VMFA acquires 34 works of art from Souls Grown Deep Foundation

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has added 34 artworks by African American artists to its collections, it was announced this week. The works, acquired from the Atlanta-based Souls Grown Deep Foundation, are part of a gift/purchase program designed to strengthen the representation of African American artists from the Southern United States in leading art museums across the country.

Since 2014, the Souls Grown Deep Foundation has transferred more than 200 artworks to the permanent collections of leading art museums. With this acquisition, VMFA joins the ranks of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and other institutions who have significantly increased their holdings through this effort.

The 34 works now entering VMFA’s collection include drawings, paintings and assemblage sculptures by Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Ronald Lockett, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Mose Toliver, Jesse Aaron, James “Son Ford” Thomas and Purvis Young.  It also features a significant selection of quilts by the women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, including four generations of Pettways and two generations of Bendolphs, as well as works by Ruth Kennedy, Nell Hall Williams and Nettie Young.

“The Souls Grown Deep Foundation is an extraordinary partner for VMFA given the museum’s strategic-plan initiative to expand and diversify its collection by adding new works by African American artists and artists from the African diaspora who are currently underrepresented in the collection,” said Valerie Cassel Oliver, VMFA’s Sydney and Frances Lewis family curator of modern and contemporary art. “Collectively, these artworks will help to expand our narrative around modern and contemporary art by including works by artists whose extraordinary talents were nurtured through informal educational frameworks such as familial traditions and social engagement rather than conventional art schools or university study.”

VMFA will present the newly acquired works in a special exhibition in its Evans Court Galleries between June 8 and Nov. 17, 2019. The exhibition will be also accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by VMFA.

“This landmark acquisition will provide greater dimension to VMFA’s collection, allowing us to more accurately present the history of contemporary American art,” said VMFA Director Alex Nyerges. “These artworks will help to tell a story that for too long has been overlooked by museums and art historians.”