SWIZZ BEATZ AND ALICIA KEYS JOIN THE VANGUARD OF POWER COUPLES SHIFTING THE ART WORLD

Earlier this year, Grammy award-winning artists and power couple, Kasseem ‘Swizz Beatz’ Dean and Alicia Keys unveiled the first major exhibition of their world-class art collection at the Brooklyn Museum. Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys is a stunning show of 98 large-scale works by 37 Black artists. They've been collecting and producing art shows for many years, referring to themselves as 'artists supporting artists,' guided by an ethos to 'collect, protect and respect.' Now that the show is prepping for a national tour, the Deans have joined a group of influential and visionary couples, who are disrupting the art world by standing for representation, identity, and contemporary Black art.

July 2024. By JANEL ST. JOHN

THE DISRUPTORS

Shirley and Bernard Kinsey of the Kinsey Collection, Don and Mera Rubell of the Rubell Museums and Fred Guiffrida and Pamela Joyner of The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art, are responsible for transformative shifts in the art world.

The Kinsey's began collecting shortly after they were married in 1967. The Kinsey Collection, is now the largest private holding of African-American art and artifacts. Through their award-winning exhibition, which toured the globe for 15-years, the Kinsey's aim to change the narrative about Black History. The Rubells began started visiting artists’ studios and collecting art shortly after they were married in 1964. The family collection grew into the Rubell Museums. They have organized over 50 exhibitions from their holdings, giving significant space to African American artists. They produced the groundbreaking 30 Americans which traveled to 24 museums and featured 30 Black artists exploring race, history and power. The Joyner/Giuffrida husband & wife art collecting team are on a mission to reconstruct the canon. Their Solidary & Solitary exhibit, which traveled to five institutions, explored the breadth and depth of Black artists in abstraction. “There is no museum collection in the world that can tell this story,” said Christopher Bedford, who was the co-curator, and Director of the Baltimore Museum. Meet the Disruptors.

Artwork below: Odili Donald Odita, American, born 1966, Place, 2018, Acrylic on canvas

84 × 110 in., The Dean Collection

PART 1: A History of Disparity

In recent years, U.S. museums have faced significant scrutiny for their lack of diversity in both staff composition and their art collections. Most U.S. museums were founded during Reconstruction and segregation by predominantly white, affluent boards, and have thus produced an art world that historically prioritizes Eurocentric art, ignores other voices, and reinforces existing cultural hierarchies and power dynamics. A 2019 study conducted at Williams College surveyed 18 major U.S. museums, and found that 85% of artists featured were white, while 87% were men. Works by Black artists comprised only 2.7% or less of their collections. This cycle of homogeneity gave rise to the widely-held notion among people of color, that their local art museum exists merely as a white-walled fortress of Eurocentricity that’s irrelevant to their lives and experiences.

Museums Respond to Report

A 2015 Mellon Foundation survey revealed that many cities with more than 60% Black and Hispanic populations - all had museum-going audiences that were less than 25% people of color. The numbers in management staff were starkly less. This prompted a response by elected officials and numerous institutions including the Phillips Collection and the Cleveland and Baltimore Museums. Efforts to create more inclusive spaces and acquire and exhibit works by artists of color were further buoyed by the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement. Since then, the number of acquisitions of works by Black artists has grown exponentially. While the 2024 art scene is peppered with shows featuring artists of color, critics argue that most of those shows are the same 10 names, considered part of the 'mainstream canon.'

While Black artists are no longer protesting, museums - the teaching institutions and civic spaces of America - have been persistently challenged to break away from entrenched practices. Issues of equity in the art world can never be entirely extricated from the broader socio-political context. Because they hold such dominant place in framing the public understanding of artistic excellence and the selection of who gets included in the art historical canon, some visionary individuals have, over time, stepped up to create space for artists of color, challenge traditional art norms and reverse the omission of Black artists from the art historical canon.

HARRY BELAFONTE PUT AFRICAN AMERICAN ART ON TV IN 1959

The late renowned singer, actor, and civil rights activist, Harry Belafonte, was probably the very first to feature a Black artist on television. He was a friend and supporter of artist Charles White, (American, 1918 - 1979) the gifted draftsman, painter, and printmaker. Not only was he an avid collector, he opened Tonight with Belafonte, his 1959 LIVE CBS TV show, with portraits by White. “It shook up television," he said. "They never quite saw anything like this; all this Blackness.”

In 2018, MoMA and The Art Institute of Chicago organized Charles White: A Retrospective - the first museum survey devoted to the artist in 40 years. They had to borrow works from the Harry and Pamela Belafonte collection, Hampton University and Howard University, where White was an artist-in-residence in 1945, and a distinguished professor in 1978. White also created portraits of his friend.

PART 2: MORE THAN A SHOW

GIANTS headed to the High Museum of Art, Atlanta

More than a show, Giants is a history-changing endeavor. And the Deans are among those power couples whose personal collecting endeavors have become a metamorphic public quest. Standing in the gap where museums have failed, they are shifting the contemporary art world narrative by showcasing an equitable representation of creative genius. “The reason why we doubled down on artists of color, black and brown, because our own community wasn't collecting these giants,” Beatz said. “We would go to other people’s homes that were non-black and brown…and would see their houses were blacker than ours." Beatz noted that they were only presented non-Black artists when seeking to buy art. “Our strategy is to collect living artists as much as possible, because those artists can use our support now and today.”

Thirty-seven multigenerational “giants” of the art world, across the Black diaspora, are featured in the show, including, Derrick Adams, Amy Sherald, Barkley L. Hendricks, Esther Mahlangu, Jamel Shabazz and Lorna Simpson. Embedded within the paintings, photographs, sculpture and mixed media, are pivotal moments, achievements, and struggles that have shaped the nation.

Artwork:

Above: Esther Mahlangu, South African, born 1935, Ndebele Abstract, 2017, Acrylic on canvas, 94 × 142 in., The Dean Collection

GIANTS opens at the High Museum September 13, 2024.

“The mission of the Dean Collection is to collect, protect and respect,” Keys said. “And that's really the whole energy behind this giant exhibition.” So many of the artists…have so many powerful stories that they're sharing with a work. And it's stunning. It's mind blowing. We want people to see themselves.”

Giants lives up to its name…beautifully striking and warm, it’s a bold, powerful display of craft, culture, connection and social commentary. Organized thematically, it opens with “Becoming Giants” - a behind-the-scenes view of the couple’s creative lives and inspiration: bikes, a turntable, the piano Keys played in a video, Kool Herc’s speakers and other keepsakes. There are giant portraits of both, created by Wiley, and smaller ones by Adams and Shabazz.

“On the Shoulders of Giants” pays homage to legendary older artists and “Giant Conversations” celebrates Blackness and explores the ways in which artists critique society. This area, filled with works by internationally renowned photographers, is like walking through a Black history time capsule. Among the political power portraits, fashion photos and street photography, there’s unapologetic pride, beauty, resilience, agency and Black joy. Here…the B-boys are as essential to Black culture as Malcom X. There’s a wall dedicated to Gordon Parks that features his iconic images of Muhammad Ali and Langston Hughes. Photographs by Jamel Shabazz tell the story of everyday life on the streets of New York from the 1980s to the present.

The monumental works in “Giant Presence,” use scale to emphasize powerful themes that resonate across history. Botswanan artist, Meleko Mokgosi presents his largest work ever and Sherald presents a glimpse at Baltimore’s dirt-bike culture. “So when you come in, they’ll say, wow, somebody that looks like me painting something so amazing at this magnitude..” Beatz said. “…I think that's a part of the mission as well, to show people that we have to be the biggest collectors of our culture.

Black Art Travel

SWIZZ BEATZ AND ALICIA KEYS JOIN THE VANGUARD OF POWER COUPLES SHIFTING THE ART WORLD

THE DISRUPTORS

“…Part of the mission is to show people that we have to be the biggest collectors of our culture.”

PART 1: A History of Disparity

Museums Respond to Report

HARRY BELAFONTE PUT AFRICAN AMERICAN ART ON TV IN 1959

PART 2: MORE THAN A SHOW

GIANTS headed to the High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Artwork:

So many of the artists…have so many powerful stories that they're sharing with a work. And it's stunning. It's mind blowing. We want people to see themselves.

SCALE: 'Giants' is literal and figurative

Artwork + Scenes from "Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys"

AFRICA FASHION

JOYCE J. SCOTT

DMV ARTS GUIDE

SWIZZ BEATZ AND ALICIA KEYS JOIN THE VANGUARD OF POWER COUPLES SHIFTING THE ART WORLD

THE DISRUPTORS

“…Part of the mission is to show people that we have to be the biggest collectors of our culture.”

PART 1: A History of Disparity

Museums Respond to Report

HARRY BELAFONTE PUT AFRICAN AMERICAN ART ON TV IN 1959

PART 2: MORE THAN A SHOW

GIANTS headed to the High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Artwork:

So many of the artists…have so many powerful stories that they're sharing with a work. And it's stunning. It's mind blowing. We want people to see themselves.

SCALE: 'Giants' is literal and figurative

Artwork + Scenes from "Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys"

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AFRICA FASHION

JOYCE J. SCOTT

DMV ARTS GUIDE

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