Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys Are Bringing Their Personal Art Collection to the Brooklyn Museum

Hot off of staging its successful Africa Fashion exhibition, New York City’s Brooklyn Museum is still on a mission to expand its body of artwork by Black and African artists from across the globe. The historic location is now partnering with legendary American artists Swizz Beatz (birth name Kasseem Dean) and his fifteen-time Grammy-award-winning wife Alicia Keys to debut the first major exhibition of the couple’s world-class collection of multigenerational Black diasporic artists in Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys.

The exhibition, which will run from February 10 to July 7, 2024, is set to offer viewers a unique look into the many artistic interpretations that have helped the Deans learn more about themselves and their culture, while also helping illustrate the global Black experience. It begins with an homage to the iconic couple and the creative influencers that guided them to their own success, as well as the eagerness to pour into other Black creatives with similar experiences.

“The collection started not just because we’re art lovers, but also because there are not enough people of color collecting artists of color,” Beatz said in a 2018 interview with Cultured. And the couple have truly been putting their money where their mouths are, over two decades into supporting Black art.

Taking the name quite literally, the exhibition will display artwork from some of the world’s most innovative artists, giants within their respective fields. From American greats Jean-Michel Basquiat to the late Kwame Brathwaite, to Botswana's ingenious Meleko Mokgosi, and Obama-portrait painter Kehinde Wiley, Giants seeks to continue the dialogue taking place around societal injustices and Black excellence. Most, if not all, of the artists on display, used their work to comment on and critique how the world was run during their lifetime, and reintroducing them to society is one way to show how far we’ve come, or how little has changed.

An intimate, multigenerational look into the Black experience sees the exhibition paying respect to, and acknowledging, those who came before us, with an “On the Shoulders of Giants” section. South African legend Esther Mahlangu brings her beloved reimagining of the country’s longstanding tradition of building colorful Ndebele houses, while Mali’s Malick Sidibé’s memory lives on in his illustrious photographs. The Brooklyn Museum has just expanded its permanent collection with a host of recently added pieces, including one by Mahlangu, and three from Nigerian artist, Twins Seven Seven.

It’s all part of the museum’s commitment to increasing its African art collection – something the Deans will also add to when they make a gift to the museum of selected artworks in celebration of the exhibition.

  

Photo courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

"Self, Father." Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys will debut at the Brooklyn Museum from February 10 - July 7, 2024.