Dave Popkin/American Jazz Museum

As the old line goes, "Jazz was born in New Orleans, but it grew up in Kansas City," so it was appropriate that in 1997, the American Jazz Museum opened its doors at one of the most important jazz crossroads in the world- 18th and Vine in Kansas City. The museum serves as a vibrant performance, exhibition, education, and research space. The day I attended there was a wonderful art exhibit of Frederick J. Brown, featuring his oversized oil portraits of legends like Big Joe Turner, Thelonious Monk, and Etta James. - continue reading

If you are a patron of Kansas City's art or jazz community, then you have seen the painterly work of the late artist Frederick James Brown. Two large, elegant portraits, one of Charlie Parker and the other of Count Basie, permanently adorn the atrium interior at the American Jazz Museum in the 18th and Vine District. Halfway across the city, Cafe Sebastienne at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art contains an intimate dining room with a floor-to-ceiling installation of more than 100 paintings by Brown expressing his rendition of art history.

In 2002, a traveling exhibition of Brown's work, focusing on his portraits of jazz and blues luminaries, premiered simultaneously at Kemper Museum and the American Jazz Museum. Titled "Frederick J. Brown: Portraits in Jazz, Blues, & Other Icons," the exhibit then traveled to the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Born in Georgia and raised in Chicago, Brown graduated in 1968 from Southern Illinois University Carbondale with a degree in art. He lived and worked in the SoHo district of New York City for decades. Along the way, he taught at various colleges including one in Beijing, China. His 1988 retrospective of mo works at the Museum of the Chinese Revolution made Brown one of the earliest Western artists to exhibit in China. Brown passed away in 2012, at the age of 67.

In October, Brown's "Energy is Jazz" exhibition, co-curated by the American Jazz Museum and Bentley Brown of the Frederick J. Brown Trust, opened at the American Jazz Museum. While the world has changed in innumerable ways since Brown's last exhibition at the AJM, the sheer energy collected, refined and expressed in Brown's work continues to astound. - continue reading

(From the left: Stanley Boxer, Sosoughtbloomnaught, 1976; Frederick J. Brown, Jacques Lipchitz, 1992-1993; John Opper, Untitled (#16), 1969; Stanley Boxer, Softlashtendercombs, 1976)

"Throughout the room, anniversary collection fabric, carpet and furniture frames came together in signature Young Huh style. The designer and her team debuted the iconic Tree of Life pattern as a wallcovering. Artwork from Berry Campbell, fireplace accessories from Chesneys and florals from Diane James Home completed the luxe ambiance." - continue reading

Frederick J. Brown, Portrait of Etta James, American Jazz Museum

OPENING OCTOBER 26, 2023: Energy is Jazz, an exhibition of works by American artist, Frederick J. Brown

The American Jazz Museum presents Energy is Jazz, an exhibition of works by esteemed American artist, Frederick J. Brown. The exhibition has been co-curated between The American Jazz Museum and Bentley Brown of the Frederick J. Brown Trust. The exhibit will explore Brown's career and his depiction of jazz artists in portraiture, in addition to the energy and feeling of jazz through visual representation.

A mural for Lima jazz legend Joe Henderson has already been created downtown, and on April 27, Lima schools will add another posthumous honor to add to Henderson’s legacy.

Following its debut at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2021, the group exhibition Black American Portraits travels to Atlanta’s Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.

Join us for a virtual conversation that delves into the artistic practice of Frederick J. Brown with noted American art historian and curator Lowery Stokes Sims, who contributed a new essay to Frederick J. Brown: A Drawing in Five Parts, and the artist’s son, Bentley Brown, Adjunct Professor of Art History at Fordham University and PhD Fellow, NYU Institute of Fine Arts. The conversation is moderated by Director and CEO Masha Turchinsky.

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LACMA has added two American portraits: a full-length Robert Henri Spanish Dancer and Frederick J. Brown's portrait of L.A. art patron Dr. Leon Banks.

Abby and Alan D. Levy pledged the Henri to LACMA on the museum's 40th anniversary (2005), and the gift was made official this year. Henri's series of Spanish dancers against velveteen backgrounds show his admiration for Velázquez and Goya. Measuring 85 by 44-5/8 in, it joins a set of Ash Can School works at LACMA that includes three smaller Henris and George Bellows' Cliff Dwellers.

The Metropolitan Museum bought one of Henri's Spanish subjects (not nearly so compelling as the Levy picture) out of the 1913 Armory Show. Within a few years Henri's Spanish naturalism had been overtaken by the modernism of Picasso and Miró.

Frederick J. Brown (1945-2012) was a Chicago-born African-American artist who moved in New York's avant-garde circles of visual art, jazz, and blues. The portrait of Dr. Leon Banks is a study for Brown's monumental Last Supper (1984), a painting honoring men important to the artist's life and career. Dr. Banks is a retired Los Angeles pediatrician, co-founder of the California African American Museum, and a former MOCA board member. He's also known as the subject of several David Hockney portraits. The Brown painting was purchased this May from Berry Campbell Gallery, New York, with funds from the Modern and Contemporary Art Council Acquisitions Endowment.

Order/Reorder: Experiments with Collections
Hudson River Museum, New York
June 17, 2022–September 3, 2023
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Frederick J. Brown, The First Time Around, 1985, oil and pencil on paper, 42 x 29 3/4 inches.

Art as both creative output and curated object is in constant dialogue with the past and the present. It is this never-ending conversation that pushes art into its future, forcing us to continually reimagine the ways in which we project a vision of ourselves and the world around us. Order / Reorder: Experiments with Collections explores approaches to looking at American art that consider expressions of American identity from new perspectives.

The works on view range across genres: portraiture, figural studies, still life, landscape, and abstraction. Recent additions to the Museum’s collection and other artworks on view for the first time are joined by visitor favorites, paired with special loans from the Joslyn Art Museum and contributions from regional artists. Rather than structured chronologically, the installation is designed to spark discussion through juxtapositions of styles, outlooks, and eras. Works by renowned artists are in conversation with those now emerging.

Frederick J. Brown: Acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Frederick J. Brown
Dr. Leon Banks (Study for Last Supper), 1982
Oil on linen
32 x 24 1/4 inches
Signed, dated and titled on verso

Join art historian Bentley Brown for a walk through African American Art in the 20th Century to discuss the importance of how African American artists have framed the narratives in which they see themselves through medium, context, and storytelling throughout the twentieth century. In the course of this conversational tour, Brown will make a special stop at the signature work, John Henry, an imposing 1979 oil painting by his father, Frederick Brown.

Bentley Brown is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and doctoral student at The Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. His research at the Institute explores the pioneering role of Black artists and Black creative spaces within New York City’s contemporary art movements of the late 1960s through the mid 1980s. In his artistic practice, Brown uses the mediums of canvas, found objects, photo-collage, and film to explore themes of Black identity, cosmology, and American interculturalism.

Saturday, December 11, 2021
1pm
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Hudson River Museum, New York | African American Art in the 20th Century

Frederick J. Brown: The Sound of Color

This year, when giving holiday gifts, skip the gift cards, the Amazon Prime products and deals and think way outside that digital, impersonal box, give and share a LIVE experience instead.  Let others jam malls and run around frenzied looking for the “perfect” anything, just dial up a museum, or book timed tickets online, knowing capacity is limited and museums are not jammed just before the holidays.

Accompanying a niece, nephew, cousin, or friend to an exhibit will stay with the giftee. Selfies taken in front of that Mondrian or Chagall, Matisse or Richard Mayhew and Felrath Hines or Sol LeWitt are certain to outlast flashy yoga wear, a tushy spa warmer, or a reinvented shower cap.

A trio of manageable museums are currently exhibiting some of the most talked about work in town: the Hudson River Museum, the Jewish Museum, and the Morgan Library and Museum are three off-the beaten track venues for pint-sized immersions in carefully cultivated and curated shows.

The Hudson River Museum is the fifth and final venue to host this impressive and wide-ranging collection African American Art in the 20th Century, which brings one of the most significant national collections of African American art to Yonkers. Featuring some of the country’s most famous Black artists–it was drawn from the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum–the exhibit features paintings and sculptures by 34 artists who came to prominence during the period bracketed by the Harlem Renaissance starting in the 1920s, the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and beyond.

In addition to Romare Bearden, artists include Frederick Brown, Beauford Delaney, Jacob Lawrence, Loïs Mailou Jones and Renée Stout, whose work ranges in style from portraiture to modern abstraction, to the postmodern assemblage of found objects.

Move from the galleries to the Planetarium or consider the Glenview Holiday Tour, the Gilded Age mansion that abuts the museum featuring Yonkers’ favorite dollhouse, Nybelwyck Hall. For a virtual experience, consider the Studio Tour and Demonstration with Jamel Robinson on Jan. 12 at the artist in his own studio.

https://www.hrm.org/
Open Thursday through Sunday, 12-5 pm

Frederick J. Brown | ArtsNews: Understanding and Appreciating African American Art in the 20th Century
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The Hudson River Museum is presenting an important survey exhibition, “African American Art in the 20th Century,” that was organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and includes 43 objects from their permanent collection. 

The show, on display through Jan. 16, 2022, presents paintings and sculpture by 34 African American artists who became famous in the decades between the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights movement. The works reflect the artists’ responses to the evolving international aesthetic movements of the 20th century, as seen through the lens of race in America. As one of these artists, Jacob Lawrence, said in 1951, “My pictures express my life and experience… the things I have experienced extend to my national, racial and class group. I paint the American scene.”

HRM director and CEO Masha Turchinsky called the Smithsonian’s collection “one of the most significant national collections of African American art. This is a pivotal opportunity for the public to experience powerful works by these American luminaries at the exhibition’s only New York venue.”

The African American experience as shown by these artists embraced both rural and urban life. 

In 1940, William H. Johnson, a native of South Carolina, painted “Sowing” in oil on burlap. He used brilliant colors and the naive style characteristic of many of his paintings of country life in the South in the early 20th century.

But the rural South could also be inhospitable for Black people. At first glance, Norman Lewis’ 1962 “Evening Rendezvous” seems largely abstract. Blink, and a sinister scene appears: a crowd of white-hooded Klansmen milling around a red-hot fire. According to the Smithsonian’s label for this painting, the abstract-art-obsessed critics of the time debated whether Lewis meant to make a political statement with this painting.

Frederick Brown chose John Henry, a freed slave who was a hero of American folklore and protest music, as the subject for his 1979 oil painting. Brown himself grew up near the steel mills of South Chicago, and his portrayal of Henry is a comment on the contemporary concerns of American laborers.

Cities figured prominently in the Black exodus from the South, but life wasn’t always easier there. The artistic trope of the “portrait of an artist in his studio” is turned on its head in Palmer Hayden’s 1930 oil, “The Janitor Who Paints.” A Black janitor, whose basement apartment is strewn with the tools of his maintenance trade, takes a break from that job to don a jaunty beret, as he goes to his easel to work on a portrait of a mother and child. In real life, Hayden had to support himself as a janitor in order to paint, as did a friend and fellow artist, Cloyd Boykin. 

The inner city is also the setting for Beauford Delaney’s 1946 oil painting, “Can Fire in the Park.” Wielding the paintbrush in post-Impressionist style to create a patchwork of vivid colors, he depicts a typical city corner with street lamps, signs, and a manhole cover. Six men, possibly homeless, huddle around a trash can to warm their hands.

Cities continue to fascinate and repel Black artists. But the mood of Charles Searles’ 1975 panoramic acrylic, “Celebration,” is exuberant. It could be a street festival in the artist’s hometown of Philadelphia, but was clearly influenced by the artist’s earlier trip to Nigeria. The canvas is alive with vibrant patterns and textures evoking the textiles of Africa.

A different kind of muralist was Purvis Young, whose 1988 untitled acrylic painting depicts horses surrounded by a frame of abstract rectangular designs. Young, a native of Miami, was a self-taught urban artist who began painting on scrap lumber scavenged from the inner-city neighborhood where he lived, often attaching his paintings to the boarded-up fronts of abandoned buildings.

Thornton Dial’s 1992 mixed-media painting, “Top of the Line,” combines enamel, unbraided canvas roping, and metal on plywood.  This emotional, frenzied work was Dial’s response to the Los Angeles riots of 1992, when looters ran amok after a jury found four white policemen not guilty of beating an unarmed Black motorist, Rodney King.

The exhibition also includes sculpture. Sargent Johnson’s 1930s copper sculpture on a wood base, “Mask,” was one of many masks he created. Some were faithful to old African designs, and others depicted people with contemporary American hairstyles, but all were clearly designed to capture the natural beauty and dignity of his race. One also has to wonder whether his interpretations of African masks was an ironic comment on European artists, such as Picasso, who appropriated native African masks and related imagery for profit.

The exhibition’s catalog, “African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond,” celebrates modern and contemporary artworks in the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection by African American artists. It will be available in the Museum Shop. Extensive biographical information on all the artists in this exhibition can also be accessed by searching for an artist’s name on the website of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The Hudson River Museum is located at 511 Warburton Avenue in Yonkers. Museum hours are Thursday–Sunday, 12–5pm. All visitors 12+ must show proof of full vaccination or a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours of visit; those 18+ must also show proof of identity. Visitors under 12 may enter only if accompanied by an adult who can show proof of full vaccination or a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours of visit.

The work and struggle by Jamel Robinson and other artists is part of the “African American Art in the 20th Century” exhibition at the Hudson River Museum.

“Fighting for Change: Fist Full of Tears,” the title of one of the five works Jamel Robinson is showing at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, N.Y., encapsulates the artist’s love of wordplay as well as philosophy about what it means to be a Black man making art in America.

The piece is a pair of boxing gloves covered in black paint and pennies mounted on a large black, green and white canvas.

“As Black people we’re fighting for change, and as a Black artist, we’re always trying to move forward — it always feels like we’re fighting for change and sometimes literally for change,” said Mr. Robinson, 42, who was born and raised in Harlem.

He is the teaching artist-in-residence at the museum in conjunction with the “African American Art in the 20th Century” exhibition, which includes 43 works by some of the country’s most famous Black artists. Mr. Robinson’s first museum show and the 20th Century exhibition will run concurrently from Oct. 15 through Jan. 16. Continue Reading

Drawn from the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, these works range in style from modern abstraction to stained color to the postmodern assemblage of found objects, and their subjects are diverse. Benny Andrews, Ellis Wilson, and William H. Johnson speak to the dignity and resilience of people who work the land. Jacob Lawrence and Thornton Dial, Sr. acknowledge the struggle for economic and civil rights. Sargent Johnson, Loïs Mailou Jones, and Melvin Edwards address the heritage of Africa, and images by Romare Bearden celebrate jazz musicians. Sam Gilliam and Felrath Hines conduct innovative experiments with color and form. This will be the only New York venue for the exhibition.

The featured artworks were created at significant social and political moments in America. Words of Howard University philosophy professor Alain Locke, novelist James Baldwin, Civil Rights leader Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and their contemporaries provided insight and inspiration. In response, these artists created an image of America that recognizes individuals and community and acknowledges the role of art in celebrating the complex and diverse nature of American society. As featured artist Jacob Lawrence stated in 1951, “My pictures express my life and experience . . . the things I have experienced extend to my national, racial, and class group. I paint the American scene.”

The related catalog, African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond, celebrates modern and contemporary artworks in the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection by African American artists. The book, co-published with Skira Rizzoli in New York, is written by Richard J. Powell, the John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University; and Virginia Mecklenburg, chief curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum; with contributions from Maricia Battle, curator in the prints and drawings division at the Library of Congress.

African American Art in the 20th Century is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The C.F. Foundation in Atlanta supports the museum’s traveling exhibition program, Treasures to Go. The William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment Fund provided financial suppor

Frederick J. Brown
South Chicago, 1976

View works by Frederick J. Brown

Frederick J. Brown had an incredibly prolific career throughout which he moved fluently between abstraction, figurative painting (particularly portraiture), landscape painting, ceramics and collage. Particularly in his early career many of his vivid and evocative brushstrokes recall de Kooning: Brown’s longtime mentor. In fact, Brown famously painted de Kooning, depicting him in bold swaths of primary color that recall de Kooning’s own style and eclectic personality. Early on in Brown’s career he was particularly influenced by de Kooning and the German school of Abstract Expressionism. After his early abstract works in the 1970s, Brown began to introduce figuration into his work in the 1980s. While most of his career did have a largely figurative focus, the emotive influence of Abstract Expressionism carries through the body of his works.  

Brown was born in Georgia on February 6th, 1945 and grew up on the South Side of Chicago. He credited his family for surrounding him with color; his uncle repainted cars (Brown would help him mix the paints) and his mother was a baker who specialized in cake decorating. His mother’s influence in particular caused Brown to have quite a tactile relationship with color and he claimed that painters were “people who love paint” particularly the feeling of paint. Another formative influence was the community of jazz musicians that Brown met through his father. Brown’s relationship with music cannot be overstated; his bold, vigorous works often produce synesthetic experiences and Brown listened to music while he painted, citing it as a creative catalyst for his painting process. He attended Southern Illinois University where he studied art and psychology.  

In 1970, Brown moved to SoHo to pursue his painting career. At this point he was focused on musical and abstract influences. In 1977 he collaborated with the Adler Planetarium to produce his wonderful work Milky Way that exemplified the galaxy as it was understood in the late 70s. He hints at the spiral shapes of the galaxy while imploring the viewer to imagine other aspects of the Milky Way. This work and several of the studies leading up to it showcase his aforementioned tactile relationship with paint and color. Dabs of paint throughout Milky Way almost inspire a visual sense of touch. Another painting of his, Elephant Skin was actually painted so that the paint itself would feel like an elephant’s skin. Brown’s idea that anyone could even feel one of his paintings was indicative of his egalitarian approach to art. In 1985, Brown taught in China at the Central College of Fine Arts and Crafts - during his teaching he sought to embody what he considered to be an authentic American experience. He imported his entire studio and would work for 13 hours at a time to give his students an idea of the intensity of his process. His teaching experience was followed by an exhibition of his works in 1988 at the Museum of the Revolution in Beijing. He was one of the earliest Western artists to exhibit in China and at the time he was the largest exhibition of a Western artist to date. He was commended for the moving sense of his works and was an exemplar of cross-cultural relations at the time. 

In the late 1980s, Brown began a series of portraits of jazz musicians. This series was significant in the sense that it exemplified the excellence of Black musicians and demonstrated Brown’s own excellence as a Black painter. It was on Brown’s part, an effort to make sure these artists were appropriately memorialized. Brown would listen to the artist’s music as he painted their portrait and this influenced the visuals of the painting. In his work Duke Ellington, Duke’s large and soulful eyes are the immediate striking characteristic. But if one takes into account the surprising pockets of color (the blue tones at the base of his eye, the red across one cheek, and the dash of yellow on his bottom lip) and the erratic curves that constitute his face, both these elements are reflective of the erratic and surprising nature of Ellington’s compositions. Another portrait Brown painted, Sarah Vaughan is a contrast to Ellington’s portrait. Vaughan’s face is all vibrant color and smooth elegant lines that recall the cadence of her voice. In her rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” it is quite clear how her voice translates to her portrait.  

Beyond these projects, Brown worked on a number of spiritual and religious works and reworked common themes like the Last Judgement and the Virgin and Child. He painted a number of bright folklore-like works that were simply meant to inspire joy after his experience in a drab hospital - it showed his propensity to use art as a vehicle for an emotional experience in the viewer. Another notable work of his, History of Art is a series of over 100 canvases representing important paintings in Art History. The series effectively recasts the monochrome canon of Art History into a vibrant and diverse set of new subjects. Many of the works are either infused with new vigor or feature people of color in portraiture. Brown said once in an interview to the Smithsonian: “I think my heritage has a great significance to the images I produce, but you can limit people with a name or a title to only serve one group. When you see my work, you can tell it is done by someone who is Black. But, I want to provide as many beautiful things to the world as I possibly can.” Indeed, Brown’s wide artistic achievements left a legacy of accessibility and facilitated a democratization of art. Frederick J. Brown died of cancer in 2012 and is survived by his wife Megan and his two children. 

Berry Campbell is pleased to announce the representation of the Estate of Frederick J. Brown (1945-2012)

Exhibition formcoming September 9 - October 9, 2021
Curated by Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims

View Works by Frederick J. Brown