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The Man
Building an art collection is rarely perceived as a radical or political act. But there is a distinct aggressiveness to the acquisitions methodology of Paul R. Jones that suggests just that. From the beginning, he aligned collecting with social and moral responsibility, perceiving it as a necessary, though seldom acknowledged, affirmation of the intrinsic value of African American expression to the totality of American art. He approached collecting as a means to constructing community, recalling how art-related events have historically appealed to African Americans across social and other strata. Moreover, he found art so inviting and alluring that it constituted an effective mechanism for cross-cultural engagement.
Recognized as having one of the top art collections in the country,i Paul Jones was motivated to collect largely because of absence—too few works by African American artists on museum walls, in gallery displays, and at auctions. Though not considerably wealthy, he was sustained in his collecting endeavors by a firm belief in the cultural merit of the creativity of the artists and a respect for the inevitability of change, convinced that the time would come when the accomplishments of African American artists would be sufficiently recognized.
Intrigued by art at a young age, his maturation began in the small mining camp on the outskirts of Bessemer, Alabama, where he grew up. There, under the watchful eyes of parents Ella Reed Phillips Jones and William “Will” Norfleet Jones, and four older stepsisters, Sophronia “Sal” Phillips Sims, Maggie “Moch” Phillips Ray, Louella “Pip” Phillips, and Leah Kate Phillips Watts, he was encouraged to actively explore his surroundings—a very loving, secure, and creative environment. He was groomed in his youth to understand the subtle negotiation and conciliation techniques that established his father as one of the most powerful men in the county. Grounded in a strong work ethic, he was raised to appreciate family, respect friends, and honor the nobility of a humble, simple existence.
Intermittent stays in the north during the school year (where his mother and sisters felt he received a better education) and frequent travel with his father exposed him to different people, situations, and ways of life. Experiences at Alabama State College, Howard University, and Yale University informed his acute awareness of the need to combat social ills based on racial prejudice proactively, strategically, and methodically. Of particular note were his years at Howard, where he encountered leading thinkers across disciplinary lines. He was exposed to such pioneering figures as artist and art historian James A. Porter (1905–1970) who wrote the first history of African American art, Modern Negro Art, in 1943; philosopher Alain Leroy Locke (1886–1954), the leading proponent of the New Negro movement (ca. 1917–1934) who called for “a school of Negro art” in the early 1920s to entail the conscious development of an African American style and aesthetics; and, artists Lois Mailou Jones (1905–1998), James Lesesne Wells (1902–1993), and Alma Woodsey Thomas (1891–1978). Thomas was Howard University’s first fine art graduate (1924) and founding vice president of the Barnett-Aden Gallery in Washington, DC.ii The Barnett-Aden Collection may possibly have played a small yet significant role in the formation of interest or strategies in the collecting of Paul Jones.
Beyond art, Jones had contact with such illustrious Howard professors as political scientist, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Ralph J. Bunche (1904–1971), who was Undersecretary General to the United Nations between 1951 and 1971, and played a key role behind-the-scenes of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march. Other prominent professors that he encountered were sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, author of the 1939 study, The Negro Family in the United States, and John Hope Franklin (b. 1915), one of the nation’s most celebrated historians and author of the literary landmark From Slavery to Freedom (1947). Elsewhere, Jones associated with activists Fred L. Shuttlesworth, Charles Evers, Ralph David Abernathy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other figures on the forefront of the push for equity in America during the civil rights era. Before and after his Howard experiences, Jones profited from rich engagements with extraordinary people in all walks of life and art-related matters. Occasional visits to art venues, interactions with leaders of the art world, and recollections of his mother’s award-winning gardens provided additional wealth of diverse experiences that gradually coalesced to prime Paul Jones for the leadership roles he assumed as a nationally recognized conciliation specialist, successful businessman, and pioneer art collector.
For Jones, art became a conduit of the outward expression of a private passion—to bridge distinct communities through a broad-based understanding of the African American cultural tradition as a part of American life and heritage. To this end, he considered it an imperative that visual expressions from the African American constituency assume their proper, inseparable placement within the study and history of American art. “As a young boy, it was instilled in me to respect education, especially higher education, because I was told it was the place where serious quests for truth took place. It is time for a more complete understanding and treatment of American art that properly weaves in the part played by so many omitted African Americans.”iii While the art holds a special place for him in its own right, he remains most enamored with the tenacity of the people who create it. Inquire about the collection in general and Jones will deliver a ten-minute overview of its content, his buying strategies and why he has entrusted so much of it to the University of Delaware. Ask about a specific work in the collection and he will potentially present an hour-long, detailed discussion of the artist’s life, work, how he came to know him or her, and his view of that person’s relevance to the overall cultural identity of America. As he frequently states: “the sheer essence of art collecting is expression and communication in the company of many nationalities of artists. Its variety of statements, and its diverse forms and techniques attest to its intended catholicity.”iv
The Mission
Collections, as a rule, are identified with the predominant classification of its inclusive objects, emphasizing a descriptive era, style, media, movement, national culture, or geographical region. When the art makers in a collection are racially defined, the ethnic group heading supersedes other descriptions, even the dominant slant in terms of style, theme, period or medium, a habit that tends to perpetuate overgeneralized, superficial treatment (if any) of the work of individual artists and the body of images as a whole. The objectives of the collector of these racially tagged holdings are usually minimized similarly. Little to no consideration is afforded the fact that their selection process is likely driven by cultural directives and data that contribute to both a deeper knowledge of the various modes of ethnic expression and a broader understanding of what American art truly encompasses.
The collector of the African American model, like his or her counterpart with other emphases, chooses specific works of art in the presence of a vast range of alternatives. The selected works reflect a particular spectatorship, appropriation, or acknowledgment on the part of the collector formed by any range of preferences, assumed meanings, personal taste, or the art historical/art critical phenomena referred to as a good eye. Collecting patterns are phenomena worthy of examination in their own right. The two fundamental lurking questions at the heart of the collecting act—Why buy? and How high?—assume drastically different connotations in America when the art in question is produced by African Americans. Such collections are seldom taken seriously as exemplars of American art, and are generally pigeonholed into monolithic interpretations of black experience or oversimplified chronologies. As art historian Richard J. Powell writes: “When black people—be they college students, office workers, politicians, or visual artists—come together as a socially cohesive ideologically kindred group, we assume that the reason for the assembly has to do with race. Why? Because race—and specifically racial and cultural “blackness”—has a peculiar way in Western society of obliterating all existing subtleties, specifics, nuances and complexities, especially in the cultural and social dominion.”v
In building his collection, Paul Jones purposely challenged existing canons of art buying and connoisseurship. He was not unaware of the prevalence of what cultural critic Cornel West refers to as “xenophobic America’s suspicion that black artists do not measure up to the rigorous standards of high art.”vi He simply dismissed it, confident that he and other collectors possessed indisputable evidence to the contrary; adamant in his belief that, eventually, cracks in the illogic would come, at which time appropriate works would gain warranted, if overdue, acceptance.
In “making the careful selections he was compelled to make,” Jones avoided establishing a marginal, panoptical, encyclopedic view of African American art by “basing purchasing decisions on character rather than conduct,” namely, seeking purpose in the specific object instead of buying blindly based solely on the reputation of the artist. In deference to the few obvious black favorites of the art establishment, he remained most intrigued by firsthand discoveries of well-trained, highly skilled artists who were underexhibited, underrepresented, and thus, practically hidden from view. He rejected the historical survey as a collecting approach, and rather than looking through catalog listings as a guide, preferred to trust his own judgment and the work of living artists.
Jones believed the climate of the civil rights era charged, enhanced, and spawned creativity within the African American artist community to an extent unmatched by any previous period in the nation’s history. i Bobbie Leigh and Rebecca Dimling Cochran, “Top 100 Collectors in America,” Art and Antiques 26 (March 2003): 86 ii Alma Thomas became vice president of the Barnett-Aden Gallery in 1943 on the invitation of Howard professor James V. Herring who founded the art department and was her former teacher and mentor. Herring co-founded the gallery with Alonzo J. Aden (the gallery was named in honor of his mother Naomi Barnett Aden) who served as curator of Howard’s gallery for ten years. The Barnett-Aden Gallery was initiated in the northwest Washington, DC, home where Herring and Aden resided. Adolphus Ealey directed the gallery that presented work by artists regardless of race or creed. iii Paul Jones commenting at the opening reception of the exhibition. “Original Acts: Photographs of African American Performers in the Paul R. Jones Collection,” at the University of Delaware, February 2002. iv This comment was in the “Collector’s Note” in the catalog to the exhibition, Master Works Selected from the Paul Jones Collection, Schatten Gallery, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University, in 1984. v “Immeasurably Unbound” in the exhibition catalog African American Art: Twentieth- Century Masterworks, II, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, 1995, 5. vi For a more detailed discussion of West on this topic and related issues see the essay “Horace Pippin’s Challenge to Art Criticism,” in Kymberly N. Pinder, ed., Race-ing Art History: Cultural Readings in Race and Art History (New York: Routledge, 2002).