News & Events

The New Orleans Museum of Art has acquired ten works from the Atlanta-based Souls Grown Deep Foundation. The acquisition is part of the foundation’s “strategic gift/purchase program” that strives to increase the representation of African-American artists from the South in museums across the country.

What makes some artwork timeless? History shows that neither high prices at auction nor gallery attendance figures are good predictors of how artists, artworks, and art movements will be viewed in decades to come. The Guggenheim’s landmark exhibition 1900: Art at the Crossroads was noteworthy for revealing that the artists we lionize today were far from acclaimed in their time.

It’s not often that an art museum can address a major gap in its collection with one bold move. So when the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco made a deal early this year to acquire 62 works by 22 contemporary African American artists, the museums decided to produce a full-scale exhibition with catalog in four months—a fraction of the normal lead time—to celebrate. The result, “Revelations: Art from the African American South,” opened last week at the de Young Museum; it will be on view through April 1.

Hallelujah, and better late than never, are among the responses one may have to "Revelations: Art from the African American South," a truly outstanding, long overdue exhibition at the de Young Museum. The occasion for the show is FAMSF's recent acquisition of 62 sculptures, paintings, drawings, ingenious, emotionally charged assemblages, quilts from Gee's Bend, and prints based on them, by 22 Southern-born, late-19th and 20th century, African American artists.

What does it mean to have an American art collection? The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) had this question in mind in February, when it acquired 62 works from the Atlanta-based Souls Grown Deep Foundation, which promotes contemporary African-American artists of the South from beyond the gallery or art school system. FAMSF’s De Young museum has cleared its Modern and contemporary galleries for its new exhibition dedicated to the trove, Revelations: Art from the American South (until 1 April 2018).

Fine Arts Museums Director Max Hollein said in February, when 62 works by contemporary African American artists based in the South were acquired, that the de Young Museum was dedicated to “expanding the representation of artists who reflect the historical diversity of American culture.” The collection, which came from from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation in Atlanta, includes paintings, sculpture and quilts from Gee’s Bend, which were first displayed at the museum in 2006.

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta has the largest collection of Thornton Dial works in the world. It’s now about to get bigger, thanks to a major gift of artworks to the museum from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. The acquisition totals 54 works by contemporary African-American artists from the South. Thirteen of those are by Mr. Dial, a self-taught artist who used scavenged materials to depict black struggle in the South. The acquisition includes “Crossing Waters” (2006-2011), which refers to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and was the largest painting ever made by Mr. Dial, who died last year.

Atlanta’s High Museum of Art has acquired fifty-four artworks from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, a nonprofit organization also based in Atlanta and dedicated to the preservation and distribution of artworks made by African Americans in the American South. This combined gift and purchase—made up of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper—is a major boon to the museum’s collection. Some of the artists represented in the gift/purchase include the quilt-makers of Gee’s Bend, Thorton Dial, Ronald Lockett, Joe Minter, Joe Light, Royal Robertson, Georgia Speller, Eldren Bailey, and Vernon Burwell.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: 62 works of art acquired by purchase/gift from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation

Over 60 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawing and quilts by 22 contemporary African American artists from the American South, will enter the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The acquisition includes a significant gift from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, a non-profit organisation that aims to preserve, exhibit and promote the work of contemporary African American artists, and holds a collection of more than 1,200 artworks.