Arturo Lindsay

In 2016 Lindsay retired from teaching at Spelman College.

Lindsay's 2008 solo exhibition, Love, at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporian Art, involves the use of "ashé", which is the Yoruba concept for the life force found in all things. In 2009 he was commissioned to create a sculpture for the Smithsonian Institution’s Latino Center Legacy Awards.

In 2006, Lindsay was the Distinguished Batza Family Chair at Colgate University and the Kemp Distinguished Visiting Professor at Davidson College in Davidson, NC in 2005. Lindsay also received a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award in 1999. He has been selected to be a part of the smARTpower project that is funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and administered by the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

In the mid-1990s Lindsay returned to Panama, where he co-founded the Painting Workshop of Taller Portobelo; an artist cooperative dedicated to preserving the traditions of the Congos who are descendants of cimarrones – enslaved Africans that liberated themselves in wars fought against the Spanish empire. He later founded the Spelman College Summer Art Colony, which provides students and emerging artists from the United States and Panama with an opportunity to create works of art in the rainforest of Portobelo, Panama.

Lindsay began his career as a theater artist acting in and directing street theater projects in New York City and New England. While pursuing a doctorate degree at New York University Lindsay began working with fellow student Sandro Dernini, the originator of Plexus International. Lindsay became a founding member of Plexus New York. This multinational group of artists began creating large-scale collaborative art projects known as co-operas during the 1980s in New York City’s Lower East Side. Lindsay continues creating Plexus based projects in Atlanta, Georgia, and Portobelo, Panama.

Arturo Lindsay (born September 29, 1946) is a Panamanian-born artist and professor of art and art history at Spelman College. His scholarship specializes in ethnographic research on African spiritual and aesthetic retentions in contemporary American cultures. His Panamanian/American identity is reflected in his art, which focuses on African culture in America.

Lindsay was born in Colón, Panama on September 29, 1946, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He attended graduate school at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Lindsay studied with AfriCOBRA member Nelson Stevens, Lionel Góngora, a Colombian artist and a founding member of Nueva Presencia and Salón Independiente in Mexico, Dr. Nana Nkestsia, Kwame Nkruma’s first Minister of Art and Culture in Ghana.