The art world and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York owe one Atlantan a big “thank-you.”
The Met's current exhibition — "History Refused to Die: Highlights From the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift" — highlights 30 paintings, sculptures, drawings and quilts by self-taught contemporary black artists including Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley and the women quilters of Gee's Bend, Ala. The works were part of a 57-piece gift to the museum from the Atlanta-based nonprofit Souls Grown Deep Foundation, which was founded by longtime Atlanta art historian and collector William Arnett. The exhibition, which opened May 22, ends Sept. 23.
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Arnett, 79, spent nearly 50 years amassing his collection of nearly 13,000 works, of which about 1,100 belong to the foundation.
“I’ve always had a good interest in African-American music — jazz, blues and rock ‘n’ roll — but especially rock ‘n’ roll because the beginning of rock ‘n’ roll was the beginning of my teenage years,” Arnett said. “By the time I was 30, I had been to more than 60 countries and I came to realize every great civilization on Earth that has great music also has great literature, architecture and art — all of those things go together.”
However, while Arnett realized the works of many self-taught Southern African-American artists were hidden gems of American history, the established art community wasn’t interested.
“Many of the white museum people didn’t believe it was possible for uneducated black people to make art that’s as good as Picasso or Matisse, but the interesting thing is that Picasso and Matisse became what they did by looking at African art during their youth in Europe,” he said. “The saddest thing in my life, other than the death of my wife, was that I could not make Atlanta aware of what I was doing and why it was important. Black people in the South have made the best art that’s ever been made on this continent, and it’s as good as anything that’s ever been made in the world, but try telling white people in the South that in the 1960s.”
But, as Bob Dylan wrote, “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”
In 2014, Souls Grown Deep began transferring the majority of works in its care to the permanent collections of museums including the Met, the High Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Ackland Museum of Art in Chapel Hill, N.C.
Souls Grown Deep President Maxwell L. Anderson said Arnett’s collections are important to the American art community because it has traditionally not included artwork by artists from the African-American South.
“They weren’t in the marketplace, and they weren’t visible to museum curators and collections,” he said. “It was only when Bill began to do exhibitions in the 1990s and when the foundation began to make these transfers that it really lit up the switchboard and people began to realize that this was a missing part of American art history.”
As part of the major reinstallation of its collection galleries that is set to debut in October, the High Museum of Art will display paintings and sculptures from its 2017 Souls Grown Deep acquisition, which it describes as "one of the most significant acquisitions by the High's folk and self-taught art department since its establishment in 1994."
ON EXHIBIT
“History Refused to Die: Highlights From the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift”
Through Sept. 23. $25; $17 for seniors; $12 for students; and free for members, patrons, and children younger than 12. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave., New York City. 1-800-662-3397, metmuseum.org.
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