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Hannah Hall Murals
A Visual Archive
More than 120 student murals adorn the walls of Texas Southern University’s Hannah Hall. From the 1950s to 2010s, senior TSU art majors, hailing from Texas to Thailand, painted the building’s walls as a crowning achievement of their undergraduate studies. The Hannah Hall murals serve as a visual archive, providing a lens into the experiences, worldviews, and imaginations of young, Black artists. No other university, HBCU or otherwise, has a collection of student murals rivaling the quality nor quantity of the Hannah Hall murals.
title unknown, Edward Mills, circa 1976
The mural program was the brainchild of Dr. John T. Biggers, who lobbied TSU president Dr. Samuel M. Nabrit to allow his senior art majors to paint the walls of what was then the only academic building on campus. Dr. Biggers came to TSU from Hampton University, where he had assisted Charles White, his teacher, with a mural that he created specifically for Hampton’s campus. While Dr. Biggers demanded quality, he never censored students’ expression and the murals cover a range of topics including politics, religion, nature, futurism, and rural life in the South.
The University Museum at Texas Southern has been hard at work digitizing the Hannah Hall murals. 42 murals have been digitized, with another 9 in the pipeline for the coming year.
Interested in seeing the murals? Fill out this form to schedule a tour: https://forms.gle/G93AxXGZoKL3bAxn9.
Selections from the Hannah Hall Murals
All rights held by the University Museum at Texas Southern. For permission to publish, distribute, or use these images for any other purpose, please contact University Museum, Texas Southern University umuseum@gmail.com Attn: Museum Director. Materials not created by Texas Southern University may still be under copyright. Additional materials may be presented for educational and research purposes in accordance with fair use under United States copyright law.