Celebrating 175: Jeff Donaldson, Biographical Summaries and Resumes, 1990s-circa 2001

About the Project

Join the Archives of American Art and the Smithsonian Transcription Center throughout the next year as we celebrate the Smithsonian's 175th birthday! Explore the lives and worlds of 175 different US art world figures on their birthdays, one for each year since the Smithsonian's founding in 1846. Who was born on this day? In 1932, Jeff Donaldson.

Born December 15, 1932, Jeff Donaldson (1932-2004) was an African American artist and educator, and a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. He helped found the group which organized the "Wall of Respect" mural in 1967, and he also co-founded the AfriCOBRA artist collective in 1968. He was a life-long member. In 1970, Donaldson became the director of the Howard University Art Gallery and chairman of the art department. He later became associate dean, and then dean of the Howard University College of Fine Art. Donaldson promoted the "TransAfrican" aesthetic. Help us transcribe interviews and writings to illuminate his life. You can explore the rest of the fully digitized Jeff Donaldson papers on the Archives of American Art website!

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Completed!

Project Progress (details)

75 pages completed

Difficulty

3 out of 5

(details)

About Project Difficulty

Level 1 - BEGINNER

Content: all typed
Language: English
Format: letters, diaries, flyers, pamphlets, and one-page documents
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: none required

Level 2

Content: mostly typed, handwritten in print, or otherwise very clearly written/readable
Language: English
Format: memorabilia, advertisements, image captions, telegrams, diaries, letters, notes
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: none required

Level 3 - INTERMEDIATE

Content: typed and handwritten materials in cursive or print
Language: English
Format: newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, letters/diaries/notes that may include annotations or margin notes
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: experience reading cursive writing may be useful

Level 4

Content: handwritten materials, primarily in cursive or somewhat difficult to read (predominantly from the 19th and 20th centuries) , audio recordings that are relatively easy to hear/decipher, and scientific materials
Language: English and/or other languages that use Roman script but may require the use of diacritics (French, Spanish, German, Italian, etc.)
Format: audio recordings, letters, diaries, notes and other written materials, projects with templated fields and special instructions
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: some knowledge of non-English Roman-character/script languages and diacritics may be useful, as well as experience reading cursive handwriting. A general knowledge or familiarity with scientific terminology.

Level 5 - ADVANCED

Content: handwritten materials in cursive (from the 19th century or earlier) or in a non-Roman script language, audio recordings that are difficult to hear or are not in English, specialty materials/projects such as numismatics projects and the Project Phaedra notebooks
Language: foreign languages that use non-Roman characters (Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Greek/Cyrillic, Native American and Indigenous languages, etc.) and English
Format: audio recordings, columned data/tables, manuscripts, letters, diaries, notes, currency sheets, coins
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: knowledge of a specific language and access to a keyboard with the characters in that language may be required for certain projects. Experience reading cursive handwriting and familiarity with 19th century (or prior) handwriting and conventions/abbreviations may be useful, as well as knowledge of scientific terminology, astrophysics data, or linguistics.

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