artists, and artists of African descent, to document our history. The historians weren't doing it. I felt it better the artists do it anyway, through pictorial and written information… It was really about the movement," Samella Lewis said of the book published in 1969 and 1971. In 1960-70s, Samella Lewis belonged to a group of artists that would meet every month. Lewis began collecting art in 1942. She mostly collected art from WPA and the Harlem Renaissance. Career In the 1960s and 1970s Lewis's work, which includes lithographs, linocuts, and serigraphs, reflected humanity and freedom. Between 1969 and 1970, Lewis and E.J. Montgomery were consultants for a "ground breaking" exhibition creating awareness to the history of African American history and art. Lewis was the founder of the International Review of African American Art in 1975. In 1976, she founded the Museum of African-American Art with a group of artistic, academic, business and community leaders in Los Angeles, California. These founders had similar goals including increasing the public's awareness of African American art. Many individuals and corporations, such as Macy's, made generous donations to the museum. Lewis, as the staff's senior curator in the museum, not only organized a great number of exhibitions but also developed diverse ways of educating the public on African American arts. In an article, she discussed the ideas of "art of tradition", and argued that museums had the responsibility to explore the African roots of African American art. The museum operates on donations in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza with staff and volunteers who are dedicated to supporting the museum. Lewis once mentioned an "art of inspiration" based on the experiences of African Americans themselves. Lewis founded three other museums in the Los Angeles, California. Lewis was an NAACP member, and a collector of art with her collection including African, Chinese, Asian, South American, and other works. Some of the art that Lewis collected was transferred to the Hampton Institute, now the University Museum. In 1984, she produced a monograph on the artist Elizabeth Catlett, who had been one of Lewis's mentors at Dillard University. In 2012, works by Lewis were exhibited alongside selected artworks from her personal collection in Samella Lewis and the African American Experience at Louis Stern Fine Arts in West Hollywood, California. The exhibition was accompanied by a full-color catalogue with text by art writer and critic Suzanne Muchnic. In 2015, Unity