Alonzo J. Aden

Alonzo “Lonnie” Aden was born on May 6, 1906, in Spartanburg, South Carolina.^[1][2] He was the oldest son of Ephraim Aden (1859–1917), a hotelier,^[1] and Naomi Barnett (1883–1956), a school teacher.^[1] Aden had blonde hair until early adulthood and green eyes.^[1]

In 1920, Aden was sent to Washington, D.C., to live with his uncle, James Aden, a porter,^[1] and his wife Laura.^[2] After graduating from Armstrong High School,^[1] he attended Hampton Institute (now Hampton University).^[2][3]

In June 1927, he wrote to W.E.B. DuBois to ask him for a job writing for The Crisis.^[4] That fall he started classes at Howard University,^[1] and enrolled in an art history class taught by James V. Herring.^[5][6] In 1933, Aden graduated from Howard with a bachelor's degree in education.^[2][3]

In 1930, Aden began working in the university art gallery as an undergraduate assistant to Herring.^[1][2] He would rise through the ranks and eventually become curator of the Howard University Gallery of Art.^[2][7][8]

In 1935, Aden received a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship^[1] for a sixteen-week apprenticeship in the Visual Education Department at the Buffalo Museum of Science.^[3] He took a leave of absence from Howard to complete the apprenticeship.^[3]

In 1936, Aden was “on loan from Howard to the United States Department of Commerce”^[3] to work as the curator of “Hall of Negro Life” at the Texas Centennial Exposition,^[1][3] the first major Black arts and culture exhibit at a world's fair.^[9][10] The Hall of Negro Life attracted more than 400,000 visitors.^[10][11]

in 1938, Aden received a travel grant from the American Association Museums to study in Europe.^[3] He visited museums, galleries, and other artistic spaces in Berlin, Brussels, Cologne, Dresden, Florence, London, Munich, Rome, and Venice.^[1][2]

The following year, he returned to the United States and the Howard art gallery.^[1] In 1940, Howard professor Alain Locke, who chaired the Art Committee for the American Negro Exposition,^[12] invited Aden to serve as curator of the exhibition held in the Tanner Hall Galleries.^[2][3][12] Aden was commissioned by the National Gallery of Art to deliver a series "curatorial lectures" in 1941 and 1942.^[1][3]

In 1943, Aden resigned as head of the Howard University Art Gallery after ten years of service as curator.^[2][13]

Aden and Herring co-founded the Barnett-Aden Gallery in 1943.^{[3][6][7][13][14][15]} The Barnett-Aden gallery was named in honor of Aden's mother, Naomi Barnett-Aden,^[3][7][8] who was a "benefactor" of the gallery^[6] by giving $1,000 to her son's new venture.^[2]

Barnett-Aden is recognized as one of the first major Black-owned art galleries in the United States.^{[3][5][7][16][17]} During its existence, Barnett-Aden hosted nearly 200 gallery events and exhibited more than 400 artists.^[14] The gallery maintained a sales policy where each artist retained all the money for their art sale, yet were required to contribute at least one object to the Barnett-Aden art collection.^[2]