Review+1

VISUAL ARTS: Famous collection, shaken and stirred Jerry Cullum - For the Journal-Constitution Sunday, November 13, 2005 REVIEW

"A Century of African American Art: Selections from the Paul R. Jones Collection"

Through Dec. 10. $3 admission, $3 parking. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays; noon-4 p.m. Saturdays. Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, 350 Spelman Lane, Atlanta. 404-270-5607.

museum.spelman.edu/museum/current.shtml

Verdict: Beautifully installed exhibit shows different aspects of the well-known Paul R. Jones Collection than seen before.

When Atlanta collector Paul R. Jones presented 1,500 works of African-American art to the University of Delaware in 2001, he fertilized the roots of dozens of studies of art and artists that scholarship had neglected. To complicate matters further, he had acquired new pieces by still-working Atlanta artists whose place in history is, obviously, not yet established.

So when collection curator Amalia Amaki (whose own solo show opens at Spelman in January) assembled the touring exhibition "A Century of African American Art: Selections from the Paul R. Jones Collection," she chose work that revealed a few useful themes. She drew upon a collection that was strongest in work made since 1960, with some of it very recent indeed.

When Spelman College Museum of Fine Art curator Andrea Barnwell narrowed down that show to fit its galleries, she was in some ways picking the best of the best. How she picked and placed them makes this exhibition outstanding.

These 60 works tell a now-familiar story of African-American artists producing distinct types of representational and abstract painting, with photography entering the discussion. Collectively, these works reprise a familiar question: Should African-American artists tell a story unique to their community or emphasize the fact that they are a long-ignored part of world art?

Leaving out most of the collection's best-known work, Barnwell makes us realize just how much good art we don't know about. A stunning diptych by Guyana-born painter Frank Bowling hangs next to a batik by South Carolina artist Leo Twiggs that echoes Bowling's dominant colors and some of his characteristic brush strokes. A work by contemporary Atlanta artist Carl Christian anchors one end of a row of paintings and holds its own in the company of far more famous names.

The arrangements are meant to stir different kinds of discussion. A wall featuring art about musicians offers a fresh take on an almost too-familiar topic. James Van Der Zee's vintage photographs of African-American life hang close to a collage by still-emerging Atlanta artist Cedric Smith, introducing African-American faces into nostalgically romanticized versions of the signage of 60 or 70 years ago.

The mix is stimulating enough to provide new perspectives to students and complex enjoyment to veteran gallery-goers who have seen innumerable survey exhibitions of African-American art. The show gives us Charles White's nearly iconic image of the steel-driving folk legend John Henry. It also gives us striking works by Aimee Miller and Samuel Guilford, Spelman and Atlanta College of Art graduates whose work is insufficiently known even in Atlanta. And there are other surprises that make this show especially illuminating to those who only thought they knew the Jones Collection.