Sylvia Snowden
Sylvia Snowden (b. 1942, Raleigh, N.C.) holds both Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from Howard University (Washington, D.C.). She received a scholarship to Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Skowhegan, ME), and has a certificate from Académie de la Grande Chaumière (Paris, France). Snowden has taught at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), Howard University (Washington, D.C.), and Yale University (New Haven, CT), and has served as an artist-in-residence, a panelist, visiting artist, lecturer/instructor, and curator in universities, galleries, and art schools in the United States and internationally. In 2018, Snowden’s work was notably featured in the landmark exhibition Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960-Today at the National Museum for Women in the Arts (Washington, D.C.) alongside fellow Howard University alumnae Mildred Thompson, Alma Thomas, and Mary Louise Lovelace. Snowden has also exhibited at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY; and the National Archives for Black Women's History (NABWH) of the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site (MAMC), Washington, D.C.. Her works have been shown globally in Chile, the Netherlands, Ethiopia, Australia, the Bahamas, France, Mexico, Italy and Japan.
Her first solo exhibition with the gallery, Sylvia Snowden: Select Works, 1966 -2020, took place in 2021.
Select Works
Select Exhibitions
Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–70
Whitechapel Gallery, London, EN
February 9 – May 7, 2023
Sylvia Snowden
Rubell Museum, Washington D.C.
Opened October 29, 2022
Sylvia Snowden: Venus of M Street & Men on M Street
Edel Assanti, London, EN
co-presented with Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York, NY
October 13 - November 19, 2022
Select Press
2023
Bradley, Joe. “Sylvia Snowden by Joe Bradley.” BOMB, October 2023.
Fullerton, Elizabeth. “Expressionist painter Sylvia Snowden: ‘White people will show some Black art ... then it wears off’.” The Guardian, September 2023.
Smith, Laura. “Sylvia Snowden: M Street on White.” Edel Assanti, September 2023.
Jensen, Charlotte. “Retelling the Story of Abstract Expressionism Through Women Artists.” The New York Times, March 2023.
2022
Sutton, Benjamin. “Rubell Museum DC opens in former school, with a mission to champion ‘the unique role of artists as teachers’.” The Art Newspaper, October 28, 2022.
Hudson, Suzanne. “Sylvia Snowden.” Artforum, March 2022.
Drucker, Johanna. “Alive with Potent Energy: The Work of Sylvia Snowden.” Los Angeles Review of Books, February 27, 2022.
Belmont, Sarah. “From the Pompidou to Frieze, Curator Camille Morineau Is Bringing Forgotten Female Artists to Light.” ARTnews, October, 2022.
2006
“Venus of M Street,” Art News, September 2006, Volume 105/Number 8, page 75.
“Venus of M Street,” Art in America, September 2006, page 74.
2005
Cohen, Jean Lawlor. “Sylvia Snowden,” Art News, Volume 104/Number 11, December 2005.
2000
O’Sullivan, Michael. “Life and Death and Malik,” The Washington Post, Weekend, September 1, 2000.
Shaw-Eagles, Joannna. “Images of Shattered Youth,” The Washington Times, August 26, 2000.
Barrows, Davis Barrrows, “A Moving Tribute to a Son,” The Intowner, September 2000.
“Sylvia Snowden: Malik, Farewell Til We Meet Again,” The New York Times, Datebook, September 1, 2000.
Lyden, Jacki Lyden, “Weekend – All Things Considered,” National Public Radio, September 16, 2000.
“Sylvia Snowden, Works at the Corcoran Gallery of Art,” WETA, Around Town 1601, October 12, 2000.
1997
Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century, Richard J. Powell, Thames and Hudson, Inc., New York, NY, 1997.
D.C. Area Artists ’97, The Lab School of Washington, Washington, D.C.
1995
The Washington Post, Lee Fleming, “Sylvia Snowden at Addison/Ripley Gallery,” March 18, 1995.
City Paper, Mike Givliano, “Blacks and Abstract,” February 22, 1995.
Leslie King-Hammond, et al, Gumbo Ya-Ya: Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artist (New York; Mid-March Arts Press, 1995) pp 269-270.
1994
The Washington Post, Elizabeth Kastor, “Finding Her Muse In Malik,” April 17, 1994, 117th year, No. 133.
1993
The Washington Post, Dorothy Gilliam, “Finding Ways to Stem This Violent Tide,” July 10, 1993, 116th year.
Washington Review, Michael Clark, “Sylvia Snowden, National Museum of Women in the Arts; Sylvia Snowden: Abstract Paintings, Zenith Gallery,” June/July 1993, Volume XIX, Number 1.
1992
The Washington Post, Mary McCoy, “Art: Painter Sylvia Snowden’s Visceral Expressionism,” December 26, 1992, 115th year.
Panelist, “The Memory of the Legacy”—James A. Partner, Art and Art Historian, Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Tritobia H. Benjamin, November 13, 1992.
“Visions of 1993,” Contributing Artist, Video, Colgate, Palmolive, Stromberg Center, New York, April 1992.
George Howell, “Sylvia Snowden,” Eye Wash, December 1992.
The Washington Post, Mary McCoy, “High-Energy Expressionism,” May 30, 1992, 115th year, Number 117.
Washington City Paper, Rex Weil, “True Colors: Sylvia Snowden, New Abstractions,” May 22-28, 1992, Volume 12/Number 21.
1991
American Art, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Judith Wilson, “Optical Illusion: Images of Miscegenation in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century American Art,” Oxford University Press, Summer 1991, Volume S, Number 3.
College Art Association, Judith Wilson, “Sex, Race, and Gender” – Paper, Washington, DC, 1991.
1990
The Washington Post, Michael Welzenbach, “Debut With A Difference,” September 22, 1990.
City Paper, Alice Thorson, “Art and Conscience,” September, 1990, Volume 10/Number 39.
Colorado Daily, David Alan, “Artist Sylvia Snowden,” November, 1990, Volume 98/Number 47.
1989
Limburrqs Dagblad, T.S. Vallinga, “Sylvia Snowden bij Ipomal”, Zaterdag, November 4, 1989.
Smithsonian Institution – Traveling Exhibition, “African American Artists 1880-1887 – Selections from Evan Tibbs Collection,” University of Washington Press – Seattle and London, 1989.
1988
New Art Examiner, Alice Thorson, “Sylvia Snowden Engaging Expressionism”, October 1988, Volume 16/Number 2.
Washington Review, Sheila Rotner, “Sylvia Snowden: Painting on Paper,” June/July 1988, Volume XIV/Number 1.
1987
The Washington Post, Henry Allen, “Acrylic Avalanche,” November 14, 1987.
The Washington Times, Alice Thorson, “Two Approaches to the Group Show,” July 30, 1987.
The Washington Times, Alice Thorson, “Separate but More Than Equal,” January 29, 1987.
Thorson, Alice. “Snowden, an artist city should be proud of.” The Washington Post: Arts and Entertainment, November 1987.
1986
The Washington Post, Elizabeth Lazarus, “The Experience Exhibited”, August 1986.
New Art Examiner, J.W. Mahoney, “Sylvia Snowden,” January 1986.
1985
Washington Review, Mary McCoy, ‘Sylvia Snowden: Painting and Works on Paper,” December 1985.
V.A.C. “Sylvia Snowden.” The Nation, 1985.
1979
The Washington Afro-American, Charles Farrow, “Curtain Call”, March 3, 1979.
The Washington Post, Jo Ann Lewis, “Arts As A Statement,” March 3, 1979.
The Washington Star, Benjamin Forgey, “Galleries: High Voltage Intensity in Paintings from the Inner City,” Sunday, May 4, 1979.
Voice of America, Arlene Stern, Washington, DC
1974
Sylvia Snowden, A Black American Female Painter, University of Sydney Australia Press.
1971
Resource Guide to the Visual Arts of Afro-Americans, South Indiana, 1971.