Text and photographs by Emily Burkhart
February 23, 2023
Roederick Vines (American, b. 1949), Thankful, 2008. Mixed media.
“ I learned to accept the fact that it [the image] was whatever it was,
even if there were no specific words to define it.”
-Paul R. Jones
A new exhibition at the Flint Institute of Arts entitled “Ways of Seeing: The Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at The University of Alabama” features art from the private collection of the late philanthropist and public servant Paul Raymond Jones (1928-2010). The exhibition opened January 29th and runs through April 23rd. Art & Antiques magazine called Jones “one of the top art collectors in the country.” During his lifetime, he acquired over two thousand works by more than 600 twentieth-century African American artists, building, as the FIA states, “one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of 20th century African American art in the world.” In 2008, two years prior to his death, Jones donated his collection to the University of Alabama.
Curated by the FIA’s Rachel Holstege, the exhibition consists of a cross section of Jones’ collection–paintings, works on paper, mixed media, assemblage sculpture and photography from the 1930s to the early 2000s. In an interview with Mid-Michigan Now, Holstege emphasized the importance of “showing the breadth and diversity of African American art to the public.” Among the many artists in the exhibition are Roederick Vines, Valerie Maynard, Sheila Pree Bright, Michael Ellison, Gwendolyn Knight, John Riddle, Felicia Grant Preston, and Duhirwe Rushemeza. The usual museum labels describing the artworks are supplemented throughout the exhibition by quotes from Jones himself along with explanatory panels discussing subject, style, and the medium used and a panel with recommendations for how to start one’s own art collection.
The Art
Sheila Pree Bright (American, b. 1967), Paul R. Jones, 2010. Chromogenic print.
The large introductory placard at the exhibition’s entrance features the photographer Sheila Pree Bright’s 2010 portrait of Jones alongside the exhibition’s title. Her image indeed presents a way of seeing Jones himself–an African American man who had served his country wearing the flag. The photograph alone also stands by itself in the exhibition, its museum label noting that this portrait was likely the last taken of Jones before he passed away later that year. The label also adds that the photo was included in the exhibition because Bright (American, b. 1967) was an artist collected both “broadly and deeply” by Jones.
Roederick Vines (American, b. 1949), Thankful, 2008. Mixed media.
The works Jones collected speak to the African American experience and the visual representation of African Americans in art. Among the pieces displayed, Thankful (2008) by Roederick Vines is a larger than life-size mixed media painting of a young African American man in profile gazing straight ahead as objects seem to magically fall into his hand from above or arc from his hand up into the air. Of his work, Vines said: “My drawings and paintings are aesthetically executed, but when necessary, they are designed to shake up the soul, to make the viewer laugh or cry, or to just contemplate in wonder.” Indeed, the young man in Thankful does make one pause in wonder at what he is doing and thinking and the meaning of the title.
Valerie Maynard’s (1937-2022) Get Me Another Heart This One’s Been Broken Many Times (2000) is a monochromatic work iteratively depicting a nude woman with another figure clutched against her chest. Her body appears to be riddled with literal keys and her skull pierced by nails, a symbolism of repeated opening and closing and suffering.
Valerie Maynard (American, 1937-2022), Get Me Another Heart This One’s Been Broken Many Times, 2000. Ink on paper.
Outside In (1986) by Michael Ellison (1952-2001) depicts two figures seated outdoors. Executed in a palette of purple, brown, pink, black and gray, the woman in the picture looks toward houses and stores across a disconcerting white space. The boy beside her meets the viewer’s gaze. The museum label notes that Ellison primarily depicted people in social settings like churches, bars, and other gathering places. The meaning of this work remains obscure but somehow melancholy because we do not know how or why they are situated the way they are.
Michael Ellison (American, 1952-2001), Outside In, 1986. Ink on paper.
Gwendolyn Knight (1913-2005) was involved in the Harlem Renaissance and the Works Progress Administration’s mural project. Her silkscreen print New Orleans (2002) is an ambiguous piece much like Outside In. A thin, featureless woman in a high-necked red dress passes by the entrance to a building. On her other side, a large, stocky palm with an enormous red flower or fruit emerging from its fronds looks to devour the woman. It nearly bursts out of the frame, dwarfing the woman and obscuring what might be lettering that could identify this street scene.
Gwendolyn Knight (American, 1913-2005), New Orleans, 2002. Screenprint on paper.
John Riddle’s (1933-2002) collaged painting Untitled (Club Man in Tuxedo,1994) we are told was inspired by the August 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles personally witnessed by Riddle. While at first glance the painting seems innocuous, on closer inspection it is far more sinister. At the center, an elegant Black man in a tuxedo carries a magazine and cigarette but surrounding him are unsettling scenes of imprisonment, death, and torture featuring African Americans. Among these scenes, a silhouetted figure stands behind bars, a human form hangs from a noose as someone else holds a paper, a woman dances naked on a table, while in another scene, another tuxedo-clad Black man in tophat seems to have followed a person from a building. The entire effect of these images is unnerving.
John Riddle (American, 1933-2002), Untitled (Club Man in Tuxedo), 1994. Mixed media on board.
The title of Felicia Grant Preston’s (American, b. 1953) abstract painting Zora’s Fire #11 (1997) suggests an homage to the Harlem Renaissance author and filmmaker Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) whose writing “focused on contemporary issues in the African American community and her struggles as an African American woman.” In her lifetime, Hurston published more than fifty short stories, plays, and essays about deeply felt racial experience. Likewise, Zora’s Fire positively smolders.
Felicia Grant Preston (American, b. 1953), Zora’s Fire # 11, 1997. Acrylic on polyfoam.
Lastly, Duhirwe Rushemeza’s linocut A Votre Choix (2005), French for “your choice,” is a somber autobiographical work. After living abroad, Rushemeza (American, b. Rwanda, 1977) and her family returned to her country of birth in 1994 after the genocide that claimed over 800,000 lives and left many thousands of children orphaned and homeless.The print is from a series Rushemeza created depicting the children she saw wandering the streets. Her work chronicles their emotional trials but also emphasizes healing and strength, portraying them not just as victims of war, but also as survivors–votre choix, as the title advises.
Duhirwe Rushemeza (American, b. Rwanda, 1977), A Votre Choix (Your Choice), 2005. Linocut on paper.
About Paul R. Jones (1928-2010)
“Accomplishments have no color. I decided
to focus on [African American] artists–to
give their artwork exposure and, hopefully,
to influence in a positive way their futures.”
-Paul R. Jones
The man who collected these works, Paul Raymond Jones, was born June 1, 1928, to Will and Ella Jones near Bessemer, Alabama in Muscoda, a mining camp owned by the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co. He had four older half-sisters and one half-brother from his parents’ previous marriages. He was sent to New York City to live with his half-brother in the Bronx following the 1939 World’s Fair because his mother thought the schools better there. After several years, he returned to Bessemer to finish high school. Following graduation, Jones received a scholarship to attend Alabama State University, later transferring to Howard University in Washington, D.C.
His application to the University of Alabama Law School, though initially welcomed, was later officially discouraged because of his race. He then stayed on at Howard for a year of post-graduate work. As funds ran low, he returned home in 1951.
Back in Alabama, Jones began working for civil rights and social justice causes at a series of non-profits and governmental agencies, eventually including the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development where he earned a national reputation for his work. He also later served as deputy director of the Peace Corps in Thailand.
The Collection
“I knew that if I was really going to be serious
about collecting I needed to focus, I needed to
look around and see where the gaps were.”
-Paul R. Jones
Jones began collecting art in the 1960s when he purchased three small prints by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Marc Chagall, and Edgar Degas. He then began immersing himself in the art world and noted the underrepresentation of African American artists in museums, galleries, and in the telling of the history of American art. Jones decided to make it his mission to address the cracks in the institutional foundations of the so-called “white cube” through collecting works by living African American artists. He wanted to give them the support and representation they deserved and to influence other art collectors to do the same.
Jones never intended to keep the art for himself; rather, he used the collection to educate and inspire others. In addition to his very generous 2008 bequest to the University of Alabama, Jones had previously gifted several hundred works to the art history department at the University of Delaware in 2001 to help “provide an avenue to learn about African American art as part of American art history,” he stated.
Paul R. Jones died at his home in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2010 at age 82.
“Ways of Seeing: The Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at the University of Alabama” runs through April 23, 2023, at the Flint Institute of Arts. To learn more about African American artists and their art, I encourage you to visit the exhibit. You will not be disappointed.
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