Wilma Webb’s introduction to the performing arts came when she was 6 and her mother took her to hear famed contralto Marian Anderson in concert.
As the years passed, her passion for every genre grew. So much so that when her husband, Wellington, became the first African-American to be elected mayor of Denver, she used her influence as first lady to help shape the city’s vision for the arts. Among other things, she established the Denver Art, Culture and Film Foundation, refined the city’s process for procuring public art and pushed for the return of an arts curriculum in the Denver Public Schools.
At a gala held Sept. 25 in Tivoli Turnhalle on the Auraria campus, master of ceremonies Joseph Graves, a 2005 graduate of the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law who also works as an actor, joined co-chairpersons Khadija Haynes and Carrie Warren in presenting her with the Colorado Black Arts Movement’s first Wilma J. Webb Award for Excellence in the Arts.
In accepting the award, Webb said she views art as “a powerful gift. It can be provocative, inspiring, moving and entertaining. The arts have a way of making people, and things, better. They have certainly taken me to a deeper place.”
In addition, the William “Gully” Stanford Time, Talent and Treasure Award was presented to Richard L. Lewis, the founder, president and chief executive officer of RTL Networks. A graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Lewis had held senior leadership positions at Cisco, Qwest and Avaya before founding his multimillion-dollar company that has grown to 160 employees in 20 states.
“I do not draw, paint, sing or dance,” Lewis said. “But art makes me happy, focused, humble and who I am.”
Established in 2013 by nine Denver-area artists and patrons, the Colorado Black Arts Movement is dedicated to cultivating and supporting the state’s African-American artists. “We want to get them from here to there,” Haynes, a founding member, explained.
“We are trying to discover artists as they are creating — not after they are gone,” added Portia Prescott, another of the founders.
The 100 guests included playwright Kenneth Grimes, co-creator of “Uncle Jed’s Barbershop,” a play inspired by the atmosphere, language and music of the late 1920s through the early 1960s. It stars Denver’s current first lady, Mary Louise Lee, and can be seen at the Cleo Parker Robinson Theater, 119 Park Avenue West, through Oct. 18.
State Reps. Rhonda Fields and Beth McCann were there, too, along with Denver School Board president Happy Haynes, who is also executive director of the city’s parks and recreation department; Denver African-American Commission members Voradel Carey and Benzel Jimmerson; Metro State’s new director of athletics, Anthony Grant; musician Purnell Steen; vocalist Claudette Sweet; mayoral aide Barry Burch, Jr.; and Charleszine “Terry” Nelson from the Blair-Caldwell African-American Research Library.
