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Creator
Cortor, Eldzier, 1916-2015
Call number
Sc MIRS Cortor 2021
Physical description
5 video_recordings
Language
English
Preferred Citation
Eldzier Cortor moving image collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division, The New York Public Library
Sponsor
An anonymous donor funded preliminary processing for this collection. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supported a research library-wide grant for the digitization, and funded the Schomburg for the description and production of the finding aid as part of The Next Century of Black Studies Project.
Repository
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division
Access to materials
Appointment preferred: Request an in-person research appointment.

Eldzier Cortor (1916-2015) was an African American painter and master printmaker. The collection consists of five video recordings of an interview with Cortor on June 26, 2000 at Kenkeleba House, an art gallery in New York City.

Biographical/historical information

Eldzer Cortor (1916-2015) was an African American painter and master printmaker. Cortor was born in Richmond, Virgina, and raised in Chicago, Illinois. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago, earning a degree in 1936. In 1940, he worked with the Works Project Administration (WPA) as a painter, depicting the lives of African Americans in Chicago's South Side. During this time, he helped establish the South Side Community Art Center, the first Black art museum in the United States.

In 1944 and 1945, Cortor earned two fellowships from the Rosenwald Foundation that allowed him to study the Gullah community on the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina, and to paint its African American inhabitants. In 1949, supported with a Guggenheim fellowship, he studied in Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti, as well as taught at the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince from 1949 to 1951. Cortor's works are in major museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Smithsonian American Art museum.

He died in 2015 at ninety-nine years old.

Scope and arrangement

The Eldzier Cortor moving image collection consists of one interview comprising five video recordings. They are arranged in sequence by parts. The interviewer is Corinne Jennings, the owner of Kenkeleba House. Founded in 1974, Kenkeleba House is an art gallery dedicated to celebrating and presenting the visual aesthetic and cultural legacy of African American artists and other artists of color that have been historically overlooked by the art world establishment and cultural mainstream.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Gift of Michael Cortor, 2021.

Processing information

Collection inventoried by Anika Paris. Collection processed and described by Ornella U. Baganizi, archivist; and Shola Lynch, curator. Finding aid published in 2024.

Separated material

See the Art and Artifacts Division for the artworks.

Using the collection

Location

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division
515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801
Third Floor

Access to materials

Appointment preferred: Request an in-person research appointment.