Sale 2528 - African-American Fine Art, January 30, 2020

While the inclusion of well-established artists like Chicagoans Margaret Burroughs and Ralph Arnold is not surprising, the range of contemporary artists from across the country, particularly from the South, is a revelation: several Southern artists like Shirley Bolton, G. Caliman Coxe, and Leo Twiggs stand out. The collection includes significant abstract painters, like Thomas Sills and Kenneth Victor Young, while embracing politically and socially conscious artists: Sherman Beck and Omar Lama of AfriCOBRA in Chicago, and Dindga McCannon of the Weusi Artist Collective in New York. Their artist collectives aimed to promote an Afro- centric point of view that was accessible to wider audiences and were part of the larger national Black Arts Movement. In addition, the collection includes a wide-ranging group of multimedia artists, like Marie Johnson Calloway, Ben Jones, and Jim Smoote, who defy traditional categories and materials with collage and assemblage while investigating the African-American experience. We are honored to present this auction catalogue and exhibition of a historic collection. It is a document of both the art and artists in their holdings, and the first and only time the collection will be on view outside of the Johnson Publishing Company offices. At the time of the iconic building’s closing, two exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem included artistic responses: Stray Light , David Hartt’s 2013 photographic essay on the building’s 1970s decor and Speaking of People: Ebony, Jet and Contemporary Art , a 2014 group show of artists, including Ellen Gallagher, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas and Hank Willis Thomas, who reference Ebony and Jet imagery in their work. Recently, Theaster Gates and his Rebuild Foundation in Chicago have made preserving the cultural history of the Johnson Publishing Company part of their art practice. With the exhibitions A Johnson Publishing Story at the Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago, in 2018, and Assembly Hall (which included the Thomas Sills and Francis Sprout paintings) at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, from 2019 to 2020, Gates not only worked with the company archives, but preserved many artworks, objects and furnishings, repurposing their history and cultural value within his installations.