Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys’ Collection to Show in Brooklyn

Brooklyn Museum New York Follow +

The Brooklyn Museum has announced an exhibition of works from the collection of singer Alicia Keys and her music producer husband Kasseem Daoud Dean, better known as Swizz Beatz.

Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys will feature over 100 works by leading Black artists including Tschabalala Self, Kehinde Wiley, and Amy Sherald.

‘Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys have been among the most vocal advocates for Black creatives to support Black artists through their collecting, advocacy, and partnerships,’ said Anne Pasternak, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director at the Museum.

‘In the process, they have created one of the most important collections of contemporary art,’ she said.

Photography is one of the strengths of the collection, with images by Jamel Shabazz, Deana Lawson, and Kwame Brathwaite dating back to the 1960s.

Among the exhibition’s most ornate and ambitious works is Ebony G. Patterson’s 2016 mixed media photo installation . . they were just hanging out . . . you know . . . talking about . . . ( . . . when they grow up . . .), pictured top, which evokes memorials to young black victims of violence.

Another notable inclusion is Derrick Adams’ monochrome giclée print portraits of Keys and Dean.

‘The collection started not just because we’re art lovers, but also because there’s not enough people of colour collecting artists of colour,’ Beatz told Cultured magazine in 2018.

‘So we want to lead the pack in owning our own culture and owning our own narrative instead of waiting for someone who’s not part of the culture to tell our story for us.’

Speaking to Artnet News in 2019, he said, ‘I collect like I’m putting together a museum for my kids.’

Having previously been on the Brooklyn Museum’s Board of Trustees, he said he saw ‘how much it costs, and how big a space you need. So I’m like, “You know what? I want a lot of little satellites, but when they come together they create a big-ass museum”.’ —[O]

Main image: Ebony G. Patterson, . . . they were just hanging out . . . you know . . . talking about . . . ( . . . when they grow up . . .) (2016). Beads, appliqués, fabric, glitter, buttons, costume jewellery, trimming, rhinestones, and glue on digital print on handcut matte photo paper. 228.6 x 571.5 cm. The Dean Collection. Courtesy Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys. © Ebony G. Patterson. Courtesy the artist, Monique Meloche Gallery, and Studio Museum in Harlem. Photo: Adam Reich.