HomeArtist BiographiesArtist Bio: Margaret Burroughs

Artist Bio: Margaret Burroughs

b. November 1, 1917
d. November 21, 2010
Birth Place: St. Rose, Louisiana
Nationality: American
Education: MFA, Art Institute of Chicago
Signature Medium: Printmaking

Artwork in Collection: Birthday Party, Face of a Lady, Faces a la Picasso, Faces of My People, Harriet Tubman, Harriet Tubman II, Harriet Tubman III, Malcolm, Mother and Child, On the Beach, Read! Read! Read!, Sleeping Boy, The Afro American Family, Woman with a Cloak

Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs is an African American poet, visual artist, educator, and arts organizer. Margaret Burroughs was born in St. Rose, Louisiana, near New Orleans. But at the age of five, her parents, Alexander and Octavia Pierre Taylor, moved the family to Chicago where she grew up, and her distinctive career unfolded. She attended the public schools of Chicago, including the Chicago Teacher's College. In 1946, she received a BA in education, and in 1948, an MA in education from the Art Institute of Chicago. From 1940 to 1968 she was a teacher in the Chicago public schools and subsequently a professor of humanities at Kennedy-King College in Chicago (1969–1979).

Burroughs has a national reputation as a visual artist and as an arts organizer. Her long exhibition record as a painter and printmaker began in 1949 and has included exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. A retrospective of her work was held in Chicago in 1984. As an organizer, she has been associated with the founding and governance of a number of arts organizations. It was her founding in 1961 of the DuSable Museum of African American History, however, that placed her among the outstanding institution builders of her generation. She served as a director of the museum until her appointment as a Commissioner of the Chicago Park District in 1985.