Cooper Hewitt says...
“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 series ended in 1955, he remained unique in this distinction.
Robinson was a 29-year-old native New Yorker working as a graphic designer in the advertising industry. His award-winning fabrics were produced by L. Anton Maix Fabrics, a small firm reputed for soliciting designs from unlikely sources, among them architects and furniture, industrial, and graphic designers. Despite being declared “the most promising newcomer in [the] creative textiles field,” there is no evidence that Robinson continued to design textiles after his first, successful collaboration with Maix.[3]
Information regarding Robinson’s early career is spotty. The 1952 Ebony article refers to Robinson “an ex-bellhop” and indicates that he trained as an architect, but also designed book and magazine covers, and had written and illustrated a children’s book.[4] A few sheet music covers dating from the 1940s have been attributed to him, including That's The Beginning Of The End (1946) and Don’t Call Me Sweetheart (1949). He may also be responsible for the spare and elegant design of the progressive literary journal The Contemporary Reader, produced between 1953 and 1955 by a mostly volunteer group of African American intellectuals. [5]
At the time of the 1951 exhibition, Robinson was employed by the pharmaceutical advertising agency William Douglas McAdams, but by 1954, he was creative director and executive vice president at the David D. Polon Advertising Agency. [6] In 1971, he was appointed national merchandising manager at National Distillers Products Company. [7] The name Joel Robinson recurs in the society pages of the New York Amsterdam News throughout the 1960s and 1970s. If they are the same man, these mentions collectively build an impression of a man who was a leader in his Harlem community and a regular participant in charity events, particularly those that supported opportunities for African-American youth. He was certainly the Joel Robinson who was listed as the vice president of the Manhattan School of Printing in 1965, working to provide vocations for young men in the graphic arts. [8] As recently as 1985, a Joel Robinson earned mention as one of the artists featured in the exhibition Contemporary Black Artists in America at the Great Neck Library. [9]
Robinson was a guest at the 1969 opening of MoMA’s Harlem On My Mind exhibition, suggesting both his prominence in the Harlem community and an ongoing relationship with the museum. More recently, his award-winning textile Ovals was displayed once again at MoMA, in the museum’s 2019 exhibition, The Value of Good Design.
[1] N/A, “Fabric Designer,” Ebony, May 1952.
[2] N/A, “Exhibits Prize-Winning Fabrics,” Jet, December 13, 1951.
[3] “Fabric Designer,” 1952.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Titi Halle, Cora Ginsburg: Modern, (Hong Kong: Pressroom Printer & Designer Ltd., 2018), 10.
[6] N/A, “Named Vice Prexy of N.Y. Ad Firm,” Ebony, February 25, 1954.
[7] N/A, “Merchandising Supervisor,” New York Amsterdam News, December 11, 1971.
[8] N/A, “Painting Gift,”New York Amsterdam News, January 30, 1965.
[9] N/A, “Great Neck ‘Contemporary Black Artists,’” New York Amsterdam News, March 9, 1985.
