Stephen Wicks on Joseph and Beauford Delaney

Today we talk with Curator Stephen Wicks about two artistic brothers who were born in Knoxville -- Joseph and Beauford Delaney.  We learn about their roots in Tennessee, their national and international careers, and how a thoughtful collaboration of Knoxville's art patrons, historians, archivists and institutions made Knoxville a center for their work. We hope it inspires you to visit the Knoxville Museum of Art and see these master works.

Transcript

Sarah Campbell Drury 0:07

Welcome to another Made in Tennessee podcast, the program that delves into the stories behind collectible art and antiques from the state of Tennessee, the makers who brought them to life in the cultural and historical context that shaped their creation. I'm Sarah Campbell Drury, here along with Celia Walker. And today we are excited to be talking with Stephen Wicks, the Barbara W. and Bernard E. Bernstein curator at the Knoxville Museum of Art. Stephen is going to speak with us about two 20th century artists who got their origins in East Tennessee. Welcome, Stephen.

Stephen Wicks 0:39

Yeah, thank you for having me here.

Celia Walker 0:40

That's right, Sarah. It's such a pleasure to be here with you, Stephen. After more than 25 years as the lead on the KMA's curatorial department, you have a deep understanding of American art and specialized expertise in the art of Tennessee. And the exhibitions you've curated on individuals like Bessie Harvey and Beauford Delaney, as well as comprehensive surveys of glass and printmaking and the recent exhibition of the last 100 years of visual arts in East Tennessee have provided important new scholarship for those of us who find inspiration in the work associated with our state. Will you tell us a little bit about the Knoxville Museum of Art and your role there?

Stephen Wicks 1:19

The Knoxville Museum of Art started out as a community dream. A lot of museums start with a family's wealth and collection to jumpstart. The KMA didn't have that. The KMA was all about this amazing building that was designed by a world-renowned architect. And I think the feeling was if the building gets built, surely the money and the collection will follow. And it didn't really work out that way. We became a museum that was interested in blockbuster exhibitions, that those might put us on the map. And then we had a director come along, David Butler, who had the brilliant idea that we needed to plant our flag in local soil artistically and find out who were the brilliant artists connected to our area. And so, in the course of trying to put together a collection and an exhibition program that were designed around East Tennessee's art historical legacy, we came across some artists that we thought were, again, worthy of attention. We already had some great paintings by Joseph Delaney, but we had nothing by the world-renowned Beauford Delaney. And so this became our quest to fill in the holes art historically with great works of art that would have audiences wanting to learn more about these legacies.

Sarah Campbell Drury 2:51

And so you and David Butler really have been instrumental in helping the KMA build the world's largest and most comprehensive public collection of Beauford Delaney's art, which is what we want to talk about today. And also Joseph Delaney, too. Can you tell us a little bit more about these brothers?

Stephen Wicks 3:08

Well, one of the things that was uh interesting to me was how different they were. You know, the research I've done into their character, their artistic temperaments. What was also a really dramatic contrast is the fact that because Joseph Delaney came back to Knoxville from New York in 1986 to be the University of Tennessee's first artist in residence, we were able to acquire, the KMA was able to acquire great examples of his work. He donated them for the most part to the KMA. We had nothing by Beauford. And so one of the challenges became how do we go about adding great works by Joseph to the collection to flesh out his legacy, but how do we get anything by Beauford? And what ended up working out so beautifully was we developed a partnership with the estate of Beauford Delaney. And the estate administrator, Derek Sprattley, had been so committed to this long game of trying to make sure that the estate was handled with the utmost care and that every opportunity was taken advantage of to put Beauford on the map, not just locally, but um internationally. And so little by little there was this growing interest in let's get something of Beauford's into the KMA's galleries. And so at first there were paintings on loan from the estate, and then eventually, uh, thanks to the support of our collectors group, we were able to raise enough money to make some purchases of Beauford Delaney's art from his estate. And so over the years, we've been able to add new pieces with strategic purchases, and now we have something like 60 plus works of art. And now we have museums around the country approaching us about lending our Beauford Delaney paintings and Joseph Delaney paintings for their major exhibitions. And it's a dream come true, but it did not happen overnight. We're talking about 20, 25 years of work, of slow progress.

Celia Walker 5:25

Museum visitors may not understand the long-range curatorial planning that goes into creating a collection like the KMAs. It's uh it's a labor of love, and uh and I congratulate you on creating such an amazing collection.

Stephen Wicks 5:40

Well, what was uh the biggest challenge is that we had no designated acquisitions funds to start out with. Most museums have got a pile of money that they can use to take advantage of great opportunities, art opportunities that come up at auction or come up in a gallery somewhere. Um we had to depend for years on donated works, things that uh were offered to us, rather than us being proactive and targeting things that we knew would fill a specific void in our collection. And so eventually, with our collectors group support, um, we've been able to make targeted purchases. And we've also, in the last what, 15 years or so, have finally gotten some acquisitions funds earmarked so that now when key things do come up at auction, if they fill a significant void in our collection, we can go after them.

Sarah Campbell Drury 6:38

Can we talk for a minute about just about Beauford and Joseph and and what their life might have been like growing up here in Knoxville when they were young? Because they, you know, they spent a lot of time here when they were younger, but then when they got older, they they left. Tell us about that.

Stephen Wicks 6:54

Well, they were born into a remarkable family that um resided in East Knoxville, not too far from where the museum is, and it was a family filled with talent and creativity. Joseph and Beauford, their mother was an expert seamstress. Uh, she encouraged the boys' creativity. And basically, Knoxville was a had a thriving art scene in the 1910s, 1920s when the Delaney brothers would have been in their youth. Um, there were arts groups like the Nicholson Art League. There were major cultural expositions that Knoxville was hosting called the Appalachian Expositions. Uh, in 1913, the name was changed to the National Conservation Exposition. But basically, these huge cultural gatherings and fairs that happened in East Knoxville, and they attracted uh artists, art lovers from all over the world, and there were local artists and a local arts group that were in charge of an art exhibition within the larger cultural fair. And so for Joe and Beauford and others, young, aspiring artists, they had a chance to see some of the nation's best art under one roof. There was a fine arts building that had some really ambitious displays by some of the best contemporary artists in the country. What was interesting is that Catherine Wiley, Lloyd Branson, who are two of Knoxville's uh key early artists and arts organizers, they helped put these shows together. They helped get the loans secured and basically allowed them to showcase their work along with their peers from other parts of the country. And I think that Branson and Wiley were interested in being able to show audiences there is work being made here in Knoxville that's just as worthy as art being made by other masters in other parts of the country. And so it was really an advertisement for the level of art in East Tennessee. And so Joe and Beauford had a chance to potentially visit those fairs and those expositions. We don't know that they were actually there, but it would have been an opportunity for them.

Celia Walker 9:21

We see this pattern in in Nashville as well, that um around this early part of the 20th century, there's a a need for community leaders, artists who feel this passion for the work to bring their group together and find ways to bring in work that they wouldn't normally get to see. And as you said, exhibit alongside uh folks who are working in other parts of the country. So it's it's an interesting pattern. It requires those key leaders.

Stephen Wicks 9:51

Yes. And uh Lloyd Branson was a key leader who was a mentor to Beauford Delaney, and so that was a critical thing. There was an educator named Charles Kansler, African-American educator in Knoxville, who knew Branson. And Kansler, I guess, noticed that he was this young man who was doing sketches. He he somehow became aware of Beauford's artistic inclinations and talent. And so he mentions uh to Branson about this young man, and it looks as if Delaney is able to get some kind of a studio position with Branson, where he learns how an artist actually put together a studio and a studio practice. And um I'm not sure whether Joe had any opportunities to be part of that, but as far as I know, it was just Beauford that was under Branson's tutelage. And so this becomes a critical early uh part of Beauford's uh education that it happens here in Knoxville and it prepares him for life in bigger, greener artistic pastures to come.

Sarah Campbell Drury 11:09

So I I think of Lloyd Branson's work and I think of Beauford Delaney's work, and I don't see a lot of similarities there, you know, just stylistically.

Stephen Wicks 11:18

Do you? Well, it's interesting. Um on the surface, I would say you're absolutely right. But if you look carefully at some of Branson's later work, which I think was influenced by Catherine Wiley, who was an impressionist, some of Branson's later paintings have a looseness in terms of the paint application and a vibrancy in terms of the color choices. Uh, there is a painting in our collection, the KMA's collection, called Going Home at Dusk by Lloyd Branson. And it looks straight out of Monet's playbook in terms of uh this sun and the horizon and broken color and uh thick, thickly encrusted color. And the earliest surviving painting of Beauford Delaney's the only one that I'm aware of that he made before he left Knoxville, is a scene very similar to this going home at dusk. There is a sun on the horizon, there is all this attention being paid to atmospheric effects. And so I don't know whether Delaney saw Branson creating this painting and he worked on his own similar version, or whether Delaney was doing this landscape, and the elder Branson said, Hey, that's pretty good, and let me try my hand at that. I just know that these two paintings are remarkably similar and they were done around the same time. Delaney's is dated 1922, and going home at dusk, I want to say, is 1920.

Sarah Campbell Drury 13:00

And so after at what at what point then did Beauford Delaney leave Knoxville? And where did he go?

Stephen Wicks 13:07

He left in in 1923, headed to Boston for additional art education, and then after spending several years there, enjoying Boston's museums and learning about um a whole broader cast of art characters, he then eventually settles in New York City in 1929 and is um living in different parts of the city. He's doing his best to try to connect with the art world there. And um his brother Joe meets him there after Joe roamed around the country for a while. He settles in New York City as well. The two of them um enter into New York's uh artistic milieu at a really critical time. The the Harlem Renaissance. There's just so much happening in the visual arts and with music, uh uh literature. It's just a great time to be in a great place.

Sarah Campbell Drury 14:09

And his story didn't have the happiest of endings, did it?

Stephen Wicks 14:12

Beauford's.

Sarah Campbell Drury 14:13

Beauford's well.

Stephen Wicks 14:14

No, it didn't. Um Joe and Beauford were were very different artists, um, very different people. Um Beauford was gay, Beauford was uh artistically very adventurous. Beauford also battled uh inner voices, destructive inner voices throughout his life that that tore him down. Some people linked them back to the Red Summer in Knoxville, where there was shooting happening not too far from Branson Studio and the theories that it traumatized a young Beauford on his way to or from the studio. Um Joseph was a loner. He was interested in the American scene and life in the big city. In particular. He loved doing academic figure drawing, particularly of women. And so the two had very separate interests. Uh Joe was much more looking at the American scene. Beauford was interested in great modernists whose work he saw in museums in New York as well as earlier in Boston. And so they were on very different paths. Um I think there was a quiet competitiveness going on between the two of them. And in some cases, they overlapped socially, but in for the most part, they they inhabited different artistic circles and different social circles than one another. And ultimately, getting back to your question, Sarah, is that um Beauford's illness, the voices get the better of him by the 1970s, and he's really pretty much not able to maintain his studio practice. And he comes becomes dependent on the support and love of his social circle, primarily James Baldwin, but there are many others that were there supporting Beauford and helping him uh keep his daily affairs together, uh, keep canvases and paints on supply in his studio, and do as much as they could to help him continue, because for many that knew Beauford, they got the sense that his artistic practice was really the main thing keeping him from falling apart psychologically. And so it was critical for him to be able to continue to work as much as possible.

Celia Walker 16:49

And is that why we have works, so many works by Beauford today, because this group supported him? So often when artists become ill or incapacitated, their work gets lost. And yet we still have really interesting pieces around by these artists.

Stephen Wicks 17:07

I I think that for Beauford, the critical thing was that um for a long time he did have the strength to maintain his studio practice and to um have a set of goals and ideas driving what he did. Like, for instance, there were years in the 1960s where his best friend James Baldwin is all over the world in demand as a speaker and a leader of the civil rights movement. And Beauford is following him as best he can from Paris, where he'd moved after living in New York for many years. Um Baldwin would visit him in Paris, and there was a time where he visited Beauford in his inner city Paris studio, and he finds that Beauford is really out of sorts, hit a really dark patch psychologically. And Baldwin ends up helping to move Beauford away from inner city Paris to this beautiful suburb. And it's the first time in Beauford's career that he has not been in the city with you know his artistic practice based there. He's now out where he's got uh beautiful gardens and trees all around him. And so it brings out a different phase in his work. Instead of him being in the city and doing a lot of city scenes and um capturing urban life, he's now surrounded by nature. He doesn't have as many people visiting him. He becomes in this um, I guess, more uh withdrawn, almost monk-like existence, where he's looking out this big window in his studio and he sees changing light and cloud formations and weather patterns and trees and plants moving in response to all these natural forces. And it brings out a whole new phase in his work where he's making these lyrical abstractions using all kinds of colors and uh different types of brush patterns, and they become atmospheric, they become at the same time almost like these internalized uh scenes of his inner world. And Baldwin goes there and famously writes this uh short essay in response to what he sees, and he calls these paintings that he does in this suburban environment Beauford's Metamorphosis into Freedom. And it's where Baldwin sees these paintings almost as if they were portals that Beauford used to have access to this exalted place, this exalted artistic territory that Beauford believed in, and he needed it to keep his world in balance.

Sarah Campbell Drury 20:11

You know, one of the limitations of this format is that we we can't show pictures of this work, but we are going to put some images on our Facebook page so that um listeners can see a little bit about what we're talking about. And of course, you know, the vivid yellows that he used and and some of these colors that just jump off the canvas are really delightful to observe.

Stephen Wicks 20:35

One of the things that I try to point out to people is Beauford is known for his yellow paintings. Um, but if you look at them carefully, the yellow is actually built of dozens of colors. There, there's a vibrant yellow painting that we, the KMA owns, that's been included in major exhibitions. And if you look at it closely, there are greens and rust colors and whites that all are part of making this yellow look as vibrant as it does. If it were just a singular yellow, I think Beauford's feeling would be that it would have less life than it's made up of all these other colors and somehow reaches us as a yellow that is filled with light and movement. There's a story about Beauford in color that he came home from New York with his brother Joseph in the 1930s, I think it was 1933, and his mother knew that they were coming. She ended up producing for Beauford this red bedspread, and evidently the color excited him so much that he had a hard time sleeping. So clearly he had artistic antenna that uh were very sensitive and were very tuned in to brilliant color. Whereas Joe's palette was often very earthy. And uh gritty. He he would capture these bar scenes where, and like we have a painting in our collection called Wild Joke, and it's all these uh people whose heads are right beside one another. They're there laying almost on each other at the bar, and someone has told a joke, and so now all these faces are just filled with this laughter, and it's this reaction that moves from one person to the other in this very crowded scene, but it's very dark, very earthy in terms of its tonality.

Sarah Campbell Drury 22:34

Wow. So you really need to see them.

Stephen Wicks 22:37

Exactly. And the brushwork is something that I like to point out. Um, you know, there are a lot of times where you look at a painting and it looks like this just seamless layer of another reality that someone has captured using paints and brushes. With Beauford and Joseph, even though their paintings are so different from one another, they're both interested in showing you the tracks of their decision making, showing where they've come as they've moved through this composition. And in many cases, they leave these openings where you're able to peer into the earliest decisions that they made in building the painting up to the surface. Some people say, well, this painting looks unfinished. No, it was finished because the artist, in Joseph's case, donated it to us. So clearly, if he's donating a painting to the museum, he thinks it's finished. But he's showing you the underdrawing, the underlayers, the bare canvas, and it almost gives the painting an immediacy, like the artist has just walked out of the studio and is about to come back in. It keeps the composition more lively, I think, the way that they have done it gone about it.

Celia Walker 23:54

For me, it's a kind of a movement. It feels like movement to me because I I think about the steps. So the KMA has a wonderful collection. Where else can we see works by these two brothers?

Stephen Wicks 24:12

In terms of Joseph's work, it's it's harder to find it in in collections, museum collections, but I just gave a talk at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and they had just acquired a wonderful canvas. It's a portrait of a woman by Joseph Delaney. And it was on View, adjacent to a painting of Beauford Delaney. So I was really thrilled to see that because they they own actually one of the best Beauford Delaney paintings I've ever seen. It's a portrait of Marian Anderson from 1965, and it shows Marian Anderson this glowing angelic figure in the center of this large canvas that is brilliant shades of yellow. It's as if she's just uh in this um exalted place that Delaney remembers, and it's based on uh a time when Delaney and Baldwin were there watching her perform. And Beauford's remembering this performance years later. But uh the painting by Joseph in their collection was also outstanding. Uh, if you want to find other great examples of Joseph's work, the Ewing Gallery at the University of Tennessee has what I think must be the world's largest collection of Joseph's work. They've got sketchbooks, they've got paintings from every era. Uh I think most of them are in storage, but they also lend generously. They've loaned to the KMA great works by Joseph. One of the things that I like to point out with Joseph, too, is that in many ways he was remembered as a parade painter. And there's a quote from Joseph where he talks about his love for the parade because it was one moment where people from all different backgrounds and classes and races came together in a public place around a central shared idea or celebration. And so that was something that meant a lot to him.

Celia Walker 26:17

And then there are archives of the brothers as well, right?

Stephen Wicks 26:22

Right. But in terms of uh collections of Beauford's art, uh Rosenfeld Gallery in New York City has got a treasure trove. They've represented his e state for years. There are in every major museum in the country by now, I think, has got a Beauford Delaney painting, the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, uh, the Cleveland Museum of Art. It just goes on and on. They don't have lots of depth, but most of the museums have got one great painting. And my hope is that Joseph's work will get increased recognition as years go by. The Phillips Collection in Washington is about to do a show, I think in 2027, devoted to Beauford Delaney, putting him in the context of his heroes, his mentors, Georgia O'Keefe, Stuart Davis, Monet, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso. There'll be paintings by all these masters, but the centerpiece will be Beauford Delaney. And at least they're borrowing one piece by Joseph Delaney from our collection. It's a watercolor that Joseph did of Washington Square Park. So I'm hoping that by having Joseph's painting in this show, it'll get his work on other art historian and curators' radar.

Sarah Campbell Drury 27:41

Do you know the dates of that exhibit?

Stephen Wicks 27:44

I want to say it's the summer and fall of 2027. I don't have the exact dates. And then it's supposed to make an international tour.

Sarah Campbell Drury 27:53

Okay. So we'll try to update some of that information on our Facebook page as well because we all want to know when that happens.

Stephen Wicks 28:01

Well, the the great thing too is that uh we're lending this large red abstraction by Beauford, and there is talk that that may be the image used as the cover image for the exhibition and the catalog. So that would be wonderful for the KMA and for for Beauford.

Sarah Campbell Drury 28:21

Well, as one might expect, with this level of attention, prices are going up really fast for Beauford Delaney's work. I mean, his trajectory is like a rocket ship.

Stephen Wicks 28:33

Which is why we were so lucky that the museum was able to make this purchase from the Beauford Delaney estate back in 2018 of uh nine works and several sketchbooks. And um we did it at a time before his market really became just prohibitive for museums with our level of funding. So that was just a watershed moment for the KMA.

Sarah Campbell Drury 28:59

I remember in 2015 at Case we sold an abstract work by Beauford Delaney. It was painted on a pillowcase. So back during the period when he was having trouble affording more traditional work.

Stephen Wicks 29:12

Yes, yes.

Sarah Campbell Drury 29:13

And and that sold for 24,000. That was 2015. Then in 2021, I believe, we sold a oil on canvas abstract, really nice piece for 348,000. And we thought, you know, everybody's like, oh, that was a great, great price. Well, and then last year, new record set for him in New York at 1.5 million. So his his trajectory is very strong. Meanwhile, Joseph, his auction high is 81,000. So there's a real disparity in terms of the, you know, what people are paying for these prices. I know that's that's not always your world. It is my world.

Stephen Wicks 29:53

It is my world because uh for the longest time I've been trying to figure out how do we get the funds to make the purchases we need before these opportunities become scarce because of just sheer uh magnitude of price. And um it's been so great to see that Beauford's estate was managed so carefully that uh the estate administrator was calculated in how he let only a certain number of paintings out into the market. Whereas Joseph's estate, there were times when the market was flooded with sketches and canvases that were of a similar nature to one another. And so it just i it was a strategic uh difference between how the two brothers' estates were handled. And my hat goes off to Derek Spratley and the great uh job that he's done for decades managing the estate of Beauford Delaney.

Sarah Campbell Drury 30:56

Just to kind of wrap up Joseph's story, um, Joseph ended up returning to Knoxville. Can you tell us more about that?

Stephen Wicks 31:03

So Joseph is uh living in New York City. Uh I want to say it was Alex Haley, and I'm trying to think who else was working on trying to get Joseph brought down to Knoxville to become the first artist in residence at the University of Tennessee. It was a new position that had been created, and I got a chance to meet Joseph uh shortly after that. And basically he moves back to Knoxville. They give him a house, I want to say it was on Lake Avenue, um adjacent to campus. And he continues to work. I I don't know exactly what his official capacity was as artist in residence, but I imagine teaching was part of that. And um he was just really in this environment that he hadn't really been in for an extensive period. He'd come back to Knoxville with with Beauford several times, but actually living in East Tennessee in Knoxville 24-7 was such a different experience for him. And he was a person who was restless by nature, always interested in staying on the move and being in the center of the action. And I think that coming back to Knoxville, there was a change of pace and intensity that didn't necessarily agree with him. And so um, when I met him, he was encouraging me to come to his studio, which I never had a chance to do. I that's one of the regrets of my career was Joe died before I got over there because when I was hired at the KMA, there were lots of fires to put out.

Sarah Campbell Drury 32:45

This would have been like 1991, right?

Stephen Wicks 32:47

1991, yeah. Yeah, he dies in 1991.

Sarah Campbell Drury 32:51

And uh Beauford died in 1979, so Joseph outlived him for about 10 years.

Stephen Wicks 32:56

Right. And Beauford works up until 1973 or four, somewhere in there. He he didn't really have access to any kind of paints when he was at St. Anne's, as far as we know. Um, we have what's the last self-portrait of many self-portraits, it's dated 1971. And um he continued to get visits from Baldwin, and Baldwin and friends were were sustaining him with as much energy as they could. But um, yeah, Beauford's story ends on a uh a low note in terms of his mental illness getting the better of him. But uh he leaves behind an incredible legacy uh as a painter. And his paintings I've found have the they hold the promise of just uplifting you when you look at them. I mean, I've had physical reactions looking at some of his abstractions. They're so filled with with this joyous energy and this this feeling of this exalted luminous place that's out there that he was so desperate to connect with to silence or at least to outshine um those negative voices.

Celia Walker 34:20

While this residency may not have turned out the way it was planned, it sounds like it was part of a continuum of efforts from Knoxville and Knoxville's institutions to raise these artists up and recognize them. I I know there have been other efforts that UT uh libraries have uh acquired archives.

Stephen Wicks 34:39

Yes. No, that's that's a great point. And I I applaud the efforts to canonize these remarkable people who had such great artistic talent and to anchor their legacies locally. That's something that we've tried to do, and I know there are other organizations in town that are doing a great job of that. But uh part of Beauford's estate was this volume of papers, uh correspondence. He wrote back to his family in Knoxville, just as Joseph did uh religiously. The two brothers, it's like this umbilical cord that they both had to Knoxville, regardless of where they traveled internationally. They were always spiritually connected to Knoxville. And that comes through in the papers of Beauford Delaney, which were acquired, thank goodness, by the University of Tennessee Special Collections Library. There were major research libraries around the country that were chasing after this archive. And I tried to do what I could. I ended up getting the head of the library and the head of the Delaney estate together to meet and just talk about this. And it took several years, but eventually things came together and the library was able to purchase the estate archives. There's now a display at UT Library that shows some of the kinds of things that are in this archive, and it's fascinating. The sketchbooks, you know, you might think, okay, there are going to be some sketches of places and people and all that. For Beauford in particular, there are all these different kinds of entries in his sketchbooks. He would have addresses of people like Georgia O'Keeffe, who he met in New York. There would be different imperatives where he'd say, "incorporate more African-American subject matter," or he might have actual rough drafts of letters that he was writing to James Baldwin. All these amazing bits of information that help us anchor his career and different uh pathways and turning points in his career. And so having that asset at the UT Library, having the KMA's art collection of Beauford Delaney, Knoxville has become an international hub for Beauford Delaney, along with Paris and New York City. And so that to me is something that can never be taken away. We've we've reached that level, and my hope is that the rest of the art world, the uh, you know, writers, uh poets, they'll all want to come to Knoxville to connect with this legacy. And the legacy is only going to deepen with the renovation of one of the Delaney family's homes. It's on Danridge Avenue next to Beck Cultural Center. And so that's in the process of being renovated and turned into a space that will help celebrate the legacy not just of Beauford, not just Joseph, but the whole Delaney family. So that becomes another reason to come to East Tennessee.

Celia Walker 38:01

So, any other thoughts about what's been happening at the Knoxville Museum of Art? Can you tell us a little bit more about what's coming up?

Stephen Wicks 38:08

One of the things I want to just mention is that, you know, it's one thing. A lot of times you'll go to a museum that has an artist's work that you're especially interested in, and you get there and it's not on view, and you're disappointed. You've come all this way, and they're not going to bring the painting out of storage to show it to you just because you love this work. When you come to the KMA, you will always see the work of Joseph and Beauford Delaney. We have an ongoing exhibition right as you walk in our front door. Parking is free, admission is free. And then when you walk in the front doors, there is a gallery devoted to showcasing Beauford and Joseph. Their work is side by side. Right now, I want to say there may be eight or nine works by Beauford and three or four works by Joseph. That may sound unfair to you, but uh two of Joe's, actually, yes, two of Joseph's paintings are monumental. So, in terms of square footage, it's it's pretty even. And what we do is as we continue to get loan requests and we have to take a painting off of view, we'll bring another one because we have many more in storage. And so in this way, you can see Joe and Beauford's art anytime you come to the KMA. And our hope is that it'll stay dynamic as we lend to other museum exhibitions.

Sarah Campbell Drury 39:38

And for anyone who's not been to the Knoxville Museum of Art, it is a world-class place to view art. It is a great destination, and I highly encourage anyone to come and see not only works by the Delaney brothers, but also the other art that you and David Butler in particular have assembled over the years. It's worthwhile.

Stephen Wicks 40:01

Well, we have a really great curatorial team. Another part of our mission artistically is international contemporary art, particularly that that has connections to uh the Appalachian region. And right now we have an exhibition devoted to the art of Wayne White, who was born in Chattanooga, uh, but is is based in Los Angeles. He's he's done everything you can possibly imagine doing as an artist, from producing videos for smashing pumpkins, designing the set for Pee-Wee's Playhouse, uh, doing films, uh, creating paintings where he will appropriate an old landscape painting in a you know garage sale, and he would go into it and add in acrylic paint these written passages, these slogans. He calls them his word paintings. He would create large-scale puppets. And matter of fact, right now in the centerpiece of the show that we have on view, there's a larger-than-life puppet of the Knoxville Girl, the ballad of the Knoxville girl and her murder. Um, there's no blood spilled, but uh the Knoxville girl basically got her revenge, and you can see it in larger-than-life form in the gallery. And then we have um another contemporary exhibition coming up called No Man's Land, that uh our curator Kelsey Conley put together that looks at contemporary artists who are imagining art happening and existing in places that are between places, um, between public and private, between imagined and realized. And it's um a show that takes you into lots of different artistic territory, and I'm fascinated to see the outcome. We also have uh an exhibition called Currents that regularly is presented and features a different cross-section of the KMA's contemporary collection. We've made a number of acquisitions recently, and one of the things that curators love to do is when you acquire a painting for the museum, you want to show it. You want to get it out of storage and put it on view. And so that's something we're looking forward to.

Sarah Campbell Drury 42:26

Well, thank you, Stephen, for an amazing introduction to two important artists whose lives reflect the history of our state and the nation. So I encourage anyone who wants to see works by these artists to come to the Knoxville Museum of Art and see their collections and other works by artists whose art was made in Tennessee.

Celia Walker 42:43

Our show is edited by Ben Hill. The music is by Kylie Daly. The program is sponsored by the Tennessee Commission for the United States Semiquincentennial, arranged under an agreement with the state of Tennessee. Thanks to the folks at the IT Company in Knoxville for recording this episode, and thanks to all of you for listening. You can find this episode and others at our madeintennessee.org website. That's all one word and all lowercase. And find us on Facebook where you can find additional images relating to our episode.