitions. He stated that his “vocabulary of form has been based largely on the biomorphic...Water in all its variety of forms denotes both the constant and ever-changing nature of our common experiences.” 15 v
Universality was a central theme to Majors’ work. He was quoted in the press and in a brochure for a residency solo exhibition 12 Pegg, Thom. Susan Stedman. Personal, May 10, 2021. 13 Ibid.
14 Majors: Graphics, An exhibition of the winter artist-in-residence, Dartmouth College, Beaumont-May Gallery, Hopkins Center, 28 January-6 March 1977. 15 Ibid.
William MAJORS
Born, Indianapolis, IN 1930; died, Portsmouth, NH 1982
Education
John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis, IN 1953-55; 1958-60 BFA
Cleveland School of Art, OH 1956-58
Independent study, Florence, Italy, 1960-61
Awards
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Award, Graphic Arts, 1974-75
Ingram Merrill Foundation Grant, 1967-68
Grand Prize, Graphic Arts, First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar, Senegal, 1966
(Awarded by Senegal President, poet Leopold Senghor)
Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant in Graphic Arts, 1965
John Hay Whitney Foundation Fellowship, Independent study,
Florence, Italy, 1960-61
G.W.Roper Tidewater Purchase Prize, American Drawing Annual VI, Norfolk, VA, 1959
Wolcott Travel Award, 1960 and Katherine Ayres Award, Indianapolis, IN, 1954
Major Collections
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
The Brooklyn Museum, New York
The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania
International Graphic Arts Society, New York
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delware
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York
AT & T, Somerset, NJ
Chase Manhattan Bank Art Collection, New York
Schomburg Collection of Research in Black Culture, New York
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana
Achenbach Foundation, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California
University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, Iowa
Hood Museum of Art Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
Tamarind Art Institute, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Zimmerli Art Museum, Brunswick, New Jersey
Wellin Museum, Hamilton College, Clinton, New York
Roy R Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York
Mott-Warsh Collection, Flint, Michigan
Lafayette College, Rare Books Collection, Easton PA
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ
David Driskell Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
James E. Lewis Museum of Art, Morgan State University, MD
Selected Exhibitions
Printmasters, Wilmer Jennings Gallery, Kenkeleba, New York, 2019
Artist as Craftsman. A Survey of Prints by William Majors, Brandywine Workshop and Archives, Philadelphia, PA. 2018 (solo)
Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952-65, Grey Art Gallery, New York University; NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery, 2017-18
19 Stars, a Bicentennial Celebration, Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN. 2016-17
Progenitors of Spiral, Gallery of Art, Bowie State University, MD, 2016
Spiral: American Masters, Evolve the Gallery, Sacramento, CA 2014
Spiral: Perspectives on an African-American Art Collective, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 2011
Annual Auctions, Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, NJ, 2011-12
Permanent Collection selections, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 2011
Abstraction Plus Abstraction, Wilmer Jennings Gallery, Kenkeleba, NY, 2010; Group exhibition, Kenkeleba, NY 2018.
GeoMetrics, Wilmer Jennings Gallery, Kenkeleba, NY, 2008-09
African American Artists On Paper, Lederer and Lockhart Galleries, State University of New York at Geneseo, NY, 2008
Works on Paper, Collectors Show, Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AK, 2006
Annual Art Auctions, National Coalition of 100 Black Women, NY, 2004 - 2006
National Black Fine Arts Shows, New York, NY 2001-2008 (Sragow Gallery, Kenkeleba Gallery)
William Majors, (solo) Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN, 2006
Romare Bearden Foundation, Auctions, NY 2005 – 2008, 2014
African American Printmakers. The Legacy Continues, Lore Degenstein Gallery, Susquehanna University, PA, 2004-05; and, Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, NJ, 2005
Rhythms and Rituals that Feed My Spirit, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY, 2002-2003
The Stamp of Impulse, Abstract Impressionist Prints, Worcester Museum, MA, 2001; The Cleveland Museum of Art, OH, 2002-02; Amon Carter Museum, TX, 2002; M and l Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, IL 2003
A Shared Heritage, Art by Four African Americans, Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1995-96;Terra Museum of Art, IL, 1996; National Museum of African American Heritage, MA,1996
African American : 1838 to Present, State Univ of NY, Rockland Community College, 1995
BermanDaferner Gallery, New York (solo) 1994-95
Distinctions; Approaches to Drawing by William Majors, Leubsdorf Art Gallery, Hunter College of the City University of New York, NY (solo) 1993
Three Voices, Thirty Years of Afro-American Expression, Shircliff Gallery, Vincennes University, Vincennes, IN, 1992
Harris Brown Gallery, Boston, MA (solo),1987
University of Vermont, Robert Hull Fleming Museum, Burlington, VT 1987
Transitions: the Afro-American Artist, Bergen Museum of Art and Science, Paramus, NJ, 1986
Impressions/Expressions: Black American Graphics,1979
Another Generation,The Studio Museum, New York, 1979
Majors: Graphics, Beaumont—May Gallery, Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (solo; artist-in-residence), 1977
Selected Works by Black Artists from the Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY,1976
U.S. Pavilion, 35th Biennale, Venice, Italy, 1970
Dimension of Black, La Jolla Museum of Art, CA, 1970
Black Odyssey Festival, Graduate Theological Union, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 1970
American Drawings and Prints of the 1960s, Illinois Bell, Chicago, IL, 1970
Thirty Black Contemporary Artists, Minneapolis Art Institute, MN (national traveling exhibition), 1968-69
American and Soviet Printmakers, Larcada Gallery, NY, 1968
Homage to Martin Luther King, The Museum of Modern Art, NY, 1968
New Voices, Fifteen New York Artists, American Greetings Gallery, NY, 1968
IV Triennial of Colored Graphics, Grenchen, Switzerland, 1967
Philadelphia Art Alliance, (two-person), Philadelphia, PA, 1967
Society of Art, Fredrikstad, Norway, 1967
The Negro in American Art, (traveling exhibition) California Arts Commission, 1966-67
Dix Artistes Negres, (international traveling exhibition) American Federation of Art, 1966-68
First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar, Senegal, 1966 (Grand Prize)
American Illustrated Books, 1964-65, Grolier Club, NY, 1966
Weyhe Gallery Group Show, New York, 1966
Second American Biennial of Printmaking, Santiago, Chile, 1966
Prints for Home and Office, (traveling exhibition) NY State Council on the Arts, 1965-66
New York Regional Exhibition, Drawing Society, Gallery of Modern Art, NY, 1965
SPIRAL Exhibition, New York, 1965
Recent Acquisitions, The Museum of Modern Art, NY, 1963
A.C.A. Gallery Group Show, New York, 1962
American Drawing Annual, VII, Norfolk, VA ,1959
Ball State Drawing Annuals, IN 1954, 1956, 1959
American Drawing Annual, VII, Norfolk, VA ,1959
Religious Art Annual, Indianapolis, IN, 1957-58
Boston Festival, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1957
Various regional exhibitions in Indiana and Ohio, 1956-60
Various faculty group exhibitions: Rhode Island School of Design, (1979-81)University of New Hampshire (1971-73), Hayward State University (1969-71), California College of Arts and Crafts (1969-71), Orange County Community College, State University of New York (1965-69)
Commissions
Etchings from Ecclesiastes, a limited edition portfolio of 18 etchings published by the Junior Council of The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1965 (Introduction by Fritz Eichenberg)
Limited edition etching, Burning Bush, published by the International Graphic Arts Society, New York 1966
Two limited editions of lithographs, Steps to Freedom, published by the Tamarind Art Institute, Albuquerque, NM; commissioned by Robinson Galleries, Houston, TX 1975
Teaching
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 1979-81
Associate Professor, Graphic Arts
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI 1974
Associate Professor, Design and Director, Third World Program
University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 1971-73
Associate Professor, Printmaking, Painting, Drawing
California State University, Hayward, CA 1969-71, 1973
Associate Professor, Chair Graphic Arts Division, Printmaking, Drawing
California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA 1970
Visiting Lecturer, Drawing
New School for Social Research, New York 1967-69
Visiting Professor, Printmaking, Painting
Orange County Community College, State University of New York, Middletown, NY, 1965-69
Assistant Professor, Painting, Drawing, Design, Art History
Art Department Chair 1968-69
Northern New Jersey Art Center, Tenafly, NJ 1966-69, 1971
Instructor, Printmaking, Painting, Drawing
The Institute of Modern Art, The Museum of Modern Art, NY 1964-65
Instructor, Painting and Printmaking
Indianapolis Public School System, Art Department, IN 1960
Jewish Community Center, Indianapolis, IN 1958-59
John Herron Museum School, Indianapolis, IN 1958-60
Instructor, Drawing, Painting, Sculpture
Visiting Artist/Critic Residencies (selected list)
University of Iowa, Graduate Painting Division, Iowa City, IA 1976
Cleveland Art Institute, OH 1974
State University of New York, Cortland, NY 1971
Cornell University, Art Department, Ithaca, NY 1971
California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA 1969-70
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 1977 (artist in residence)
State University of New York, New Paltz, NY 1979
Orange County Community College, SUNY, Middletown, NY 1979
Consultancies, Guest Lectures (selected list)
Institute of International Education, NY, Chairman, Painting Division, National Screening Committee (awarding US and foreign grants including Fulbright-Hays Awards), 1972-75, 79
Philips Exeter Academy, Art Department, Exeter, NH 1973
New Hampshire Art Education Association, Currier Gallery, Manchester, NH 1971
New York State Council on the Arts, Advisor in Visual Arts 1968-69
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 1968
Atlanta University, Art Department, Atlanta, GA 1968
Bibliography
General Works
Cederholm,, Theresa D. (ed.) Afro-American Artists: A Bio-bibliographical Directory, Boston: Boston Public Library, 1973
Faulkner, Ray and Ziegfield, Edwin, Art Today, An Introduction to the Visual Arts, Fifth, sixth editions, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1969, pp. 299, 304 (Illus.)
King-Hammond, Leslie. Masks and Mirrors: African American Art 1750 – Present. Abbeville Publishing Group, 1998
Siegel, Jeanne. Art Words. Discourse on the 60s and 70s. New York: Da Capo Press, 1992.
Articles and Reports
African American Review, Indiana State University, Vol 33, No. 1 and 2, 1999 (illus.)
Carroll, Valinda, “Samella Lewis Archive and Art Collections at Hampton University Museum,” The International Review of African American Art, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2006 (illus. 50)
Eichenberg, Fritz, “A Salute of Young Printmakers,” Artists Proof, Vol. VI, No. 9-10, 1966, pp. 18, 25 (illus.)
Greene, Carroll, Jr, “The Black Artist in America,” The Art Gallery Magazine, April 1970, pp. 17-29 (illus. p 28)
Inness-Brown, Virginia, A Brief Documentary Report on U.S. Participation in the First World Festival of Negro Arts, 1966
Shepard, Richard F. , “10 Painters Quit Negro Festival in Dispute with U.S. Committee”, The New York Times, March 10, 1966
Siegel, Jeanne, “Why Spiral,” Art News, Vol. 65, No. 5, Sept. 1966, pp. 48-51 (illus.)
Siegel, Jeanne. “Artwords: Discourse on the 60s and 70s,” 1973.
Strickland, Edward, “Majors’ prints are featured…,” Bay State Banner, Feb. 5, 1987
Temin, Christine, “Majors’ Posthumous Show is an Affirmation of Life,” Boston Globe, Calendar p 9, Jan. 22, 1987
Temin, Christine, “Learning More About Prints,” Boston Globe, p. 9, Jan. 8, 1987
Warkel, Harriet G., “Shared Heritage, Art by Four African Americans,” American Art Review, Vol. VIII, No. 1, Feb-Mar 1996, pp. 114-121, (Ilus. 120, 121).
Werner, Alfred, “Black is Not a Colour,” Art and Artists, May, 1969, pp. 14-17 (illus.)
Wylly, Campbell, “New Voices: 15 New York Artists,” The Art Gallery Magazine, April 1968, pp. 32-36 (Illus.)
Exhibition Catalogues
Listed are catalogs containing reproductions, biographical and critical references about Majors. Other miscellaneous exhibition catalogs and checklists containing references are not included (e.g., university and college publications).
Acton, David, The Stamp of Impulse; Abstract Expressionist Prints. Worcester, MA: Worcester Art Museum, 2001, pp. 226-227 (Illus.)
Acton, David. “Jammin at the Press,” Procession. The Art of Norman Lewis. Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2015. pp. 123-133 (illus pg 129)
American Illustrated Books 1945-65. New York: The Grolier Club, 1965.
American Prints in the Library of Congress, Compiled by Karen F. Beall. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970 (Illus.)
An Art Calendar/Portfolio, Works Selected from the Chase Manhattan Collection, New York, 1970 (Illus.)
La Biennale di Venezia. Catologo della 35 Esposozione Biennale Internazaionale d’Arte Venezia Venice, Italy 1970
Coleman, Floyd, Essay, “The Changing Same: Spiral, the Sixties, and African-American Art,” in A Shared Heritage; Art by Four African Americans, Indianapolis, Indiana University Press and Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1996.
Corlett, Mary Lee, Essay in Process to Print; Graphic Works by Romare Bearden, San Francisco, CA: Pomegranate, 2009, pp. 11,12
Edmunds, Allan; Stedman, Susan. Artist as Craftsman, Survey of Prints by William Majors, Brandywine Workshop & Archives, Philadelphia, PA 2018
Haynes, Lauren, Spiral: Perspectives on an African-American Art Collective, Studio Museum, Harlem, NY, 2011
Hebler, Herman (ed.) Internazional Farvegrafikk. Fredrikstad, Norway: Fredrikstad Art Society, 1967 (Illus.)
Kingsley, April, Afro American Abstraction. New York, 1980
Mandle, E. Roger (introd.), Thirty Black Contemporary Artists. Minneapolis and New York: Minneapolis Art Institute, 1968 (Illus.)
Masters of Color. Calendar portfolio of Black American Artists. Boston, MA: Harris Brown Gallery, 1987 (illus.)
Nieves, Marysol, The Permanent Collection of The Bronx Museum of the Arts. 1998 (p. 10 illus.)
Panzera, Anthony, Distinctions: Approaches to Drawing by William Majors, Hunter College of the City of New York, NY, 1993
The Negro in American Art. Los Angeles, California Arts Commission, 1966 (Illus.)
New Printmaking. Fredrikstad, Norway: Society of Arts, 1967
Rachleff, Melissa, Inventing Downtown, Artist-Run Galleries in New York City. New York: Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 2017 (Illus. pg 190)
Rockefeller, David (introd.), Art at the Chase Manhattan Bank, NY, 1970 (Illus.)
Second American Biennial of Printmaking, Santiago, Chile, 1967
Spiral. New York, n.d. [1964] (illus.)
Stubbe, Wolf, IV International Triennial of Colored Graphics, Grenchen, Switzerland: Satz and Druck A Niederhauser AG, 1967
Ten Negro Artists from the United States, New York; American Federation of Arts, 1966 (for the International Program of the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution) (illus.)
Warkel, Harriet (ed.), A Shared Heritage; Art by Four African Americans, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press and Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1996.
20th Century Afro-American Artists: Selections from the Permanent Collection of the Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
The Chronicle, Pub 2, June 1960, John Herron Art School Publication. (cover illustration)
