Bill Arnett had spent two decades collecting and dealing antiquities from around the world — African art was his passion — when, in 1986, he had an epiphany in Birmingham, Ala. There, the artist Lonnie Holley assembled sculptures from salvaged junk, and on his first visit, Mr. Arnett bought one — a statement about racism made from a mannequin and chains. It inspired him more than anything he had seen in Europe, Africa or Asia ever had. “Nothing has been the same since,” Mr. Arnett told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1993. “I had to go out and tell the world that there’s this forgotten civilization doing this great work.”To Mr. Arnett, Mr. Holley’s work — and that of other Black painters, sculptors and quilters he would soon encounter, most of them poor — was as distinguished as that of acclaimed white artists like Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

Source: New York Times August 27, 2020 17:25 UTC