Housed in the atrium of Trevor Arnett Hall, the Art of the Negro mural series was painted by Hale Aspacio Woodruff (1900-1980) and consists of six, 12 x 12 foot oil on canvas panels. Woodruff, founder of the Atlanta University art department and permanent collection, painted the murals between 1950 and 1951. Woodruff aspired to providing the university community with a global narrative on the cultural history of Africans in the Americas. Referring to his rationale for painting the murals, Woodruff stated:
"It portrays what I call the Art of the Negro. This has to do with a kind of interpretive treatment of African art. . . . I look at the African artist, certainly, as one of my ancestors regardless of how we feel about each other today. I’ve always had a high regard and respect for the African artist and his art. So this mural, . . .is for me, a kind of token of my esteem for African art. One of the motivations again for doing these would be these murals would deal with a subject about which little was known—art and also among Negroes, there was little concern about our ancestry. Then I took the idea that art, being a little known subject, would attract the curiosity and attention of young people, as well as older people, toward further study and in that way the murals would have educational value. I thought also that the unusual subject matter would be timeless in a sense that the arts are always timeless."
Although Woodruff proposed to paint the murals after completing the Amistad mural series at Talledega College in 1939 and conferring with the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, Atlanta University did not grant him the opportunity until 1950. By this time he had relocated to New York City and joined the faculty at New York University. Hence, the murals were painted in his New York studio. Woodruff declared them to be the best of all his murals.
