Keith A. Morrison, celebrated artist and former Temple dean, has died at 84

Keith A. Morrison, 84, of Meadowbrook, Montgomery County, celebrated artist, professor of painting emeritus and former dean at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture, curator, critic, consultant, writer, and lecturer, died Monday, June 1, of cancer at Fox Chase Cancer Center.

Born in Jamaica, Dean Morrison left the Caribbean island for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago when he was 17 and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts and art education. He went on to teach college art classes in Nashville, Chicago, and College Park, Md., and in addition to Temple, serve as dean at San Francisco State University, the University of Maryland, and the old San Francisco Art Institute.

He was the first Black academic dean of art in a predominantly white American school in 1993 at the San Francisco Art Institute and joined Temple as dean of its art school in 2005. He became a professor of painting at Temple in 2008 and retired in 2018 as professor emeritus.

As head of the Temple art school for three years, Dean Morrison hired staff, expanded degree programs, and coordinated popular activities with the school’s affiliated art programs in Europe and Japan. In an online tribute, former colleagues at Temple called him a “dedicated advocate for artists and arts organizations.”

Earlier, he was associate dean of architecture and art at the University of Illinois, art department chair at DePaul University in Chicago, and associate professor of art at Fisk University in Nashville. He lectured around the world and was a visiting scholar at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in China and the University of Michigan.

“He was very serious, very thinking,” said his wife, Susan C. Alunan. “People said he was present and insightful, even life-changing.”

As an artist, Dean Morrison was inspired by his Afro-Caribbean heritage, childhood memories of lush Jamaican landscapes, and his multicultural experiences in Europe, Cuba, Mexico, and elsewhere. He worked in watercolors, oils, acrylic, and prints, and created memorable abstract, figurative, and surreal images.

Many of his paintings feature landscapes, people, plants, and animals, often including Scout, his African gray parrot. His images, he told colleagues, were “more intuitive than intellectualized.”

Friends and colleagues called his paintings “unique and moving” and “magical in content and accessible by all who encounter them.” Allan Edmunds, founder of Brandywine Workshop and Archives, said on Facebook: “His art connects and shares hidden stories and myths that helped shape his creative vision of multiculturalism as a global reality.”⁠

Dean Morrison’s work appears on the covers of books and magazines, and in hundreds of solo and group shows around the world. It resides in collections at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C., and other galleries.

Colleagues at the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland said in a tribute: “Morrison’s vivid, imaginative paintings — filled with brilliant color, history, mythology, and fantasy — speak to African diasporic experience as well as Morrison’s unique sense of humor and narrative composition.”

As a writer, he pioneered Pan-African art criticism and was, in his own words, a Black critic “interested in art from a Black person’s perspective.” He was a visiting editor at the New Art Examiner in Chicago, and his reviews, interviews, and general observations appeared in the Washington Post, museum catalogs, and other publications.

His book Art in Washington and Its Afro-American Presence: 1940-1970, was published in 1985 and serves as a text at art schools. In 2004, Renée Ater wrote a 128-page monograph called Keith Morrison.

As a curator, Dean Morrison supervised exhibitions in the United States, Jamaica, and Cuba. He represented the United States and Jamaica at international art exhibitions, and was active with Brandywine Workshop and the Washington Project for the Arts.

» READ MORE: Why did best-selling author Carol Saline email The Inquirer’s obit writer?

He earned lifetime achievement awards from Howard University and Brandywine Workshop, and was named a Jamaican Commander in the Order of Distinction in 2017 for “outstanding and important services to Jamaica.”

“My mood is always happy,” Dean Morrison said in a 2008 interview with the University of Delaware’s UDaily. “You can paint anything you want. It does not have to be because you yourself feel that way.”

Keith Anthony Morrison was born May 20, 1942, in Linstead, Jamaica. He ran track in high school and took drawing classes at the Jamaica School of Arts and Crafts.

He learned about the School of the Art Institute of Chicago after high school and worked as a disc jockey and sound effects man for a Jamaican radio station to earn money to travel to the United States. He earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Chicago in 1963 and his master’s degree at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1965.

» READ MORE: Survivors give advice about mourning their loved ones, as told to The Inquirer’s obit writer

He had a son, Ron, a daughter, Melinda, and, after a divorce, married Alunan in 2003, and welcomed her children into his family. His daughter and former wife died earlier.

Dean Morrison studied Aristotle and earned a Fulbright Senior Scholar grant. He enjoyed classical music and jazz, and he and his wife traveled the world together.

He played tennis and ran, and lived in Chicago, Washington, and San Francisco before settling in Meadowbrook. “He had a great imagination and sense of humor,” his wife said. “He was a fun guy.”

In addition to his wife and son, Dean Morrison is survived by a brother and other relatives.

A celebration of his life is to be held later. Brandywine Workshop and Archives has scheduled a showing of his work from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 6.