A. Joel Robinson

“One of the most promising newcomers in the highly competitive field of fabric design is a youthful, multi-talented New Yorker, Joel Robinson, whose strikingly original textiles have won Good Design awards for two successive years and are now sold in leading department stores and modern art galleries across the nation,” Ebony magazine proclaimed in 1952. [1] The article went on to explain that Robinson was the first African American to receive the Museum of Modern Art’s Good Design award, or to be included in the influential exhibitions. Jet magazine also covered the groundbreaking nature of his inclusion, hailing Robinson as “the first Negro ever to receive the award.”[2] When the exhibition... more.