Memphis Brooks Museum receives 75 works by Black artists
The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art has received a donation of 75 significant works — including paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures and videos — by Black artists, museum officials announced Tuesday.
“This gift places our museum’s collection of work by Black artists in an entirely new category, and we are excited to make these works central to the museum experience when we move to the riverfront in a few years,” said Zoe Kahr, the museum’s executive director, in a statement.
Thirty artists — including several with Memphis ties — are represented in the gift, which was presented by a collector identified by the museum only as an “anonymous donor.”
Three of the Memphis-related works can be seen in the “Black American Portraits” exhibition that is on display through Jan. 7 at the museum. These pieces include the oil pastel-on-newspaper “Highstep Double” by New York-based Derek Fordjour, the Memphisborn son of Ghanaian immigrants; University of Memphis graduate Jarvis Boyland’s painting “Expectations,” which continues what the Brooks describes as
the artist’s exploration of “Black queerness and masculinity in the digital age”; and Memphis photographer Catherine Elizabeth Patton’s “Unveil I,” from the “Studyi:sexuality,sensuality,andself”series.
The “Black American Portraits” exhibition features more than 100 works, mostly drawn from the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The show is presented by Bank of America.
Some other selections from the donated collection announced Tuesday can be seen in two other exhibitions currently on display at the Brooks, “Art of the African Diaspora” and “In the Moment: Art from the 1950s to Now.”
Founded in 1916, the Brooks is preparing to relocate from its historic Overton Park location to a new 122,000-square-foot, $180 million riverfront facility on Front Street Downtown, which could open in 2025. The relocation will be accompanied by renaming: The Brooks will become, simply, the Memphis Art Museum. To reflect that name, officials say they plan to emphasize diversity and increase the presence of Black artists in the museum’s collection, to better reflect the institution’s home city.
Trevia Chatman, president of Bank of America Memphis, said the bank intends to “present a major exhibit by a Black artist” and to “purchase a work of art each year,” to help “educate the community on the Black art experience...” Chatman is a founding member of the Black Arts Collective, which is working with the Brooks to “ensure that Black artists and audiences are actively welcomed and supported within and through the city’s museum, and that their participation grows and deepens.”
For more information, visit brooksmuseum.org.