Artwork from the personal collection of producer Swizz Beatz, born Kasseem Dean, and his wife, Alicia Keys, is receiving its first major public exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, in a huge presentation aptly named “Giants.” Blending pop culture with the high arts in a fashion similar to the museum’s recent Spike Lee retrospective, ‘Giants” lures both art connoisseurs and an audience attracted by the spectacle of seeing what hangs on the walls of the celebrity couple’s California cliffside mansion, treating them to a crash course in Black art with a capital “A.” With 98 pieces by 37 artists — including Nick Cave, Amy Sherald, Lorna Simpson, Ernie Barnes, Derrick Adams and Arthur Jafa — “Giants” impresses through sheer breadth and scope alone.
“We want people to see themselves, to feel inspired,” Keys remarks in a video displayed toward the end of the exhibit. “Every person that’s hanging on the walls is just like you and I. We want you to see that you are also a giant: special, incredible, unique.”
The fact that a 40-something African-American couple originally hailing from the hardscrabble environs of the Bronx and Harlem could amass a multimillion-dollar art collection is arguably inspirational enough. But imagining, for example, public school students of color touring the museum and getting exposed to Gordon Parks’ photographs of Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, and the 1963 March on Washington — or Jamel Shabazz’s portraits of B-boys and B-girls from hip-hop culture’s 1980s golden age; or a colorful canvas by Kehinde Wiley featuring a Renaissance-styled young Black man (“Femme Piquée par un Serpent”) definitely makes clear that the Dean Collection accomplishes Keys’ stated goal.
During the ’90s, Swizz Beatz amassed his fortune largely by crafting hits for rap artists like DMX, Jay-Z and Eve. Though he no doubt owns his share of bling, Bentleys and other ostentatious wealth signifiers, Beatz’s…
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