This Is Your Art: The Legacy of Ellen Johnson

Ellen Johnson (OC 1933) often told students in her contemporary art course, “This is your art,” insisting that they investigate the sometimes obtuse (and frustrating) art of their own time before it had been digested and normalized by art history. For nearly 40 years, from 1939 until her retirement in 1977, Johnson championed modern and contemporary art at Oberlin, first as an art librarian, and later as a professor, unofficial curator, and prolific writer. Paying homage to Johnson’s immense legacy, This Is Your Art will feature—in the gallery named for her—more than 50 paintings, sculptures, objects, and works on paper that found their way into the Allen’s permanent collection through Johnson’s prescience, intelligence, persistence, and generosity, as well as through the admiration and magnanimity she engendered in artists and patrons who knew her. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.