Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz are American music royalty, among the most recognized performers of their day. They have now gathered major artworks from the African-American community and the Black diaspora for a breakthrough exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in New York.
The show is titled “Giants” not only because of the stature of the works on display, but also because “we want you to see the giants on whose shoulders we stand,” explains Keys, the mastermind behind Grammy-winning “Fallin'” and “Empire State of Mind,” which also earned her Recording Academy recognition alongside collaborator Jay-Z.
New York cultural star Jean-Michel Basquiat, photographer Malik Sidibe, and Gordon Parks, who chronicled segregation and the civil rights struggle in the United States, are prominent figures.
Living artists are also on display, including Kehinde Wiley, who is known for his portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as for reworking conventional Western artistic traditions with African subjects.
Botswanan transplant to the United States Meleko Mokgosi’s lifelike fresco “Bread, Butter, and Power,” which investigates the relationship between power and gender on the African continent, is also featured in “Giants.”
Keys and Swizz Beatz have included images of the “Black is Beautiful” movement recorded by Kwame Brathwaite, who died last year, as well as work by Jamel Shabazz, who documented the evolution of hip-hop in New York.
Swizz Beatz, an accomplished DJ and producer from the Bronx, rose to prominence before the age of 20, helping to begin rapper DMX’s career.
‘We doubled down’
Swizz Beatz is credited with promoting new Black artists who have gained prominence in recent decades.
Among the other artists on display is Ernie Barnes, an American football hero and painter whose acrylic on canvas “Sugar Shack” featured on Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You” and sold for a staggering $15.2 million at auction in 2022, ten times its estimate.
“We represent artists from all around the world. Swizz Beatz stated in a promotional video, “The reason we doubled down on artists of color, black and brown, is because our own community wasn’t collecting these giants.”
The show exemplifies how prestigious museums are pursuing a younger, more diversified audience.
“In art history, there are still narratives that are focused on Eurocentric histories,” said Kimberli Gant, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum. “Most museums are dealing with the fact that this has heavily influenced how they have collected over generations, if not centuries.
“They’re trying to shift that…” Through the shows, they present the artworks they are acquiring, demonstrating that the world is far more complex. “It’s much messier.”
When “Giants” opens to the public on Saturday, the Brooklyn Museum’s comprehensive exhibition about filmmaker Spike Lee and the cross-pollination of his work with that of other Black creatives will come to a close.