A curated portion of the art collection of actress CCH Pounder and her late husband Boubacar Koné is on display at Philadelphia’s African American Museum and will be on display until March 2, 2025.
WHYY News reported that the exhibit features 40 pieces, with Pounder, who has previously donated to museums like Detroit’s Charles Wright and Chicago’s DuSable Black History Museum, collaborating with the Philadelphia African American Museum’s VP of Curatorial Services, Delay Duckett, to curate the collection.
Duckett described viewing Pounder’s collection at her New Orleans home as an incredible experience, but one that posed a unique challenge: selecting which pieces to feature in the museum exhibit.
“It was a feast for the eyes as we walked through. The biggest problem that I had with it was trying to narrow down what we might bring to Philadelphia,” Ducket told the outlet. “To live with artwork on that scale and that beauty — just being in that space was just amazing. You can’t leave uninspired.”
The exhibit, entitled “Shared Vision,” focuses on figures, paintings and mixed media that depicts Black bodies as sites of tension, exploring concepts related to history, identity, and relationships. As Duckett explained, portraits of figurative works create the opportunity for the work to tell a story to the viewers.
“Historically, portraits of figurative works both real and imagined signal the power importance or virtue in their subjects,” Ducket told WHYY. “When you walk into a museum, particularly a Black museum, and experience portraits like these their power radiates over you and tells the viewer their story.”
Pounder traces her love for portraits back to her youth in England, where she frequently visited museums across Europe, including the Louvre in France. She recalled that these institutions rarely showcased portraits or representations of Black people. Often, she felt a desire to reach out and touch the art, but it was always just out of reach.
“I remember at the very top of the Louvre, tiny 20-inch-by 30-inch portraits of Arabs and ‘exotics’ were up there, and the Mona Lisa and all the other fabulous people were down below,” Pounder told the outlet. “I thought, ‘How do you get those people down here?’ That’s probably where my thinking was when I started.”
Pounder also said her
decision to take up acting and dabble in art collecting was influenced by a mentor at England’s Hastings College. “I really took it to heart and I literally said, ‘Great! For the first half of the century I’ll be an actor, and then for the second half I’ll be an artist,’” Pounder recalled. “It actually doesn’t really happen like that. Life changes.”In 2022, Pounder talked with ArtNet about the process she uses to determine which pieces of art she purchases.
“Very rarely do I buy a work without some interaction with the artists. The pandemic months improved my internet skills and now I correspond with and have text relationships with artists around the world who I collect, such as Alex Peter Idoko, who lives and works in Nigeria,” Pounder said.
She continued, “More than collecting, the way an artist sees fascinates me. An artwork is an interpretation of life from an emotional or intellectual or ancestral or spiritual inspiration that is translated onto the canvas, or hewn in wood, bent in steel, blown in glass, beaded, or collaged. Being able to feast one’s eyes on these gestures is why I collect and share with those who may only see…an image.”
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