Art pieces owned by Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys are now on display at “Giants,” a new exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
The exhibit features nearly 100 pieces by Black artists and traveled from Brooklyn and Atlanta to its temporary home in Minneapolis.
Beatz and Keys are major art collectors, who have spent a better part of a decade building the collection from artists from around the world.
Pieces include a diptych by artist Amy Sherald, who liked capture the everyday movements and life of Black people “doing stuff,” explained Casey Riley, Chair of Global Contemporary Art at MIA.
Another piece is a panoramic piece by Meleko Mokgosi, an artist of Botswanan descent who wanted to capture the evolution of democracy in Botswana and the weight of colonialism, and how it continues to “reverberate and shape society,” Riley said.
“I really hope that as visitors walk through, their curiosity is sparked and they want to look closer and ask questions about what’s happening in each of these vignettes,” said Riley.
The exhibit also features an assemblage of paintings by artist Barkley Hendricks, who would travel to Jamaica with his wife over the course of many years. The paintings capture “the beauty of the landscape,” Riley said.
The collection is “really about excellence,” Riley said. “And at a time where we’re really yearning for connection and joy and maybe something to uplift our spirits, seeing the extraordinary artistic output that is exhibited in this show is really important for people.”
