Panel Discussion — A Closer Look at African American Artists in SAAM’s Collection
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SAAM is home to one of the largest collections of work made by African American artists in the world. Join artist and scholar Allan deSouza, art adviser Schwanda Rountree, and DC-based art collectors Mel and Juanita Hardy for a panel discussion highlighting important works by African American artists from our collection.
— (Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell) Good evening. We can do better. Good evening. That’s more like it. Okay. Welcome. My name is Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell and I am the Head of Public Programs at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It is my honor and pleasure to welcome you here today. We are delighted to have you join us to celebrate Black History Month by turning our attention to African American Artists in our collection and beyond. Thank you for coming.
We would also like to thank our donors who were unable to join us tonight, but have made tonight’s program possible through the Thelma and Melvin Lincoln Education Endowment. Their support allows us to produce this program, which is also being livestreamed and to humble brag about our sizeable collection of works by African American artists.
Before we begin, a few housekeeping notes. First, we welcome you to take notes in the handout that was provided, but please be sure to jot down your questions for the speakers in the comment card that was inside the handout. We will have a brief moment of transition after the panel has concluded. Time for you to complete your question and hand to a staff member who will collect them in the aisles. Following the program we hope that you will join us upstairs in our gorgeous Kogod Courtyard for a complementary reception. Lastly, please silence any devices that beat, ring, squawk, or moo, or make any other kind of distracting sounds.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is dedicated to collecting, understanding, and enjoying American Art. The museum celebrates the extraordinary creativity of artists whose works reflect the American experience and global connections. Tonight we focus on the creativity of African American artists and to do so we have a terrific panel to lead us in discussion. Allan deSouza – give us a wave - is a photographer, mixed media artist, and Associate Professor in the Department of Art Practice at the University of California Berkeley. His work restages colonial era material legacies through humor and mistranslation. DeSouza’s recent publication, How Art Can Be Thought, challenges interpretive norms in art.
Schwanda Roundtree is an attorney and independent art consultant based in Washington, D.C. She currently serves as Collections Committee member of the Ackland Art Museum, and Professional Arts Consultant for the Joan Mitchell Foundation. She has also served as Advisory Panel Member of Cultural D.C., and for the “Thirty Americans” exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2011.
Mel and Juanita Hardy are avid art collectors, with particular interest in works of African American artists. [Laughter] They founded the D.C.-based organization, Millennium Art Salon in 2000. This organization is committed to advancing cultural literacy through its arts and cultural programming, which includes salon talks, exhibitions, tours, and special events.
Our Moderator, Melanee C. Harvey, is an Assistant Professor of Art at Howard University. Since 2016 she has served as Programming Coordinator for the James A. Porter Colloquium on African American Art and Art of the African Diaspora at Howard University. Harvey has published extensively on the Black Arts Movement artists, and is currently working on her book titled Patterns of Permanence, African Methodists, Episcopal Architecture, and Visual Culture. Please join me in welcoming our speakers. [Applause]
— (Melanee C. Harvey) So, good evening everyone. I’m very excited to lead this conversation to really think about the ways in which Smithsonian American Arts Collection informs the art and art practice of our panelists. So I will dive into our first question. So please share your experience with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. How have you experienced and used SAAM’s Collection, and how has it influenced your art practice, your pedagogy, or even collection decisions?
— (Juanita Hardy) I’m going to jump in.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) I had deSouza first with landscaping.
— (Allan deSouza) Oh, okay, right, we have a little screen here. As mentioned I’m based in Berkeley, the East Bay and so I don’t have an immediate access to the museum. But certainly when museums digitize their collections, it makes a huge teaching difference in being able to access images of works and works that one wouldn’t get to see, and students would never get to see either.
A little bit, you know, one of the obvious downsides is that ideally we want you to experience the work in person. And the other things that we lose is, we lose the context of the work. So, you know, I’m seeing it on screen and then projecting it for students. On a screen they don’t get a sense of the museum settings of how the museum is displaying it, which are the works next to it, what the museum narrative is around the works, except or unless it’s translated through me. And so it’s never a substitute for kind of cultural location. You know, the internet abstracts everything, takes it out of context and so that becomes a sort of role that I have to re-contextualize it again, which requires research. And we have to step up for that, but certainly that’s not ideal.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) And then go forward to the artists. And I can go forward to, if you would like, Lois.
— (Juanita Hardy) So I guess I’ll start. So, can everyone, it sounds like there’s a little echo. Is it okay? Okay, great. So first of all I just want to say, I want to thank the Smithsonian American Art Museum for having us here. We’re just delighted and honored, not only by the invitation, but to be on this panel with individuals that we admire. So I want to thank you for that.
And now to answer the question, how has it influenced our practice, you know, our learning? So, I would say it’s been more a reinforcement. I’d use the word reinforcement because when we started collecting and when I started collecting, even before I met and married this wonderful gentleman, a lot of my collecting was happening in New York. So I wasn’t in the early stages. I did some here before I transferred by my company, I spent 31 years with IBM, to New York. And so I started, I dove in, does that sound, that’s the word. I dove in. Dived in, but that’s not right.
So anyway, dove in and learned a lot from the whole New York experience. And so when I came back to Washington and still continued to collect, and of course met this gentleman along the way, because we had this love affair between D.C. and New York. Coming to this, to SAAM, to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and seeing the work, was reinforcing. It was like, oh, I’m on the right track, you know.
So like for example, this work of Lois Mailou Jones, compared to on the right is our collection, the name of it is actually “Le Jardin du Luxembourg,” “A Shady Nook: Le Jardin du Luxembourg.” And it was created in 1991 by Lou Stowall [phonetic]. It’s based upon a work that she did, an oil that she did, that we actually had the honor to see in her home. And it’s a fairly large piece, 37 or so by 32. Her, the piece that she did, was much smaller.
But seeing that, and then seeing this piece at the Smithsonian, having the context and understanding what she was doing, and that the museum had this work, I mean, spoke volumes to us. Right? So it’s like reinforcing that we’re on the right track. But also inspiring us to do more work, to learn more, to research more. So do you want to go to the next one? Similarly this image of Jacob Lawrence and “The Builders” and the way he depicted Black people, African American people. I’m going to stop here and let Mel in, because I don’t want to dominate.
— (Mel Hardy) Juanita’s the collector in the family. We kind of support that. I have a particular bend. But as we talk about this particular work, this was done, we all know Jacob Lawrence as, in 1941 he was called America’s painter. So, I’m from Philadelphia, while I was in Philadelphia there was a Brandywine workshop and Jacob Lawrence was there. I got just to know him and Gwen Knight there.
And this particular work, I saw him pull the mylars [phonetic]. It’s green work and that kind of stuff, so it was really important. So for us together to collect this work was really important. It references, you know, a relationship with artists which is kind of like the hallmark of our collecting impulse and has a sense of legacy and importance in the American context. So I’ll stop there. A little bit later I do want to talk about these historical references.
— (Juanita Hardy) Yeah. And then the last one, Norman Lewis. So again, how reinforcing to see this work hanging in the Smithsonian. And this is the work that we own, was actually created the year of our birth in 1949. And it is an ink and wash, I believe. And to compare them, you know, they’re two different things. I think this is a canvas piece, right?
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Yes, oil on linen.
— (Juanita Hardy) Or oil on linen. And this, our piece, is a paper piece - but to see the things. In fact, what I learned, a little bit of background on this particular piece in 1949. Norman Lewis had just started doing abstract work. This is, he created it in, he actually made that shift in 1946. So this was three years after. So he’s doing a lot of exploratory work which I think led to some of the more distinctive works that we saw later on. But you see the parallels between the two. Right? So, seeing that, and then the Smithsonian’s collection, makes you want to dig in, learn more, know more. Right? So, that’s what’s been really great about it, you know, for us.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Thank you. And then Schwanda? Your work has you pulling on a range of institutions. So perhaps more fitting is to think about where SAAM fits into your constellation of art institutions?
— (Schwanda Roundtree) Well, I was really impressed with SAAM’s contemporary section in terms of the works in their permanent collection on the contemporary side, because that’s where my focus has obviously been, working with artists that are of today. And obviously, you know, I’ve studied, not formally studied but have paid close attention to artists that, you know, come from a previous time period through the institutions, going to various museums and attending talks.
But I really find that it’s extremely important to support artists of today and keeping legacy in mind obviously, and just having the work surrounding you in a space that can create dialogue and you can share the work with other people that are in your home. I thought that that was very important. And so my focus early on as a novel collector was to sort of push in that realm.
And then obviously I segued into becoming an art consultant and was able to, and still have been able to really push collectors to take a chance, because I know it is a chance in terms of collecting artists of today because you just don’t know how far they’re going to propel. But just, you know, collecting based on the love.
And so, one of my inspirations, and what I love about SAAM, is that they have a Basquiat in their collection. And I definitely see the correlation between, or the influence on some of the newer artists or younger artists of today, such as Nina Chanel Abney who uses a lot of materials that hearken to what Basquiat used during his time period, such as spray paint and unconventional ways of creating art that sort of go into graffiti or street art.
And Nina has definitely sort of been in that realm from the standpoint of having works that are extremely accessible to the novel viewer, the person that wouldn’t necessarily be in a museum or an art gallery. So I really think it’s cool that, you know, she’s creating in that manner.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Can I go forward to the William page comparison?
— (Schwanda Roundtree) Absolutely. And so, when I first started collecting I was so drawn to abstraction and obviously SAAM has a lot of beautiful abstract works in their collection as well. And so I looked at William Johnson in their collection and said, wow, you know, I see sort of a similarity in terms of, you know, the figurative area in Nina’s work which I just recently collected and the colors, the striking colors that he was working with during that time, and the skin tones. Just really impressive.
But just in terms of going to institutions like SAAM it really pushed me to push me out of the box in terms of collecting figurative work because I was really stuck on abstraction because that’s just what I love. So this definitely, collecting this large scale Nina Chanel piece was a push for me because it’s so like in your face, obviously. It sends a strong message, a strong political message. The colors, the soft pink pastel behind this supposedly dominant male figure, and you know, the sporting industry. There’s so many different things that you can discuss.
And so I think in terms of, you know, going to institutions like SAAM definitely pulls those things out in terms of the importance of the dialogue behind collecting and placing works in other collectors, you know, in their collections.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Perfect, thank you. So let’s move forward and extend our conversation about influence. I wanted to maybe talk about the ways in which Smithsonian American Art Museum has impacted you or influenced you in terms of some of the formal and aesthetic decisions that you make about not only the collection advising, but shaping the next generation of artists. So I think I organized the slides to begin with more landscape. I have this and also Alma Thomas’, so whichever you would, either this or this, to kind of think about formal and aesthetics.
— (Allan deSouza) Yeah. We can go back to the landscapes. And so, you know, I saw Robert Duncanson’s work for the first time today. So, it’s actually my first visit to the museum. And here am I, you know, speaking as if I’m an expert on this. [laughter] So, and so this is one of the disadvantages of being able to access work only online. And so there was a profound change for me to see the work in person.
And so I, you know, thinking, I’m here thinking on the spot, literally, as a kind of response to the work and partly being directed by the questions that my students have. And they, at this moment, you know, they feel divided, they feel really anxious about their immediate as well as long-term futures and that’s reflected by the anxieties of what they feel they need to learn.
And so, you know, really, university, we teach as broad a knowledge as possible. And so if I’m teaching 19th century American landscape, the question is, how do you make it relevant to students who look at this work and just, you know, glaze over? So, today I had a workshop to look at Duncanson, and again I’m leading this workshop and it’s the first time I’m seeing the work in person.
But I’m really interested in these depictions of mid-century America, and the landscape which is supposedly neutral but they’re so implicated within these sort of ideologies of Manifest Destiny. And I was drawn to Duncanson who was trained in these techniques in the sort of trajectory that Modernism was taking. And what does it mean for an African American artist then, to be working in those genres, using that language, working in the kind of tradition of Northern Italy and applying it to the American landscape?
And of course you know in our present moment we might look to, is he embedding clues about his own status in these landscapes? And certainly the rainbow, this idea that there’s hope, that there’s a beyond that’s going to be better. And certainly we can interpret that. And you know, he’s painting this, 1850s and 1860s, so a time of immense turmoil.
And so what does it mean to be painting these supposedly neutral images, which are also of hope, and certainly we can read that politically. Both at the time, and then if we go on to the next images of Alma Thomas, who is painting during the Civil Rights movement in D.C. And what does it mean to be painting quote/unquote “abstract images” at this time, at that time.
And I think of her work, you know with its sort of lush color, almost sort of mosaic-like quality, and her focus on her garden. And these are literally her observing really closely her garden as a place of sanctuary during this time of incredible turmoil and violence which is at her doorstep. And what does it mean to seek sanctuary and to offer it out into a broader world?
And so, I think these are immensely political works and we can read them as such. And it doesn’t really matter about the intentions of the artists because we’re trying to make sense of them in our present moment as well. And for me that’s, it really opens up how we can understand art histories and also how we can teach them to students who are coming from a whole range of backgrounds who would otherwise dismiss this work and we, you know, there’s ways to relocate it in their present lives and with their present anxieties as well.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Thank you.
— (Mel Hardy) Well said.
— (Juanita Hardy) That’s great. So, next, so, this one. So, I just, I’m so fascinated by Sam Gilliam and the range of his work. His genius was color. His use of fabric. The way he can take a one-dimensional object and make it a three-dimensional sculpture. And to see this work in SAAM’s collection, it just made me smile. But it also made me smile to see it side by side with the work, one of the works that we have by Sam. We’ve collected several of his works. And I think this might be the last one of that we’ve collected, some years ago.
So this is wood on the right and fabric on the left, but both very sculptural. And the colors, I was just taken by how much the colors, the similarity between the two objects. And a little story. When we bought this work and we bought it from Sam out of his studio, that one horizontal bar that you see on the left, he had it in his hand. And he said, I haven’t figured this part out yet. [Laughter] But he said, it was being delivered to us – “but I will.”
And so when I got, when we got it I’m like, wow, because it is a sculpture even though it’s hanging on a wall. And so what I enjoyed about this is seeing the connection between the two works and Sam’s eye, I’ll put it, and again being reinforced and being reinsured about our eye though. Do you want to add more to what I just said, sweetheart?
— (Mel Hardy) I think it’s cool. [Laughter]
— (Melanee C. Harvey) We’ll go to the next slide.
— (Juanita Hardy) He is my, he sort of like nods. When I find, when we purchase a work, I’ll say I really like this work and here’s why I like it. And I’ll go into my, because I’m more, I purchase work out of more of a spiritual connection that I have with the work and its placement on the page or just how that, the texture, and that and I’ll talk about all of these things. And then he’ll say, “But do you know what was happening in that period?” And then he’ll get into the whole historical context. So I’d like to think that the artist intended the combination of our two views. Right? {laughter] They’re usually different, and you may hear some of that.
— (Mel Hardy) Right. So, I just want to go back to this and follow up on Allan’s comment. I think that Allan you may have given us a gift in having us as viewers or collectors, to co-locate ourselves with the intention of interpretation as we see it today. I think that’s really important. We’ve heard many times that all art is political. Well perhaps, or perhaps not. But depending on our own set of activist impulses, we can interpret it that way and we can use it to motivate our own action in the world today. So I really appreciate your guidance to us on that.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) And there was one more about works on paper.
— (Juanita Hardy) Okay, and I’ll just speak briefly about this Eldzier Cortor. Again, these are two paper works. And by the way, when we started collecting, when I started collecting, it was, my focus was works on paper. So, a large part of the works that we collected in the early years were works on paper. And eventually evolved to sculpture, not a lot of sculpture, but canvas piece, some wood.
— (Mel Hardy) Other media.
— (Juanita Hardy) Yeah. So, but this one, I was intrigued by this because, and by the way this is a –
— (Mel Hardy) Mezzotint.
— (Juanita Hardy) It’s a mezzotint. It’s a color mezzotint. And it was created in, do you remember the year? Anyway I’ll go back to it. It was, because I’m looking at the year it was created. Is there a time date on the other? Anyway they both are things of dancers, right? The connection. And what I really enjoy about Eldzier Cortor’s work is the way he presented the body, the female body and with such dignity and such grace.
And this comes out of his, I think that was at the core. Most of his images were female. And so, even though they’re very different and different time periods, I believe, you can easily see the parallels between the two. And again that’s satisfying when you can go to SAAM and you see this work and then hearken back to work in our collection. So it was, it’s nice to see them side by side. Did you have anything?
— (Mel Hardy) I just want to point out, the execution and mezzotint, you know, that’s difficult work. Very difficult work, I mean in terms of the process of getting with the artist’s hand on that plate, to deliver that, in color.
— (Juanita Hardy) And the value.
— (Mel Hardy) That’s a pretty good piece of work.
— (Juanita Hardy) That’s 1989. It was created in 1989.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Okay, thank you. So, our last interviewer on this question is Schwanda.
— (Schwanda Roundtree) Okay, yes. So, wow, so the Mequitta piece is a recent acquisition, and it’s fairly large. It covers one entire wall in my house. And I didn’t realize it until after the piece was on auction, that when I first jumped out there as a new collector, young collector, just graduated from law school, I had come to the Smithsonian, not this particular institution but another museum under the Smithsonian, and saw Mequitta’s work on view, full, full on solo exhibition.
And I kept looking at this piece on auction and I’m thinking, this is a very familiar work, but I just couldn’t put my hand on it. And I did some more research and I realized oh my god, that was that stunning piece that I saw at the Smithsonian very early on when I was visiting museums. And so it really drove me to try to get that piece.
Another interesting thing is that Mequitta and I have formulated a great relationship because she was my mentee at an artist’s retreat with the Deutsch Foundation in Baltimore. We just connected. And I had literally just done a studio visit in Baltimore and saw, and she actually had sent me a head’s up about some of the auctions. And so I was extremely excited. Had no idea I was going to be able to acquire this work. Obviously it was a sacrifice. Yeah, Maquitta’s work is definitely in that realm of expensive, expensive work, but I figured it out. [Laughter] Just figured it out.
The funny thing is it came to my house from London on my birthday. The gentleman that was bringing it in on the truck was just fascinated as to what it was because it was all crated and it filled the entire body of the back of the truck. And he asked, and I said, “It’s a piece of artwork.” And he just seemed so proud that I had acquired this piece of work. As a Black man, he was just so proud of it.
So unfortunately, we could get it in my house that day. [Laughter] We tried through the back we tried through the front. It was just, it would not fit. So I had to coordinate with the storage company and have it stored and uncrate it and just crossed my fingers that I wouldn’t have to break a wall or a window to get it into the house, but I was going to get in.
And it has been a wonderful conversational piece for people who come to the home. I have a three year old daughter, she loves to look at that piece. And just in terms of being in the game, so to speak, because Black people, Black collectors in particular, are always sort of kept out of that whole large scale museum quality collecting realm. This is a very significant piece to me because it’s in my home. And I think that the interesting thing about visiting SAAM’s contemporary collection, because I visit it a lot, especially with my daughter, is seeing works by, like Mickalene Thomas, and Kerry James Marshall and a number of other artists. And I’m thinking wow, like I know these artists.
Like I’ve had conversations with them, whether it be in person in their studio or on the phone or at a party. These are like, literally like my contemporaries. And just the importance of having that connection and supporting the artist now, but also the fact that the museum is willing to support artists of today on that level. It’s just so impressive.
In terms of, I think that’s the Elizabeth Catlett sculpture - that goes to another artist that I’ve collected. So I try to like have a diversified collection from the standpoint of very accessible works and then other like high range blue chip level work. So Elizabeth Catlett, I just remember placing her works very early on when I was advising a lot of print work. But the sculptural work is interesting because it really made me appreciate collecting Kehinde Wiley sculptures. And I think the Kehinde Wiley sculptures, like later on in the slides.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Do you want me to go to it?
— (Schwanda Roundtree) Sure, just so they can see.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Sorry, you guys are getting a sneak peek.
— (Schwanda Roundtree) That’s okay. Yeah, so this piece, which is quite lovely and very substantial, it’s something nice and heavy. I’ve been able to place a number of works from that series, he created three busts from that series. And I think the really cool aspect of this is that it was extremely accessible early on, not so much now because he’s huge. But you could get a piece like this early on for a couple of thousand dollars and it was, I mean, that’s edition work or whatever. So it’s just nice to have. It’s nice to have a work that didn’t break the bank, obviously, but is highly valued, but also hearkens to, again, sculptors like Elizabeth Catlett. Just, you know, it’s just an excitable piece to have in my space yeah.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Thank you. Alright, so let’s go to our next question. I think that will help us talk a little bit about themes and ideas. So as SAAM’s collection has grown, it has come to reflect a broader range of ideologies and interpretations represented in African American art. I wanted to know if each of you all could share a theme, a critical issue, a motif, that has shaped your art practice, teaching, and collection. Through your art activity, how have you created artistic or conceptual dialogue with SAAM’s African American art collection?
And I think we began to speak to this question a little bit, but there are, I think, some deeper tones we can tease out. I was even thinking about how even you all’s art practice may even fill in some of the visual gaps at SAAM at any given time. And I think, again, we kind of spoke to this, but we can say more. I have this as a first image for the Hardy’s.
— (Juanita Hardy) Yes. So when we started collecting, the commitment was to collect African American art. Right? I knew that, even though our collection is broader than that now, but the principal focus is African American art. And I thought it was important, and African American art is of the 20th century, which I so admire Schwanda, your collection and your focus. Because what we’re trying to learn now is who to collect in the contemporary realm and trying to understand and appreciate that.
And what the fact that SAAM embraces both I think is an important feature of the museum and one that enables that learning that we talked about earlier. So in terms of a commitment, the commitment to us was collecting artists of the 20th century. And I found it amusing or interesting talking about some of the artists, some of the contemporary artists, Mickalene Thomas and DeWilde and the relationships that you had with them and commitment to collecting them.
If I hearken back, how many years ago would it be now, almost 30 years now of collecting, that was exactly what we were doing with people like Sam Gilliam and Al Loving and Camille Billops and EJ Montgomery, you know, and Herb Gentry.
I mean, those were the folks that we were hanging out with in New York and here in D.C. with that same impulse, right? And really, wanting to celebrate African American culture, art and culture, through that lens. Right? Now I think my husband would have a different response to that.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Do you want me to go forward, or do you want me to stay on this slide?
— (Mel Hardy) Well, I do want to say something –
— (Juanita Hardy) Do you want to say something about this one?
— (Mel Hardy) I want to say something about the Hale Woodruff, because he was known as a major muralist. He studied with Diego Rivera. We know that the matter of the uplift as a political kind of predisposition, Diego Rivera with all that he went through, the New York Rockefeller Center thing and all of this stuff. I think to contextualize the artists across experience and across ethnic/cultural spectrum I think is really important and that’s a lens through which I like to look at a lot of the work.
— (Juanita Hardy) I do want to say one more thing about this Hale Woodruff piece. It was created in 1967. He was a teacher. And on the back, we actually purchased this through a gallery in New York, and on the back of it is written that this was produced in his classroom. He was actually demonstrating painting in his classroom. This is a watercolor.
And even though he had moved at some point to more abstract work, this would have been created when he was doing abstract work. So still moving back and forth between his abstraction and figuration, even though there’s a little bit of an abstraction with the flower or green work at the top of it. And then comparing that to what he was doing in the ‘30s, right, with heavy color, heavy paint and so forth. So I thought the connection between those two was quite interesting.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) And then you also have this –
— (Juanita Hardy) This one, yeah. I know Mel’s going to want to speak to because this is the, on – the “Torture of Mothers” created in 1974 by Catlett. Even though it’s a paper piece comparing it to the sculptural piece, you see the Catlett, the way she depicts women, sharp features. This one I think makes a strong political statement, and maybe you want to speak to that.
— (Mel Hardy) So we all know about Mrs. Catlett, Washington, D.C. girl.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Howard University grad.
— (Mel Hardy) There you go. [laughter] We also know that she and Charlie White in the early stages were very, very political actors themselves. This one created in 1974 looks like it anticipated, it gave reference to all of those things by which mothers were tortured, and we could look at that from the founding of this nation through the Tayon [phonetic] issues, the Abner issues, whatever, mothers are tortured by the loss of their children. And so this is an especially important piece for me because it fortifies the need for contextualizing my own action in the context of the world in which we live today.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) I have these two, for you, Schwanda, to think about.
— (Schwanda Roundtree) So just in terms of like collecting alone, I think for me and in terms of advising and placing works in institutions and personal collections, that’s an act of advocacy by itself. And I’m very conscious of that. And I’m also conscious of what the work is speaking to. Obviously my first instinct is the aesthetic aspect of it. I’m just going to be candid about it, you know, just have to love the work and want it in your space. Obviously different types of work carry different types of energy and some people are comfortable with having it in their space, and some people aren’t.
But for me the message is extremely important. And so you know, talking about Theaster Gates, who’s in the SAAM’s collection. I mean, he is an advocate on so many different levels, specifically in his community in Chicago. And sort of the things that he’s able to convey through, in different forms, whether it be his B.A.R. sessions where he actually like carols [phonetic] different artists and curators together to have, to convene and have meaningful dialogue in a very safe space I think is really, really nice.
His ability to purchase property in Chicago in areas that are not so desirable and create beautiful things out of it. And obviously it’s, to take materials and repurpose them in a way that hearkens to very important periods in history that specifically relate to Black people, the Black body.
So the piece on the left is from, it’s water hoses, which obviously during the Civil Rights period was used heavily to abuse Black people by the police and he created these lovely rugs out of the fire hoses. At the time when I acquired this work, I was really close with Peggy Cooper Cafritz. I was her buyer. She had lost a lot of her collection in a fire, unfortunately and we just vibed instantaneously when we met. We just vibed like this, and we would talk every single week about different artists of today, and we just sort of piggybacked on one another.
If I traveled to Italy to a fair or traveled to London and I saw something that was eye-catching, I would buy it for her and have it shipped here. So I became her buyer, and it was just the most wonderful relationship. So this piece I was able to acquire for Peggy and I was so happy to get it.
And the reason I say I was so happy to get it is because as a young Black female collector and advisor, it’s really, really tough. I’m just going to be real about it. It’s extremely tough. You walk in a booth, I don't care where you are, you could be in Switzerland, you could be in New York, you could be in Miami and there are so many assumptions that are made about you based on your appearance.
And so I think Peggy knew what she was doing by having me in those spaces and buying these significant works. Because it really forced people to have a face to face with what was really going on – exclusion, exclusion. There are many times when it doesn’t matter how much money you have, how much money I had on behalf of a client, there was so much pushback to acquire certain works. And so that really pushed me to the next level to actually get on some museum boards to have real conversation about what is being acquired, why is it being acquired, why is it not being acquired.
And so these types of works, like works by Theaster Gates, is a prime example of that conversation of exclusion, in my opinion. That’s not the first Theaster Gates piece that I acquired. I went to a big fair years before I acquired that piece and my client, I had advised my client about Theaster and I said this is an amazing artist; you have to get his work in your collection.
I had already had a foreshadowing of what was going to be there. I’d already done my homework. Got to the booth, nothing was sold, but it was sold for me because it was like I was placed on a waiting list. And there was so much negotiating back and forth as to why. And I do understand. I’m not going to discount the importance of placement and custodian, in terms of stewardship.
— (Mel Hardy) Stewardship.
— (Schwanda Roundtree) Yeah, stewardship. I understand the gallery’s mindset behind that, because they want to make sure that the work is in the proper space, that it’s going to be honored. That it’s not going to be flipped, that it’s going to be well taken care of. And so maybe that’s what was going on there. Obviously they didn’t know who I was. But it was a herculean task to acquire that first Theaster Gates piece.
And since then, I’ve placed works by Glenn Ligon, Carol Walker, Len Getchimutu [phontic], who’s also in my personal collection, Carrie Mae Weems. But it’s still that same type of scenario in terms of understanding the messages that all of these works are carrying and why it’s so important to have it in my personal collection, and to push various collectors to acquire the work. Oh yeah, Mark Bradford. So I think that was, I can talk about that later.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Okay.
— (Schwanda Roundtree) I think it was more of a conversation about abstraction, so I don't know if you want me to speak to that.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Okay, well, we’ll maybe save that until the next question of works. And then Allan, did you want to stay here or go to –
— (Allan deSouza) Can I go back to Theaster?
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Sure. Oh, the Theaster, sure.
— (Allan deSouza) And Mark Bradford. Yeah, I mean the sort of really just taking on, following on from everything that Schwanda has said. One of the ways I approach work like this is how does it intervene into the kind of pretty set narratives of art history, you know, the teaching of the canon. And so it’s not that we shouldn’t teach the canon or teach those arts that constitute the canon, but we can teach them, but we can also teach them completely differently.
And you know, it’s not contentious to say that anti-Blackness is so embedded within every level of culture globally. As you said, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in Switzerland or anywhere. And so how does one address those questions for me within art history and how do we narrate the contemporary?
So you know, when I think of Theaster Gates and we looked at his work very briefly this afternoon when I was doing the workshop, so we went from Robert Duncanson to Theaster Gates. And think of this work in terms of landscape. And it’s wood, we can think of forests and woodland. It’s flooring and it’s very particular, as mentioned, to the Southside of Chicago. So he’s speaking about a very particular territory. You know, can use the term literally ghetto-ized in the term of a sense of being an area that’s had, I guess, being literally and willfully disadvantaged in terms of its resources and so on.
And so what does it mean both to speak of a very particular location? And that space we can think of in terms of landscape. And to elevate the floor where kids are playing basketball up onto the wall as an artwork also changes literally the ground we’re walking on and how we see that. And so the notion of, again, the debased and elevating it. But it makes us rethink. All landscape has territory and ownership and who has access to those places and who’s kept away from it. And we can go on –
— (Juanita Hardy) Can I just say one thing about Theaster Gates before we get off this? Theaster Gates is an amazing artist, I agree. He’s also a real estate developer. And in the work that I’ve been doing with the Urban Land Institute, he was given an award two years ago, the Nichols Award for Leadership in Real Estate Development. He’s the first African American to receive that award from Urban Land, which was established in the 1930s. And so, I mean, he just, he’s breaking all kinds of records. I just thought it important.
— (Allan deSouza) It’s pretty interesting to think of the person doing that development with physical space.
— (Juanita Hardy) Right.
— (Allan deSouza) To think of that, that makes us rethink landscape.
— (Juanita Hardy) Exactly. And what, he’s buying properties in the Southside and he’s redoing them. One of them is this bank that is now headquarters for his non-profit called, I think, Rebuild Foundation. And it’s also a gallery. So it’s a space where people can come and look at artworks like this and others. So he’s really an amazing artist and –
— (Mel Hardy) In our time.
— (Juanita Hardy) In our time, right.
— (Allan deSouza) I guess one of the sort of mythologies within art, the way it’s often taught, is that certain artists within the canon, again, as if the work ends there. So, you know, if I were to teach Theaster Gates and look at this piece, the floor piece in particular in relation to someone like Carl Andre, okay, okay, so his fire bricks on the floor. Now the work doesn’t end with Carl Andre. He’s not the genius that ends that work. You know, the notion of dealing with flooring and we know that Carl Andre is a particularly contentious person.
You know, in the same way that a certain kind of work did not end with Picasso. Picasso is just long step along a road to other works that are, there’s lots of African artists whose work we can see leads back to a trajectory of fine masks which Picasso used. So it doesn’t end with these sort of select “genius,” quote/unquote artists. That there’s a kind of continuity. And it’s really up to us as viewers and teachers to narrate those continuations.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) That’s a perfect point to kind of guide to our last question that I have for you all. I wanted to make this statement, because I feel like I’ve been asking a lot about Smithsonian American Art Museum, but the individual’s relationship to art institutions is never a one-way relationship. And so I wanted each of us to maybe conclude by thinking about how the art activity you do, be it collecting, teaching, how you believe that impacts national collections like Smithsonian American Art Museum.
— (Juanita Hardy) Okay, that’s a big question.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) I have this, this symmetry.
— (Juanita Hardy) Good. So Barbara Chase-Riboud, stepping back, to directly answer your question, I believe that collectors are the pioneers in many ways that really encourage museums to make certain buying decisions. Not entirely, I’m sure it’s not. But you know, you think about art as like, I mean, collectors like Walter Evans and more recently Brenda and Larry Thompson who are buying works, the latter are buying works for the specific purpose of giving them to museums and really raising awareness about the work. Walter Evans, who endowed SCAD and gave a number of his works, right?
So the role of collectors is an important one within the context of museums, of collecting, of inspiring and educating others. Right? So that’s one point. Another point I’d like to make is museums and galleries are catching up with respect to African American art. And it’s time. And I’d like to think that the collecting of – people that were collecting in the 20th century has helped to usher in this period that we’re all seeing and enjoying now and artists of the 20th century laid the groundwork for the success of many of the artists, contemporary artists, that we’re seeing now. I’ll speak about Barbara, this piece in a second, but I want to give Mel a chance to comment.
— (Mel Hardy) Yeah, I would say that we may be litmus to all of you guys in the audience that are collectors.
— (Juanita Hardy) Because they’re a lot of them. I see a number of people in the audience that I know are collectors. [laughter]
— (Mel Hardy) And collectors of this particular area of cultural material, so it’s really good. I’d also like to give a shout-out to SAAM because if you walk through that hall and look at their recent acquisitions, you’ll see a lot of material that is speaking to – the language that I like to use is museums conserve as cathedrals of cultural transmission through the visual arts. In that way, we lift, lift the kind of religiosity and how we look at American social cohesion and perhaps social mobility through looking at collecting, collecting material that helps forge a sense of American identity or national identity.
So hats off to the SAAM, but we can’t exclude some of the other, like in Washington we’re replete with a lot of good thinkers here. The National Gallery, the Phillip’s Collection, and similar galleries. So it’s important that we stay engaged with the museums to support this movement to helping us find this national identity against the pushes to divide us. I think we’re seeing that in very stark terms today. So if you want to engage me later in this discussion, I will do that, [laughter] but right now I’ll just turn it back.
— (Juanita Hardy) So let me just talk about this piece for a second. So this piece by, from our collection, comes from the, was created at the Brandywine Workshop. It was part of – our time was running out, so it was the tenth [unintelligible] award, Barbara Chase- Riboud was given that award. And looking at it, a work on paper, a lithograph, compared to the sculptural piece that you see, I think the juxtapositioning of the two of them quite interesting.
When we did, when we received this piece at Brandywine, it was at the award. It happened to be a little story, about, I’m seeing that particular event. And I remember standing next to her as she received her award, probably the most, the time that I was probably more nervous than I’d ever – one of those really nervous. I’m standing next to Barbara Chase-Riboud. And then to see how her career had from that point had really taken off. Yeah.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) I think next I have Schwanda thinking about –
— (Schwanda Roundtree) So I think there is a broader dialogue that is occurring amongst various museums in this country. I think there’s a bit of competition. I think there is a level of awareness that has been brought out through more diversified curatorial staff, thank goodness. And also the impact of social media because you know, things are highlighted now that may not have been highlighted in the past. And I can give various examples, but I’m not going to go into that.
But yeah, I mean, it puts pressure, it puts fire under specific museums and they’ve had to respond. And I think that onboarding of staff that you see now is a result of that tough, tough dialogue, tough highlighting of things that have occurred, like exclusion. And so one of the very interesting things that have happened or occurred as a result is museums being very racy and de-acquisitioning from their collection. And I’ve been very impressed with the Baltimore Museum of Art.
— (Mel Hardy) Yes.
— (Schwanda Roundtree) And what they’re doing to make sure they have inclusion of artists, specifically Black artists or artists of color and women artists. You know, I just think it’s just wonderful. I’ve just recently onboarded with the Ackland Museum of Art in Chapel Hill and I’m one of the few persons of color that will be making decisions on works that are $100,000 dollars or more in their permanent collection and I can’t ignore the power of that position.
— (Juanita Hardy) Most definitely.
— (Schwanda Roundtree) And to be able to bring works by artists of color into their permanent collection that is in a very conservative area where I grew up in in North Carolina. Obviously I’ve been on various boards, Spellman Museum, different positions that have impact, but I think that I’m going to hopefully be able to create some interesting inroads with the Ackland. They’re very excited. And so going back to SAAM, I think that SAAM has been, they’ve been doing this.
— (Mel Hardy) Yeah.
— Schwanda Roundtree) Which is really great. It’s a testament, because you can see the works on the walls. But obviously in terms of the broader conversations with various institutions, there needs to be so, so much more.
— (Mel Hardy) True.
— (Schwanda Roundtree) It’s sort of just a drop in the bucket. So I’m hopeful. This work is just speaking to, when I first, first started collecting and I was focused on abstraction and was going back and forth to visit Shinique’s studio and formulated a great friendship with her. Eventually followed every artist, I mean, every gallery that she went to and supported her and have multiple works by Shinique.
And so just again the importance of supporting artists holistically, like from a broader standpoint in terms of not just one piece or collecting one work, but in different ways. If you can support, you know, them in terms of if they need assistance with traveling somewhere. I was just seeing so many different ways to support various artists at certain levels. You’d be surprised at the impact that it could create as a result of you being an advocate for the artist.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) And then for Allan, I had this as an ending. I don't know if that’s okay.
— (Allan deSouza) Yeah, I mean I think it’s, yeah, especially like the Magdalena “Campos-Pons,” to think of it in relation to your question around the nation.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Hmh.
— (Allan deSouza) And the title, what is the title?
— (Melanee C. Harvey) “Constellations,” and it’s –
— (Allan deSouza) And it’s just “Constellation.”
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Hmh.
— (Allan deSouza) Yeah, it does remind me a little bit of Okwui Enwezor’s essay, “The Post-Colonial Constellation: - Contemporary Art in a State of Permanent Transition. And you know, Okwui Enwezor is really one of our most important curators and thinkers and has been a huge loss. But his notion that this sort of, how do we map culture with an under-globalization? So he offers this model of the post-colonial constellation which is about this relationality. So the culture doesn’t really recognize borders and neither do we. But to track the sort of relations across borders, you know, cultural relations.
The fact that artists have been occupiers, but they’ve also been occupied. They’ve been dislocated, they’ve been migrants. And so culture has been in that sense of permanent transition. And we have to think of it in those terms. And that’s really how I think of that collection by Magdalena as these sort of different sort of moments that are happening at different locations and sort of reconnecting them is how we begin to understand the sort of workings of culture.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) And I’m glad we got a chance to end on Magdalena “Campos Pons.” Also kind of emphasize the degree to which Smithsonian American Art has thought about the diaspora, right, in addition to their collecting. So that was our lasts question. I think now you all have, some of you all have postcards or cards that you will take a few moments, gather your thoughts and write your questions on and we’ll be receiving your Q and As. [Applause]
— (Kaylee Bryant Greenwell) So I’m going to stall of 60 seconds to give you time to write your question down. I have colleagues going down the aisles to collect your questions for Q and A. You’ll see on one side you have space to write your question for the speakers. On the reverse is some feedback for us. You ever wonder what we do with this feedback, it actually is very important to us. Please tell us who you are, how you heard about the program tonight. We’ll give about 30 more seconds to complete questions. Okay, thank you everyone. We have a lot of questions here. We will try to get through as many as possible, but I know you want to also get upstairs to socialize with the panelists directly. So let’s get started. When it comes to Black art and Black artists, how do you navigate or advocate for the visibility of their works?
— (Juanita Hardy) Okay, well I’ll start. One way that we’ve done it, Mel and I, has been through this non-profit that Kaylee mentioned earlier, Millennium Art Salon. And when we started this non-profit in 2000, you know, our main objective was to bring people together in an intimate setting and have discussion around topics of art and culture and bring artists to that conversation. And that has persisted for, this is our 20th year.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Congratulations.
— (Juanita Hardy) Thank you. [Applause] So it’s a labor of love, it’s a labor of love. But through that we’ve had many, many great artists that have come forth. And again, the more you talk about art and you promote artists in conversation, whether it’s an intimate setting or just in dialogue with museums, because we’ve had partnership with museums over the years. I think those kinds of things help to contribute to that conversation around why these artists should be in their collections.
We’ve actually taken curators to artist studios so they could see the work. And then many of our members have been advocates for artists. And I thank you for those of you that are here and I just want to call out one who, I was talking about collectors earlier – Pat Walters who just gave her collection to Howard University. [Applause] $2.5 million dollar valued collection to Howard. And that’s got to start a conversation around who are the artists that she’s contributed and why aren’t they in our collection also, right? [Laughter].
— (Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell) Melanee, maybe you’d like to respond to that question about advocacy in the classroom.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) Oh well, again, I’m the coordinator of art history at Howard, so really just developing our students to be able to go into these art spaces and occupy the spaces. To be that next generation to kind of continue. And also the kind of idea that we’re just now having African American curators. No, there’s a long trajectory, right? So really educating them on the history so they’re really, have the tools, right, to navigate these spaces. So really, education.
— (Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell) Okay, this one is for Schwanda. Thank you for speaking to your experiences regarding exclusion. I agree we need to bring more people of color to museum boards. What advice do you have for younger or non-rich people of color to [laughter] to join these boards, to advance conversation regarding exclusion? That’s a very good question.
— (Schwanda Roundtree) To advance conversation regarding –
— (Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell) Exclusion.
— (Schwanda Roundtree) Exclusion? Wow, there’s so many different ways. I mean, I’ve tried to do it in informal fashions as well. So, for example, whenever there’s an artist that’s traveling to D.C. that I’ve been following or supporting, I have held art salons in my home very similar to what Juanita and Mel have done for years, but in more of an informal fashion. Just inviting them to the home and having conversation.
Obviously these are Black artists – and it doesn’t cost much money. Just some wine and cheese and some water. I also have had the honor of working with the Joan Mitchell Foundation who has, they’re based in New York, but they have an amazing residency program in New Orleans. And so whenever I travel to a city, even if it’s for work or artist retreat, I always, always conduct or go to different studios, even if the artist is not a participant of that particular program.
I did the same thing for years when I was on the Spellman Museum’s Board. Every time I went to Atlanta, I would go to a studio and purchase work that was affordable to me. So that’s a form of support. Social media, obviously, is another form of support in terms of sharing works that you like or sharing works that you have acquired. Not saying that it’s necessary, but I think that the conversation spreads to people that may not normally collect or be in the whole art world. There’s just so many different ways. It doesn’t have to break your purse.
— (Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell) Thank you. You just answered four more question [laughter], so we’re being very efficient. If everyone is okay, I think this will be the last one so we can enjoy some socialization upstairs together. There are quite a few questions here, though. This is for everyone. Can you please talk about an art piece you originally did not like visually until you learned about its subject matter or vice versa? Thank you. Very plain. [Laughter]
— (Mel Hardy) So let me try this one, I’ll start off. We have a small metzaluna [phonetic] etching, it’s a really small piece. And at first glance - it’s done by Reggie Gammon, yeah, yeah. And it’s about the Scottsboro Boys. And Samuel Leibowitz who was the attorney who dedicated his life to kind of navigating these Black kids through the justice system.
So at first glance it’s just a black and white, you know, it’s a small piece and all that. But living with the work, looking at it, engaging with it, co-locating the time of its doing, referencing its history, speaking about yourself in its context to you is – was an important piece.
So over time I’ve really enjoyed, I’ve learned a little bit about metzaluna carving, which is very, very difficult, as you know. The process esthetically, the formal dimensions of creating that work. But this particular work esthetically is just so beautifully done. The blacks are really well done, the shading, the tonal of the skin color, both of the white guards that are guarding these Black students and Leibowitz in the middle of this thing. Really fascinating work. So it’s a process of over time.
Allan today gave a little seminar on how to look at this stuff, this material. Really important to do to linger with it. Just, you know, the 15 seconds that we normally spend on just passing a work by. Sometimes when you’re engaged with the work over time, you gain your own climbing, mining the depths of your own experience is really important.
— (Schwanda Roundtree) I can respond to that question, but it’ll be on the flip side. And I’m not going to name the artist, but there were two instances. One when I was in London a couple of years ago and I saw this piece. It was a very busy piece. There was a lot of figures in the piece, all Black figures. The things that were happening to the figures were disturbing. I assumed that it was a Black artist.
And when I explored more, it was a European artist. And so I went to the gallery and questioned why was this, why was this created, what was the inspiration behind it? They had absolutely no explanation. It was – just infuriated me because it was just, it was unnecessary. If you’re going to project something of this nature that is on this level of disturbance, you need to know why it was created and why it’s there. Another instance, I was in Miami, saw this beautiful piece of this little girl, very dark skin, but blue eyes and I was a little confused by that. She was in a garden. And I assumed it was a Black artist, and it was a Dutch artist.
— (Mel Hardy) Yeah, I know the piece, I know the piece.
— (Schwanda Roundtree) I inquired about that too and it was like okay, gallery just didn’t have the sense of what was going on with the piece. But it appeals to the Black consumer or the Black viewer naturally just because of the esthetics, but the thing that confused me was the eyes and the context, the colors and things and I knew something was different. So that’s the way I respond to the question, but on a flip side in terms of it kind of turned me off when I found that there was no scholarship behind the work.
— (Allan deSouza) Yeah. I mean, I would respond slightly differently to that question as well and sort of what comes to mind. And again, I’m not going to name the artist. There’s a number of works that I will not look at, and yet they occupy a little too much of my attention than I want. And of course, I have to teach these works as well. And I have told students, I’m going to give you the name of the artist, you look it up on the phone. I’m not projecting that image. We can talk about it. I’m not going to subject myself to it, having to look at it.
— (Melanee C. Harvey) And I think my response to this would be as an art historian, I kind of have trained myself not to dislike or disregard. So even artists, I’m thinking about even my training as an art historian. Even when I was at Spellman I did my thesis on Basquiat because I needed to understand the esthetics. It wasn’t initially that kind of esthetics of beauty, right, that’s easily accessible.
And even for my master’s thesis, I chose Benny Andrews because I needed to know what was going on with these kind of distorted abstracted faces. So for me when I see things that I don't, that my eye doesn’t see or automatically mark as beautiful, I need to know why. And so I look deeper, and that goes back even to what the Hardy’s were saying about the research, living with the art object. And the more you learn, that is that inroads for appreciation.
— (Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell) Well, thank you. Let’s give one more round of applause. [Applause] Thank you all. Guests, we invite you to exit straight upstairs the same way you came into the courtyard and our panelists will be joining you shortly. Enjoy.