"A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, Samella Lewis is a renowned artist, art historian, educator, and art advocate. Her creative impulse became evident in early childhood and the colorful Louisiana environment continues to reveal itself in many of her paintings, prints, and drawings. It was her good fortune to become a protégé of Elizabeth Catlett, her artist-teacher at Dillard University, whose social and political awareness reinforced her own, and she followed her to Hampton University in Virginia. There, in the forties, she was influenced by Viktor Lowenfeld, a refugee from European Nazism in the segregated southern United States. The irony was not lost on any of them. Her interest in portraiture, fostered by an Italian portrait painter whose studio she frequented in her youth, calligraphy, furthered by study in China, and Abstract Expressionism, developed in those formative years, combine to make her pallets rich in form, texture, color, and ideas. The many years of teaching and advocacy never diverted her from her first love—inspirational images and remembrances of a life lived fully."

In spite of her impressive academic achievements and numerous honorary doctorates, Samella Lewis continues her quest to educate the public about African American artists. She collaborated with Elizabeth Waddy in publishing a two-volume illustrated guide to contemporary African American Artists entitled Black Artists on Art. Realizing the need for a textbook on the history of African American art, and her dreams of educating the public about this unique group of artists, Lewis's Art: African American was published in 1978 and 1990. She is best known for her contributions to the education of the public through her tenure as editor-in-chief of The International Review of African American Art (formerly the Black Arts Quarterly).

Dr. Lewis established The Contemporary Crafts Gallery with actor and artist Bernie Casey, founded the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles where she served as senior curator until 1986, and served as coordinator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 1968-1969.

"Samella Lewis is an icon who is tireless in her approach to her work as teacher and artist. She continues to write about and curate exhibits for her fellow artists. Teaching is certainly a noble profession and what better way to dedicate one's life to the education of others. Dr. Lewis exemplifies that nobility of purpose."

CAAD, Inc. applauds Dr. Lewis for her outstanding achievement and the monumental gift of her legacy to the field of African-American art and art of the African Diaspora.