“Giants” exhibition brings Swizz Beat, Alicia Keys’ art collection to VMFA

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts will open the major exhibition Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys on November 22, 2025. The show will run through March 1, 2026, and highlights the couple’s extensive collection of works by Black artists across the 20th and 21st centuries.

The exhibition features about 130 objects by nearly 40 artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gordon Parks, Kehinde Wiley, Nick Cave, Amy Sherald, Mickalene Thomas, Titus Kaphar, and Nina Chanel Abney. The title Giants refers both to the stature of the artists and the monumental scale of some of the works on view.

Exhibition themes include “On the Shoulders of Giants,” spotlighting elder artists such as Esther Mahlangu and photographers Kwame Brathwaite, Malick Sidibé, and Gordon Parks; “Giant Conversations,” which focuses on societal critique and protest through artists like Hank Willis Thomas, Nick Cave, Jerome Lagarigue, and Henry Taylor; and “Giant Presence,” which brings together large-scale works such as Arthur Jafa’s Big Wheel 1 (2018) and Meleko Mokgosi’s monumental history-infused paintings.

Alongside paintings, photographs, and sculptures, the show will also display elements of the Deans’ early collecting interests, including albums, music equipment, BMX bikes, and related memorabilia.

VMFA Director and CEO Alex Nyerges described the exhibition as “significant and timely,” noting its role in sharing diverse voices and fostering conversations rooted in Richmond’s own African American history. Valerie Cassel Oliver, VMFA’s Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, serves as coordinating curator for the Richmond presentation.

Tickets are already available to museum members and go on sale to the public September 8, 2025. Prices are $12 for adults, $10 for seniors, and $8 for youth ages 7–17 and college students with ID. Admission is free for VMFA members, children under 6, Museums for All participants ($2 with EBT), and active-duty military families through Blue Star Museums.

An exhibition catalogue, published by Phaidon, accompanies the show and includes interviews with artists as well as a conversation between the Deans and curator Kimberli Gant.

Giants is organized by the Brooklyn Museum and presented at VMFA with local support from the Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Exhibition Endowment, the Julia Louise Reynolds Fund, and other sponsors.

For more information about Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, visit the museum’s website here.