Lois Mailou Jones died in Washington, D.C., at age 92, ending a career spanning seven decades as a painter and educator.
Lois Mailou Jones died on June 9, 1998, in Washington, D.C., at the age of 92, closing a remarkable career that had spanned more than seventy years as a painter, textile designer, and influential art educator.
By the time of her death, Jones had achieved international recognition for her contributions to American art, having exhibited her work across the United States, Europe, Haiti, and Africa. Her paintings, which evolved from academic realism through French modernism to vibrant explorations of African American, Caribbean, and African cultural themes, were held in major museum collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Her nearly four-decade tenure at Howard University, from 1930 until her retirement in 1977, left an indelible mark on generations of African American artists whom she trained and mentored, many of whom went on to significant careers of their own.
Obituaries at the time, including one in The New York Times, recognized her as a pioneering figure who had broken numerous racial and gender barriers in American art institutions, from being the first Black woman to graduate from Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1927, to winning major awards while concealing her race, to receiving the first solo museum exhibitions given to an African American woman artist.
Her death marked the end of an era, but her legacy continued to grow through posthumous retrospectives, scholarly studies, and the continued exhibition of her work in major institutions dedicated to preserving and celebrating African American and women's art history.