UTLibraries Comes to Paris

The University of Tennessee Libraries is visiting Paris this summer to conduct research that will support a Beauford Delaney exhibition at its facility in Autumn 2025. The exhibition will feature the Beauford Delaney Papers*, which the libraries obtained in 2022 and made available to researchers in January 2024.

UTLibraries received a $250,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to complete processing and promote the archive. The grant will not only fund the exhibition and celebration, but also support a two-year graduate research fellowship and community exhibitions planned in collaboration with the Knoxville Museum of Art (KMA), the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, and UT’s Ewing Gallery of Art.

Senior Associate Dean Holly Mercer contacted me in April 2024 to request my assistance through consulting and providing walking tours relevant to Beauford's life in Paris. Thanks to the Wells International Foundation's Entrée to Black Paris Cultural Awareness program, I was able to support this project by providing two private guided tours, a visit to Thiais Cemetery (Beauford's final resting place), and several hours of consulting over a period of three weeks.

In addition to Senior Associate Dean Mercer, I had the pleasure of interacting with Jennifer Beals, Director of the Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives; Kris Bronstad, Modern Political Archivist & Assistant Professor; and Katrina Stack, Graduate Research Assistant for the Beauford Delaney Papers.

During the first week, Director Beals and Ph.D. candidate Stack experienced the "Beauford Delaney's Montparnasse" walk, which takes place in Paris' 6th and 14th arrondissements.

Jennifer Beals and Katrina Stack
© Wells International Foundation

During Week 2, the consultation session with Archivist Bronstad and Stack began at Le Select, one of Beauford's favorite Montparnasse cafés, and ended over lunch at the nearby Chez Lionel. In walking from one location to the other, we made a quick detour to stand in front of the hotel on rue Delambre where Beauford's first studio was located.

Hôtel Lenox (formerly Hôtel des Ecoles)
© Discover Paris!

Two days later, we visited Thiais Cemetery. Bronstad and Stack purchased a lovely bunch of yellow roses to place on the tombstone.

Katrina Stack laying roses on tombstone
© Wells International Foundation

Kris Bronstad and Katrina Stack at gravesite
© Wells International Foundation

While at the grave, we discovered the remnants of a sketch and message left under the ceramic flower arrangement by UT Downtown Gallery Manager Mike Berry in October 2023. Though he had slipped the sketch into a Ziploc bag, the plastic failed to protect it.

Fortunately, we could still make out the words "With love, Knoxville, TN."

With love, Knoxville, TN
© Wells International Foundation

During Week 3, Associate Dean Mercer and Stack experienced the newly developed "Beauford on the Left Bank" walk, which emerged from the customization of the Entrée to Black Paris walk entitled "James Baldwin in Paris." Both tours take place on and around boulevard Saint-Germain in the 6th arrondissement.

Stack, a cultural geographer whose primary research areas are geographies of memory and Black geographies, remarked on the proximity of the locations visited on each of the walking tours. She also noted that the Left Bank walk ended down the street from where the Montparnasse walk began.

Holly Mercer and Katrina Stack
© Wells International Foundation

I am looking forward to visiting Knoxville next year to see the main exhibition at UT Libraries and the community exhibitions at KMA, Beck, and UT’s Ewing Gallery of Art!

*The Beauford Delaney Papers consists of family, personal, and professional correspondence, photographs, sketchbooks and notebooks, artwork, exhibition material, and biographical records created or collected by Beauford.

It also includes correspondence with influential artists and gallerists such as Palmer Hayden, Lawrence Calcagno, James LeGros, Dorothy Block, Darthea Speyer, and Joseph Delaney; the writers James Baldwin, Henry Miller, and James Jones; and other cultural figures.

For more information about the archive project, click HERE.

Bob Mair on Beauford

Bob Mair is the founder/owner/CEO of Black Toast Music, an Indie music publishing company. He is also a musician and composer.

Mair wrote to me a few days ago in search of information about Grèce, one of two paintings shown during the 2016 Resonance of Form and Vibration of Color exhibition in Paris that are currently in his collection.

Grèce
(1967) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Our lively email exchange about this work inspired me to extend a request an interview, which he accepted.

Read it below.

Les Amis: When did you first learn about Beauford Delaney?

BM: I believe it was 2013 when Jim Levis first showed me works by Beauford. I was enamored by the work but I hadn’t developed quite the eye to understand what I was looking at. I knew the work was good, I could feel it, but I didn’t understand why. His work was so different than what I was collecting at the time. I wish I could go back in time, as those works are now long gone.

Les Amis: What attracts you to his work?

BM: There is something that Beauford understood and was able to capture in his work. It was beyond just the physical and tactile, he was able to paint the essence of things. The people he painted (the portraits) as well as the pure abstract works he painted all had a thread that connected them. I don’t know if he was a Buddhist, but he was able to capture the “no separation”, the entirety of things. The whole of what is. Physical, spiritual, light and dark. And over time, as I have studied the work, I believe that some of the paintings that are perceived as pure abstract are actually portraits. No separation.

Les Amis: When did you begin collecting his work?

BM: I began collecting his work in 2017. I was at a viewing with Jim Levis in Long Island City. Jim had quite a bit of art on the walls - things he knew I was drawn to as well as some things that he wanted to test the waters with to see if I might be drawn to them. I wasn’t so sure about anything he had shown me on that particular day.

My daughter and Jim’s partner, Jamie Black, left the room and went into the hallway. Outside, Jim had a cart of other paintings that were pulled for another client to view after we left. My daughter Rachel said, "Dad, I really like this painting." It was Untitled 1970 by Beauford.

Untitled
(1970) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

I was so excited. I felt that my earlier sense of Delaney’s work from years ago had been validated. My daughter has a fantastic eye and I felt it was meant to be. So – that was the first Delaney that was added to my collection.

Les Amis: Of the four works that you own, which is your favorite and why?

BM: I really don’t have a favorite. I love them all. Each work stands on its own for different reasons. That being said, in my opinion, these are all stellar works by an amazing man and artist, and I’m very lucky to be the current caretaker of these works. They cover a wide swath of what he experienced, who and what he loved, as well as the fact that they are some of the best examples of the “no separation” understanding that Beauford was able to convey in his work.

Les Amis: What type of research are you performing on Beauford's work and why?

BM: I’m a bit OCD as well as a bit ADD so I love getting hyper focused and going down the “rabbit hole.” I look for hard to find out of print exhibition catalogs, essays, books, museum catalogs, etc. for every artist I collect as well as artists that I’d like to collect. My Art Book collection is quite extensive at this point. It’s a passion.

I love to learn, to expand, to understand all I can in regard to the art, the artists, the struggle, and the history of why there even “was a struggle for them.” These artists experienced things in their lifetime that I will never experience, yet it is so valuable to embrace history and learn from it.

Untitled
(1969) Gouache on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Les Amis: Did Beauford's work ever influence your work as a musician?

BM: Beauford’s work actually complimented my work as a musician. His work is an extension of my love of jazz. It expresses a deeper expression of what is similar to Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, etc.

By having Beauford’s work in my home, I feel a constant reminder of the best of what is and what could be. Having his work hang in my home is like having my walls filled with Zen Koans. I am so lucky to be surrounded by such talent and artistry. The ability to overcome the boundaries that Beauford was faced with is a constant reminder to me as an artist to keep going no matter what.

Les Amis: Do you have any additional thoughts that you'd like to contribute?

BM: I would like to see Beauford Delaney’s work get more interest from museums. His story is so amazing and his work should really be shared with the public on a much larger scale.

I’m a huge fan of loaning artwork so that it’s able to be seen and experienced by others who can learn and open their eyes to what is possible. I love having his work on my walls, but I think it’s selfish to not be willing to share the experience.

Portrait of Man in Sunlight
(1968) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Beauford’s story and work is a fantastic example of what is possible. I’d love to see a beautiful film created that shows the life and times of Beauford - his childhood, his struggles, his associations with people like James Baldwin, which all culminated in such amazing art.

Beauford's Art and the James Baldwin Centennial

As the centennial of James Baldwin's birth (August 2, 1924) approaches, companies and cultural institutions that wish to honor Baldwin are publishing announcements about their products and programs.

Beauford's art, especially the many portraits he created of Baldwin, has provided fertile ground from which these organizations have gathered fruit to enhance their offerings.

In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery will host a one-room show that honors Baldwin beginning on July 12, 2024. Called This Morning, This Evening, So Soon: James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance, the museum quite naturally looked to its collection and selected Beauford's 1963 pastel-on-paper portrait of Baldwin to herald the exhibition.

James Baldwin
(1963) Pastel on Paper
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institute
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Curator Rhea Combs consulted with Hilton Als on this exhibition. Als curated the critically acclaimed 2019 exhibition God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin at the David Zwirner Gallery in NYC; his show was the inspiration of what visitors will see at the National Portrait Gallery.

Edited for release in conjunction with the Baldwin Centennial, Als' new book of the same name features two Beauford Delaney works - Beauford's iconic portrait of Baldwin entitled Dark Rapture, and a work from Beauford's New York years entitled Rehearsal.

Dark Rapture
(1941) Oil on masonite
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Rehearsal
(1952) oil on canvas
36 1/8" x 30 1/8" / 91.8 x 76.5 cm
signed and dated
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

Vintage Books of Penguin Random House has re-issued deluxe editions of Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, Go Tell It on the Mountain, and If Beale Street Could Talk. Each book features a Beauford Delaney portrait of Baldwin as cover art.

Screenshot from Penguin Random House Website

I anticipate that more such occurences will be forthcoming over the next few weeks and will report them as I learn of them.