When Charles S. Johnson was president of Fisk University, he used the university's art collection as a tool for the advancement of the university and as a major part of an environment that nurtured intellectuals and leaders in the African American community. This historical study used interviews and secondary sources to focus on the value of art as a way to enlarge the scope of the Fisk curriculum and a means to build the identity of students. Johnson arrived at Fisk with an understanding of how art can change minds that he had developed during his years in New York as a promoter of African American art and literature during the Harlem Renaissance. In 1928, Johnson moved to Nashville, Tennessee to assume a position at Fisk University, and in 1946 he was chosen as the first black president at Fisk. Visual art was an important component of his program to develop Fisk, and his most impressive achievement was the acquisition of the Alfred Stieglitz collection from his widow, Georgia O'Keeffe, which was arranged through another Harlem Renaissance facilitator, Carl Van Vechten. This collection gave Fisk an enormously important asset that other universities in the South lacked. Through his promotion of the art collection of the university, Charles S. Johnson not only fostered racial integration but integration in the sense of breaking down barriers between disciplines. (Contains 50 footnotes.) (SLD)