Prof. John Biggers (1924 – 2001) was an acclaimed painter, muralist and sculptor. Prof. Biggers was a major elder-statesman of the African American visual arts tradition. A native of Gastonia, North Carolina, Biggers was the first African American painter to receive a USIA grant to West Africa and spent a year in Ghana in the late 1950s. He was the founding director of the art department at Texas Southern University, where he served on the faculty for many years. Biggers’ body of work is an extraordinary synthesis of religious symbols and meanings from various parts of the African diaspora. During his lifetime he had major one-person exhibitions at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.