THE NEW YORK TIMES
Show Us Your Walls
By Ted Loos
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| Gary and Denise Gardner in their home with Elizabeth Catlett’s sculpture “Mother and Child,” left, and Charles White’s 1950 graphite drawing “Untitled.”Credit: Catlett Mora Family Trust/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, (Catlett sculpture); Photograph by Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times |
CHICAGO---The collectors Denise and Gary Gardner are very public in their support of “Charles White: A Retrospective,” an exhibition now at the Art Institute of Chicago that will travel to the Museum of Modern of Art in the fall. They are listed as “lead individual sponsors.” More privately, the Gardners own a couple of works by White. The Gardners display more than 100 artworks at home — a few are out on loan — and many of them hang in a large basement gallery they retrofitted as their collection grew. Their focus is squarely on African-American artists, including Carrie Mae Weems, Sam Gilliam, Ed Clark, Amy Sherald, Elizabeth Catlett (who was once married to White) and Nick Cave. [
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| In the Gardners’s basement gallery space, from left, Kerry James Marshall’s “Black Beauty (Tyla),” 2012 and a partial view of Carrie Mae Weems’s, “Untitled (Colored People Grid),” 2009-2010. Credit Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times |
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| From left, “DaDaDAhlia” (2005-2008), by Candida Alvarez; seen from adjoining room, “Positive Obsession” (2013), by Bethany Collins; “RGBG” (2016), by Robin Rhode; “Kanku” (2013), by Aimé Mpané; and “Hoodoo” (2014), by Sanford Biggers. Credit Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times |
