In addition to his own artistic practice, Robert Colescott (b. 1925, Oakland, CA; d. 2009, Tucson, AZ) was a long-time teacher of painting who earned the prestigious Endowed Regents’ Professorship following teaching roles at institutions including the Portland State University, Oregon; The San Francisco Art Institute; University of California, Berkeley; and University of Arizona, Tucson, where he achieved emeritus status. In 1966 and 1967, he was the first visiting professor of art at the American University in Cairo. Colescott’s early studies in Paris under Fernand Léger were instrumental in the artist’s embrace of the human figure. Prior to studying in Paris, the artist received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, under the GI Bill, following his service in the U.S. Army during World War II.

In celebration of the artist’s centennial in 2025, the Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) opens The One-Two Punch: 100 Years of Robert Colescott on December 5. To further commemorate the artist, the exhibition coincides with the opening TAM’s permanent space for “The Current, An Artist Award,” an annual award bestowed to a Black artist living and working in Tacoma. Colescott was also the subject of a major retrospective, Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott, which traveled to the New Museum, New York (2022); Chicago Cultural Center (2022); Sarasota Art Museum (2021); and the Portland Art Museum, Oregon (2020). The exhibition originated at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati in 2019, curated by Lowery Stokes Sims and Matthew Weseley, and was accompanied by a comprehensive monograph published by Rizzoli Electa. Colescott’s first retrospective, Robert Colescott: A Retrospective, organized by the San Jose Museum of Art (San Jose, CA) in 1987, traveled to the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH; Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; New Museum, New York City, NY; and the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA. Additional solo exhibitions include Robert Colescott: Women at Venus Over Manhattan Gallery in New York in 2023, and Robert Colescott: The Cairo Years at the Tahrir Cultural Center, Cairo, in 2021.

Colescott’s work is represented in public collections internationally, including the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which acquired Colescott’s iconic painting George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware (1975), and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, following the artist’s long friendship with Arlene Schnitzer, founder of Fountain Gallery (Portland), the first gallery to represent Colescott.

Additional representation in public collections includes the Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH; Art Bridges Foundation, Bentonville, AR; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; BY ART MATTERS, Hangzhou, China; California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Crocker Museum of Art, Sacramento, CA; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Delaware Museum of Art, Wilmington, DE; Denver Museum of Art, Denver, CO; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; de Young Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles, CA; Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, UC Davis, CA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR; Pinault Collection, Paris, France; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Seattle Art Museum,