Meetthecollectors
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Right: Pamela J Joyner, photographed in front of Leonardo Drew’s Number 25A1, 2018; facing page: Jack Whitten, Black Monolith X (The Birth of Muhammad Ali), 2016 American collector and philanthropist Pamela J Joyner, in partnership with her husband, Alfred J Giuffrida, collects work by modern and contemporary African American and African diaspora artists, ensuring often-overlooked artists are acknowledged and younger ones supported. She speaks to Elizabeth Fullerton about abstraction and her collection PORTRAIT: DREW ALTIZER © DREW ALTIZER : JOHN BERENS TO Meet the collectors: E AND HAUSER & WIRTH. PHO AT Pamela J Joyner CK WHITTEN EST JA E, COURTESY THE AT CK WHITTEN EST JA © 38 SpringSpring 2021 Art Quar Quarterlyterly Art Quarterly Spring 2021 39 AQ.Spring21.Collectors.Joyner.FINALse2.indd 38 08/02/2021 23:13 AQ.Spring21.Collectors.Joyner.FINALse2.indd 39 08/02/2021 23:13 Pamela J Joyner describes herself as an ‘activist Right: Jack Whitten, collector’. She and her husband,Alfred J Giuffrida, Omikron I, 1977; below: have assembled one of the pre-eminent Frank Bowling, Samson’s collections of largely abstract postwar and Arrival, 1989-90; facing page: Norman Lewis, contemporaryAfrican American art. Their goal Afternoon, 1969 is to reframe art history to ensure overlooked artists are included in the canon.According to ArtReview, which ranked her Number 13 on its Power 100 art world list for 2020, ‘No collector in the 21st century has done more to change the official narrative of postwar American art than Joyner.’ Joyner and Giuffrida’s energetic championing of artists, ranging from early abstractionists such as Norman Lewis and : JOHN BERENS Alma Thomas to contemporary stars such as TO Mark Bradford and Shinique Smith, has been instrumental in the recent surge of institutional interest in Black artists. ‘We always had a focus but we didn’t always have a mission,’ Joyner says E AND HAUSER & WIRTH. PHO from her San Francisco home when we speak via AT Zoom at the end of 2020. That changed in 2009, when former Tate director Nicholas Serota asked CK WHITTEN EST her to lunch to request her help in expanding JA Tate’s African American art collection. ‘That’s when I started thinking about it systematically. E, COURTESY THE I thought, “OK, maybe I can make a difference AT here.”That was really an “Aha!” moment for me.’ Joyner, who founded a marketing firm in CK WHITTEN EST San Francisco, is a trustee of the Tate Americas JA Foundation, the Art Institute of Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) WHITTEN: © and sits on the steering committee of the newly founded Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, and lent works to the show. ‘It was one of life’s experiencing in the art world today around the never abandoned the idea of being involved in American curator at the Metropolitan Museum and insisted on Black artists’ right to resist social which aims to diversify art-world infrastructures. most rewarding experiences,’ she notes. ‘I decided high visibility of Black artists I think owes the the arts. ‘I do take the collecting aspect of my of Art. Her first purchase in the 1990s was a narrative in their work, is one of her heroes. In 2017 she joined the board of the J Paul Getty that if there is a heaven for Pam Joyner, it was fact of its existence to ‘Soul of a Nation’,’ she says. life really seriously. I’m retired from business, representational gouache by acclaimed artist Joyner and Giuffrida consider Lewis’ 1969 Trust and within two years the Getty Research Gallery 12,where all of those abstract works were.’ Joyner was always passionate about the arts. so I run this like a business,’she says. Jacob Lawrence, but at that stage her motivation painting Afternoon, an exuberant expanse of Institute announced a $5m (£3.7m) African She and her husband gifted Sam Gilliam’s ‘Drape’ Growing up in Chicago, she was ‘a poster child The Joyner-Giuffrida collection counts around was simply filling walls. Soon afterwards, she fell brushmarks dancing on a vibrant yellow ground, American Art History Initiative, as well as the painting Carousel Change (1970) to Tate and have for early arts education’. Her parents, both 400 works of art from the 1940s to the present, in love with Richard Mayhew’s luscious melting as the lynchpin of their collection. ‘Everyone RK, NY acquisition of Los Angeles-based artist Betye promised the museum Jack Whitten’s black teachers, were born in the Jim Crow Deep South comprising mostly painting and some sculpture. landscapes and her interest shifted towards from Frank Bowling to Sam Gilliam, to Jack YO Saar’s archives. Joyner’s activism is two-pronged, triangular Homage to Malcolm X (1970), currently and experienced harsh segregation.When they About half the collection is spread between their abstraction, an ideological as much as aesthetic Whitten to Al Loving, that whole generation, focusing on acquisitions and scholarship. hanging in their living room. The gifts are a migrated north to the promised land of Chicago, San Francisco home and their house in Sonoma decision. She became attracted to those African points to Norman Lewis as their inspiration and ‘It’s not that exhibitions and programming are reward to the curators, she says, ‘for doing that they wanted their daughter to obtain a rich [north of San Francisco, where they offer a American artists pursuing abstraction in the face direct mentor,’ says Joyner. ‘Norman gave these not important, but what is permanent are works scholarship, for highlighting careers that should education. Between ballet and music lessons, residency for artists and curators]. Some 50 of criticism from Black leaders, who accused artists confidence that they could do what they SENFELD GALLERY LLC, NEW in the collection and works on view. So, if there’s have been highlighted very many years ago’. she would slip into the Art Institute of Chicago works are on loan at any time. In 2016, the couple them of selling out to the white establishment felt compelled to do when the environment said RO a show and there’s work in it that you’ve lent or As well as introducing myriad talented and and gaze at Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon published Four Generations: The Joyner/Giuffrida and demanded they represent legible, Black that Black artists aren’t supposed to paint donated, what supports that permanence is the neglected African American artists to a broad on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-86). But her Collection of Abstract Art, with contributions subject matter. ‘Not only is abstraction radical, abstraction.’The couple has sought to capture SON WYCHE JA : scholarship,’ she explains. Joyner was closely audience, the show wove together narratives parents were devastated when Joyner decided to from museum directors, curators and scholars. it’s subversive because you just couldn’t get any the narrative arc of key artists’ careers, collecting TO RTESY MICHAEL COU involved in the ground-breaking exhibition of different groupings and debates around take time out from her undergraduate studies at The book effectively became the catalogue for an acknowledgement for doing that work; in fact, pieces that exemplify every phase of Lewis’ work, ‘Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power’, abstraction, Black identity and Black creativity Dartmouth College to pursue professional ballet, acclaimed three-year touring exhibition that told the work was derided. I’m a bit of a contrarian for instance. Similarly, they have bought across which opened at Tate Modern in 2017 and at a time of social and political upheaval, funding herself by waiting tables in New York. an intergenerational story about abstraction’s myself,’admits Joyner, ‘so I admire people who British artist Bowling’s six-decade practice. travelled around museums in America until demonstrating there was no overarching ‘Black To their relief, Joyner discovered she was a evolution into a tool for social change. have the courage of their convictions in that way.’ ‘We own pretty much every series.I think he’s one E OF NORMAN LEWIS, AT August 2020. Joyner accompanied the curators art’ aesthetic.And it continues to have profound ‘mediocre’ ballerina and instead went to Harvard Joyner was encouraged to start collecting Norman Lewis, who was a founder of the of the greatest living painters so it’s been really © EST Mark Godfrey and Zoé Whitley on studio visits reverberations. ‘So much of the moment we are Business School to get her MBA, although she by Lowery Stokes Sims, the first African Spiral collective of African American artists important to us to represent that career,’ she says. ‘Not only is abstraction RK/JOYNER GIUFFRIDA COLLECTION, SAN FRANCISCO. PHO radical, it’s subversive YO because you just couldn’t get acknowledgement for doing that work’ Pamela J Joyner /ARTIMAGE 2020 CS DA LING.ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, BOW © FRANK BEASLEY (OVERLEAF): © KEVIN BEASLEY.IMAGE COURTESY THE ARTIST AND CASEY KAPLAN, NEW 40 Spring 2021 Art Quarterly Art Quarterly Spring 2021 41 AQ.Spring21.Collectors.Joyner.FINALse2.indd 40 08/02/2021 23:13 AQ.Spring21.Collectors.Joyner.FINALse2.indd 41 09/02/2021 16:42 Kevin Beasley, The Reunion, 2018 (front view shown below, back view shown right) CREDIT LINE IN HERE CREDIT LINE IN HERE CREDIT LINE IN HERE CREDIT LINE IN HERE 42 Spring 2021 Art Quarterly Art Quarterly Spring 2021 43 AQ.Spring21.Collectors.Joyner.FINALse2.indd 42 08/02/2021 23:14 AQ.Spring21.Collectors.Joyner.FINALse2.indd 43 10/02/2021 11:37 Left: Richard Mayhew, increasingly appeared in the collection.And she who is not a natural fit for the collection but was a ‘magnificent’ work that ended up being Good Morning, 2000; and her husband have expanded their collecting is critical to the art-historical narrative, Joyner ‘maybe 10ft by 15ft [3m × 4.5m]’, weighing about below: Virginia Jaramillo, in the past 10 years to include artists from the says: ‘She’s a little bit like eating one potato chip.