John E. Weaver & Aaron Douglas Professorships

The Weaver Professorship honors John E. Weaver (1884-1956). Weaver was a leading expert on grasses, both as natural populations and as crops. During his career as a faculty member at NU, Weaver published many works regarding vegetation and ecology of prairies and published the first American ecology textbook. His reputation as a world-renowned plant ecologist attracted students from Nebraska and beyond to study range management in agronomy. An Iowa native, Weaver earned his B.S. and master's degrees from the University of Nebraska, and his doctorate from the University of Minnesota. He joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 1915 and, became a full professor in 1917; he retired in 1952.

The Aaron Douglas Professorship honors NU alumnus Douglas (1899-1979), who was the first African American to earn a degree in art from NU and is considered a pre-eminent artist of the Harlem Renaissance movement. A native of Topeka, Kan., Douglas earned a B.F.A. from the university in 1922. He founded the Department of Art at Fisk University, where he taught from 1937-1966. Douglas's art captured the zeitgeist of his era, helping to establish a new black aesthetic. He combined traditional African and African American images with the prevailing Cubist and Art Deco stylings, creating a distinctive and imaginative visual form. His work is considered seminal to the Harlem Renaissance and remains enduring and important. Douglas also earned a master's degree (1944) from Teachers College at Columbia College in New York. He received an honorary doctoral degree from Fisk. The Sheldon Museum of Art acquired four Douglas works, a set of woodcuts on paper titled Emperor Jones. Created in 1926, they are early examples of Douglas's oeuvre. The Sheldon also owns Window Cleaning, a 1935 oil painting of an African American man.