It's always been an uphill battle.

The respect that artists have garnered is low.

When you look at terms of sold pieces, museum purchases and collections, for the most part the majority of museums over 80% of what they own, are by white male artists.

I mean, it's American art.

You know, I mean, we say African-American, but it is American art.

It's really been part of the last century, in this century that the work has started to get the respect that it deserves, and the artists get the same respect.

I think that the broader aspect of American museums and museums in general are realizing that they need to update their collections right?

It was many, many years, I think, of changing perspectives and changin whose voices were at the table.

African American art is American art.

Then you know it deserves its place in the museum.

Just like anything else.

Black artists have been crafting for centuries, but there's still an ongoing disparity when it comes to accessing black art in museums across the country.

And those like the Grand Rapids Art Museum, are trying to grow their collections by black artists.

Today, we explore a recent purchase from artist Mario Moore, the first artist in GRAMS more than 100 year histor to have a permanent collection exclusively supported by black donors.

It's been a while since I've done an interview about African-American art.

It's one of my favorites subjects Of course, we had an art gallery here in Grand Rapids for 25 years before we started our museum.

When we came to Grand Rapids, we were the only African-America Historically, if I were to say, you know, can we talk about the the timeline from earliest days to now?

Well it really illustrates history, because if you look at the earlier artist, there it was mainly documenting, history.

The portraits were pictures of, of patrons, people who wanted the family painted or, their, church members painted as you moved into, say, the 20s and 30s artists, particularly in Harlem.

Band together with the Harlem Renaissance and, started to, be more representative of, people situations instead of a portrait.

Somebody just sitting there still.

You know, they were working or showed them doing action.

When I think about the Harlem Renaissance, I think that moment in our history wa such an uplifting moment, right?

In a way, in a wa in which that they were trying to describe themselves and very uplifting, types of language, because what was seen in newspapers, what was happening in communities was, really a terrorizing of, of our culture.

But that was also the time when they got most pushback.

During the 20s, while the Harlem Renaissance was just that, a renaissance in African-American art.

The artwork itself was revolutionary, and it made a statement, but it was harder for people t put them in their collections.

You know, like with all levels of society, there were these ideas about what was what was appropriate, what wasn't.

And, you know, what was good, excellent and what wasn't.

And a lot of times, those, those ideas were very biased, to, you know, promote the work of white male artists over everyone else.

For places that had African-American art, they generally were HBCUs, historically black colleges, started their collection at Fisk University or or Howard University, and those artists on campus had great respect.

But if you go outside of that area, the DC galleries weren't collecting the works.

If you moved into the 50s and 60s, artists realized that, and they started to band together and start groups like Afro Cobra, who I guess you could then start adding the term activists on it because part of what they wanted to do is push back against some of these, powerhouses, which were the New York galleries and museums.

Some of the larger museums around the country, who weren' showing African-American offers, and they were able to go t these museums and say, look, we demand this.

We demand having, shows for African-Americans.

We demand not having things only in Black History Month.

You know, we demand, to get on your mailing list.

And it worked.

And so going into the 70s and 80s, artists had a, a new power.

And so that, I think, was even deemed the the golden age of black art because you had people looking in for their own collections.

You had sales from museums and you had forums like The Cosby Show and places where you could see your own art.

And I think those venues were the thing that really turned on collectors and got them interested in collecting works by African-American artists.

When we talk about the the times or the culture of where we're at in the moment and how art can be received, I'm curious as to if there was an uptick after 2020 of museums or more people wanting to consume and buy black art.

You know, no, I think there wa definitely an uptick after 2020.

The year before was Covid.

That means a lot of artist were staying home painting, and so there was a glut of artwork out there in 2020.

And, a lot of times no place to, to sell it.

That's that was the rise of the online services and how a lot of artists started to get their work out there and in the community.

And so it's that we we see police brutality.

Some of the uprisings that happened, you know, became par of the narrative for the artist.

I mean, I know here when we had our uprising that we got together with some artist, once they sort of boarded up all the broken windows, you know, a slew of artists came out to paint up all of the panels.

And, we bought a couple pieces by a local artist.

But it gave people an idea.

Well, we'r we're all these artists before.

Before the the uprisings, it made it a, more of a priority because I think people could then see, Oh, these these guys are just as good as, or as we see in the museum.

You know, for us as a history museum now.

I mean, it's it's intertwined.

The main narrative about black art is one that's constructed from a point of view that excludes.

Right.

Basically saying, like the met or the Whitney or these museums that are iconic in the United States refuse these works, but blac art or artists who just happen to be black have always, always had space to show their work.

So it's not in the in the way in which like these spaces didn't exist.

They always existed.

Black artists always made work and they always showed their work, and they always had space to show their work.

And they sold to people who look like them.

I think in the last 30 to 40 years, major institutions have been paying attention to say, hey, we'v missed this part of the story.

So I don't think it's the case in which, like, black artists are being discovered.

You know, I think it's more so a thing where the work has exploded beyond the small circle that it was in.

My name is Jennifer Cecil, and I am the dean and the Helga Yellow curator of collections and exhibition at the Grand Rapids Art Museum.

Looking at art overall how many other African-American art artist work do you have here?

So the museum has about 680 works of art in the collection.

And right now we only have around maybe 75 works by known, African-American artists.

There are likely mor in the collection as we continue to to researc every all of those 6800 objects.

You have a commitment here that you are trying to use a percentage of funding to try to pull in artwork by African-Americans or people of color.

About eight years ago or so, the Grand Rapids Art Museum committed that at least 75% of our purchases of artwork would be by artists who are underrepresented in our collection.

So underrepresented artists includes African-American artists.

It also includes, you know, Latino, Hispanic, Asian, American artists, women artists.

And that's a commitment that we've been able to meet and exceed for all of those past eight years.

Some years, we were able to hit 100%.

You know, 100% of our purchases would be of underrepresented artists.

What's tricky, though, is that those are purchases.

We also receive quit a few gifts of art every year.

And that's another reason that growing this, collection of African-American artists has been slow, because we are also working with private collectors, and their tastes and their interests might not align exactly with what our priorities are.

Our acquisition funds are pretty limited.

So it is challenging to find the funds to to make purchases very broadly.

And museums can't always compet with wealthy private collectors.

And there has been a growing interest in black artists amongst private collectors that has pushed the prices of their work far beyond what we are able, to purchase with our smaller, funds.

It's it's a thing that I know a lot of black artists are thinking very carefully about.

They need to make money, they need to make a living, but they also want to secure their own artistic legacies.

And they know that being part of museum collections is an important part of that.

So many artists, like Mario Moore included, was very generous to work wit us on providing some discounts, doing some special things for us to make this acquisition happen.

I grew up in a home filled with art.

My mother was an artist.

My mother still is an artist.

My grandfather was a sign painter.

So I grew up in the world of art.

It was something that I just really loved and had a curiosity about.

When I saw someone making something like, the idea of creating was just infectious.

So it's it's it's always been there.

So, Mario Moore is an incredible young artist coming out of Detroit.

And I had actually saw his work maybe 10 or 12 years ago.

And I thought that there was definitely something there.

So I kept an eye on him over the years.

And GRAM was fortunat enough to partner with the Flint Institute of Arts to host a solo exhibition of his work last year, last summer.

And when we had that show, it was incredible to see the amount of engagement that people had with the works of art.

As a human being, we learn from stories.

We pay attention to the kind of images and visuals that are told to us, right?

I like to use stories as a way to talk about the future, to talk about the now, and also to imagine, because I think it's a way of, especially for me and my community, and me as a black man, to put myself into the narrative, into the story.

Very realistic painter.

He's able to capture people in high detail exactly as they appear, as he wants them to appear.

Everyone loved this one particular work of art.

It's a painting called pillar of the frontier, and it includes all of the important women in Mario Moore's life.

So his wife, his sister, two of his grandmothers, and he decided to depict them in a snowy Michigan wilderness.

And it was just something that came out of his historical researc about the history of Michigan.

And how Africans were brought over to the United States to wor in the fur trade in the state.

When I made pillars, I was really thinking about just black people existing in the Midwest and contemporary art.

Not a lot of people mak paintings about winter or snow, but when we look at the trajectory of art history, there's a lot of snow paintings.

And I started to just think about just black people in that space, like, what does that look like?

And also this idea of being in a city and in a space, the United States that was prominent during the fur trade.

What is the connectio to black people, black bodies.

And I thought about women in my family that have been such an influence on me and showing them as kind of these, these warm bodies in this cold space.

I really wanted to focus on that.

The landscape as us existing here and being here for a long time and and looking at those generations.

When I walk around museums and I don't see too many narratives about me, but at the same time, I see a broader context for human stories just being told visually through other people.

So I want to be able to tell my story.

Yeah.

And I think that's what, you know, really led me ther is, is that that storytelling?

It's a really powerful piec that spoke to a lot of people.

So we immediately thought we needed this painting to stay here in Grand Rapids.

We didn't want this one to go, and we wanted to be able to enjoy it and and show it, you know, for our community into the future.

So our board member in demands, is a driving force within the community.

And she used her network to make some of these important acquisitions happen.

And a lot of folks came together and were able to raise over $50,000 to help us purchas that work of art for the museum.

Well, we have made a commitment to Mario that we were going to purchase it.

And so, it was somethin that was important that be done.

And it had to be done in a specific time frame.

And so, you know, I was just going to keep knocking until we got enough.

And so I was blown away by the overwhelming, you know, just response and success of it.

I learned that children, school age children that would come through would just be amazed and mesmerized and, you know, just the way, you know, they reacted to, again, on the wall.

Yeah.

It was a really proud moment.

Once, Jennifer and GRAM you know, decided that they wanted to add the piec to their permanent collection.

I was elated.

It means something when an institution says that we care about what you've done, to add it to the permanent collection in a space where it's going to be there forever.

What the museum is doing in is they're putting i in the context of art history.

Your work gets talked about in a different context.

And and it's really, really important beyond the kind of, you know, flashy news stories or whether you're seen in a magazine about your latest exhibit.

Right.

And that's what most of the public sees is like, oh black art is doing really well.

And it is people are making money.

But beyond that, what is the long run?

And and I became an artist because of something I want to do for the rest of my life.

And I think that's the reason why I paint real people.

I want you to be able to find them somewhere.

So to have my my family essentially, you know, in a permanent collectio on these museum walls forever, means a lot.

The amount of money that, African-American artists can receive is far lower than a lot of the known artists.

Or even just trying to become a known IRAs or fetch more dollars for their work.

It's it's not a balanced system, is it?

The the commercial art world is never balanced.

No.

You know, there's still incredible interest in many deceased artists.

You know who who continue to hit very high auction prices.

And it's it's a struggle for a lot of young artists, but particularl African-American artists, women artists, people who are trying to establish themselves, and, and do art professionally.

You know, it's really difficult to, to make enough money to live as an artist and not have, you know, a secondary form of income.

The museums and auction houses, they still dictate how high an artist can go.

There's a number of them who have risen way over the million dollar, $10 million mark.

Those are kind of status for the artists, but they're also recognition that we're we're putting you equa with these other contemporaries.

Now, if you look at it, dollar for dollar, African-American artists are still down here while they're getting a good fee for their artwork.

You know, they're still not up where, you know, Andy Warhol or Picasso or somebody like that who's been dead years are still getting money for their works that are astronomical.

The act of making is the most important aspect of being an artist, and the ability to do that comes with an economy to it.

Right?

You have to have a living or make some kind of living to make art.

There's still an idea of what type of art black artists should be creating and what type of art will sell.

Black artists are often expected to create black art.

I feel like the art world with a capital A wants to see certain images made by black artists, right?

And sometimes.

And I'll speak for myself sometimes.

You do have moments where yo just want to paint a landscape that really gets artists stuck where they're feeling like, maybe I have to do representational work.

Maybe I have to speak to the black experience, because that's the only way that my ar is going to be noticed or sold.

And that can be really challenging for those artists in particular, because they're struggling against this idea that their art needs to look a certain way.

Artists tell, like, speak from their own experiences, right?

So no matter what race you are you're telling your own story.

And it just so happens that, you know, in the black community, there are a lot of great stories.

There are a lot of bad stories just like anywhere else.

So each artist is going to do that differently.

And I also think we're at a really critical moment in the world.

Right.

In America specifically.

But freedom of speec is being challenged right now.

You know, and I feel like censorship is is happening rapidly, broadly.

And I feel like art is one of those things that can cut through the tape.

Art has a way to ignite and calm.

There was a boom from corporation to investing in these artists.

But in recent times, when Dei has been, the jettisoned, it was short lived.

It's the same as the books.

You know, their books being taken off the shelves.

There's art being taken off the shelves.

Diversifying the collection is only one small part, you know, of making sure that museums and my museum in particular, is operating with equity.

And that needs to change systems all throughout, you know, the institution.

It needs to change the conversations that we have with our community.

It needs to change the conversations we have with our board members and our donors.

And we need to challenge them.

That's what excites me.

Art is available to all of us.

And I think it's a way to open people's eyes about certain things that they might not feel comfortable with, they might not be familiar with.

But it's a way to ignite a certain kind of curiosity.

I believe that, this next era is, is going to be a, a turning point for African-American artists.

Certainly the, the internet and online services will continue to, to sell the artwork, but I think you're also having, more recognition.

I'm black Art in America magazine and website is is a good on to find an up and coming artist.

And, regionally, we have a, an excellent crop of young artists coming up.

Some of the old traditional artists from Grand Rapids are, are literally dying off, and, collectors are looking for new blood here in town.

And so, you know, you see, it's like news and, artworks and places like that here locally are doing a great job of introducing th community to the artists, then, you know, allowing their work to to speak further.

This is only the beginning.

We had so such great success.

It only drives you just to do more.

So we'll meet again.

Some other art to be identified.

And, you know, we'll start all over again, and then we'll just keep doing it, I guess, until they don't have anywhere to put it.

It's, Thanks for watching.

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