The late scholar and artist helped to establish the formalized field of African American art.

In addition to painting, she was a historian who pushed for a more inclusive definition of art, in part by founding her own museum devoted to Black artists.

Art historian, artist, and curator Samella Lewis, who played a vital role in shepherding the work of Black artists into the canon of American art, died of renal failure May 27 in Torrance, California, at the age of ninety-nine. Lewis, the author of the pathbreaking volumes Black Artists on Art (1969…