Fort Worth's African American Museum and Cultural Center has filled its walls a second time, this time with art borrowed from the homes of North Texas collectors.
"These Walls Speak" brings together 55 paintings, sculptures and other works covering nine decades of Black art, lent by more than 20 collectors from around the region, the Fort Worth Report reported Friday. The museum, at 3100 E. Rosedale St., opened in mid-June, and this is its second exhibition. It runs through Jan. 17.
The lenders include Sundance Square owners Sasha and Edward P. Bass, Tarrant Regional Water District President Leah King and City Council member Deborah Peoples. Fort Worth attorney Renee Higginbotham Brooks, who has collected Black art for decades, contributed four paintings, by John Biggers, Elizabeth Catlett, Frank Frazier and Jacob Lawrence.
Other artists in the show include Evita Tezeno of Dallas, Fort Worth painter Sedrick Huckaby and Kehinde Wiley, best known for President Barack Obama's official portrait.
Curators Andrew Walker and Arlene Barnett picked the pieces after visiting the collections in people's homes, according to the Report. Walker, the museum's consulting art director, led the Amon Carter Museum of American Art for 14 years before that.
Museum board President John L. Barnett Jr. told the Report the idea is to show how many people in the area are collecting African American art, and to encourage others to start. Walker described the lenders as families acting with a "social purpose" through what they collect.
