She is a global R&B star, he is an influential hip-hop producer: music’s leading couple, Alicia Keys and Swizz Beats have also assembled a rich collection of art, focused on African-American or “diaspora” artists. black”, and unveiled in New York.
Open to the public on Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum, the exhibition is called “Giants”, for the size of certain works, but also because “we want you to see the giants on whose shoulders we stand”, underlines in a video the pianist and singer with 16 Grammy Awards, since her first hit “Fallin'” (2001) or for the timeless “Empire State of Mind” with Jay-Z.
The giants of Alicia Keys and Swizz Beats are, for the essentials, the New York prodigy Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), the Malian photographer Malik Sidibé (1936-2016), or the American Gordon Parks (1912-2006), who documented racial segregation and the civil rights movement in the United States.
The exhibition mainly highlights living artists, such as Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, now known for their portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, and whose paintings subvert the history of Western art to include African-American characters.
The work “Ndebele Abstract” by Esther Mahlangu during a press presentation of the “Giants” exhibition, unveiling the art collection of Alicia Keys and Swizz Beats, on February 6, 2024 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York / TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP
Or the Botswanan painter based in the United States Meleko Mokgosi, whose monumental fresco (“Bread, Butter and Power”), larger than life, explores the relationships of power and gender in the societies of southern Africa.
Also included are Kwame Brathwaite (1938-2023), photographer of the “Black is beautiful” movement, and Jamel Shabazz, who captured the hip-hop atmosphere of New York in the lens.
Pioneer
Born in the Bronx, both a DJ and producer, Swizz Beats achieved success before he turned 20, launching the career of rapper DMX. From this time he began to acquire works and he is today considered a pioneer for the promotion of black artists, some of whom have seen their popularity explode in recent years.
The work “Woman Bitten by a Snake” by artist Kehinde Wiley, during a press presentation of the “Giants” exhibition, unveiling the art collection of Alicia Keys and Swizz Beats, February 6 2024 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York / TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP
Close to the Brooklyn Museum, Swizz Beats was a member of the board of directors.
Among the artists exhibited, there is also Ernie Barnes (1938-2009), who was an American football player and painter, and whose acrylic on canvas, “Sugar Shack”, used on the cover of Marvin’s album “I want you” Gaye, fetched $15.2 million at auction in 2022, ten times more than its estimate.
“We collect artists from all over the world. The reason we focused on artists of color (…) is because our own community did not collect these giants”, underlines Swizz Beats in the video .
Shade”
The exhibition also illustrates the quest for a younger and more diverse audience in cultural institutions.
“In art history, narratives always tend to focus on ‘Eurocentric’ stories.
A work by Jamaican artist Ebony G. Patterson during a press presentation of the “Giants” exhibition, unveiling the art collection of Alicia Keys and Swizz Beats, on February 6, 2024 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York / TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP
Most museums are faced with the fact that these stories have permeated their collections over generations, even centuries,” Kimberli Gant, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum, told AFP.
“Through the exhibitions they present and the works of art they acquire, (museums) try to show that the world is much more complex, much less ordered, much more nuanced than has been suggested. be shown the collections they have had for a long time,” she adds.
On Saturday, the day when the collection of Alicia Keys and Swizz Beats will be unveiled to the public, an exhibition on another icon of hip-hop culture in New York, the filmmaker Spike Lee, will end at the Brooklyn Museum, while the Whitney Museum, located in Manhattan, honored the artist Henry Taylor, who depicted the life of African-Americans.
