AFA 22nd Anniversary

2022 Antiques & Fine Art 65 Fig. 3: Robert Colescott (1925–2009), George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page from an American History Textbook, 1975. Acrylic on canvas, 78½ x 98¼ inches. Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles (2021.45.1). © 2021 The Robert H. Colescott Separate Property Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. A number of institutions sold pieces from their permanent collections in order to make up for a lack of donations and revenues resulting from the absence of visitors. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for instance, announced plans to sell 219 prints and photographs to help plug a $150 million revenue shortfall resulting from the pandemic, joining the Brooklyn Museum and the Newark Museum of Art, which also identified objects for sale. That being said, collectors continue to show an interest in donating cash and objects to museums, and institutions still manage to make purchases. Recognizing the need to fill in some holes in the history of photography, New York psychotherapist Helen Kornblum donated 100 photographs by seventy-six women artists, including Lola Álvarez Bravo, Claude Cahun, Gertrud Arndt, Catherine Opie, Tatiana Parcero (Fig. 1) , and Carrie Mae Weems to the Museum of Modern Art . Since 2014, Kornblum has been a member of the Modern’s photography committee, which undoubtedly gave her insight into what the story of women photographers lacked. Clément Chéroux, chief curator of the museum’s department of photography, stated that “at a time when it is more important than ever to affirm parity, equity, and diversity of voices, Helen Kornblum’s donation is a welcome addition to MoMA’s photography collection.” Another hole in the collecting of art is the contribution of African- American artists, who Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida, San Francisco-based collectors of African and African-American abstract art, have helped to fill with their donation to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art of thirty-one paintings, sculptures and drawings by twenty Black American artists, including pieces by Elizabeth Catlett (Fig. 2), Beauford Delaney, Norman Lewis, and Richard Mayhew. SFMOMA director Neal Benezra called the gift “generous and transformative,” crediting “Pamela and Fred’s more than two decades of outstanding collecting and advocacy for Black artists.” In a similar vein, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, which is expected to open in 2023, purchased Robert Colescott’s 1975 painting George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page from an American History Textbook (Fig. 3), at a Sotheby’s auction in New York last May. The painting is grand in scale,