In collaboration with the Lois Mailou Jones–Pierre Noel Trust and the Featherstone Center for the Arts, the Martha’s Vineyard Museum is opening an exhibition of Lois Mailou Jones’s early work in textile design at the Featherstone gallery on Sunday, August 17, with a reception from 4 to 6 p.m.

A highly successful African American artist, whose works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the National Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the White House, the late Lois Mailou Jones (1905–1998) painted and exhibited worldwide and inspired thousands of students in her long professorship at Howard University.

Overcoming racial and gender barriers, Ms. Jones graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1927 and began her career as a highly successful textile designer before earning international recognition as a painter, scholar and teacher. Her studies and designs for fabrics and wallpapers are exquisite and give an insight into her abilities in design. Shown for the first time at the Gallery of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 2006, this show has since been exhibited in Atlanta; this is its third showing here on Martha’s Vineyard, where Ms. Jones called home and where she began her exploration into art.

At the Sunday reception, brief remarks on the artist’s life and her textile designs will be made by Dr. Chris Chapman, author of Lois Mailou Jones A Life in Color (2007), and Robert W. Jones, her nephew.

On Wednesday, August 20, Edmund Barry Gaither, director and curator of the Museum of the National Center for Afro-American Artists and longtime friend of Ms. Jones, will discuss her work and extraordinary life.

On Tuesday, August 26, Dr. Cheryl Finley, professor of art history and African American studies at Cornell University, will talk on Ms. Jones’ art within a wider art and historical context. A video of the life of Lois Mailou Jones, Lois Mailou Jones: Fifty Years of Painting and an audio slide program from oral history interviews with Ms. Jones will also be shown during the exhibit run. Artist Nick Thayer will conduct workshops for children inspired by Ms. Jones’ textile art.

Signed silk screen prints and posters by Lois Mailou Jones will be available for purchase as well as Tritobia H. Benjamin’s book The Life and Art of Lois Mailou Jones and Dr. Chapman’s book, Lois Mailou Jones A Life in Color, to benefit the Featherstone Center for the Arts, the Martha’s Vineyard Museum and the Lois Mailou Jones Trust.

The exhibit continues through Sept. 3. The gallery on Barnes Road in Oak Bluffs is open daily from noon to 4 p.m.