How I Started Collecting Black Art

A Love Story

I purchased my first piece of fine art in 2016 for $6,000.

It was a lot of money for me at the time, and I really didn’t have any business spending it on a luxury good. Especially since I was broke.

I had recently graduated with my Ph.D. from Brown University, and I was about to move to Los Angeles to start my new job as an Assistant Professor at UCLA. I was broke all summer in between grad school and starting my job. But when I got my first check that August, right before moving cross country, I copped my first piece.

“Blossomed” by Charly Palmer. 40 x 30 acrylic on canvas

I spent that in-between summer of 2016 in Atlanta living for free at my parents house. Early on a friend dragged me to this poetry event against my will that was hosted at some art studio. I really didn’t want to go—because I hate poetry. This particular event over-delivered on my expectations. The vociferous poet held a packed studio of 75-or-so people hostage; reading long ass poem after poem, with no end in sight. Like a preacher in the old Black church, the righteous poet kept pretending to wrap it up. Only to double back twice.

Worst part of it all was that the host seated me in the front. Right next to the unruly poet.

The only thing I could do to survive was to leave my body and go elsewhere, lest I start making Tamar Braxton-esque facial expressions during the vengeful poet’s performance. So I started to focus on the art on the walls.

Instantly something happened to me. It was a moment of simultaneous mutual recognition and intrigue. The art was literally dripping Black. The pieces were beautiful, irreverent, and completely accessible to me.

That was the first time that art stirred my soul. In that moment, I decided to become an art collector. Problem was, I ain’t know shit about art, nor how to approach “collecting” as a practice and an investment.

Once the pulpit poet let their captive audience go, everyone started eating, mixing, and mingling. Not me. I was glued to the walls of the studio, literally falling in love with the art that was so clearly created just for me. At some point a tall, dark, deep voiced-ed man, Dark Skinned, approached me and asked: “You like this art?” To which I replied: “Yes. It says in one painting what it takes me five years of research and 250 pages to express in a book.” He nodded kind of disinterestedly, and walked away.

“Chain Reaction” by Charly Palmer. 40 x 30 acrylic on canvas

So now I’m hooked, but I needed to learn everything about art collecting. In the abstract I knew that art was an investment. Jay-Z told us so. But I didn’t understand how to go about doing it. Should I try to buy from a gallery or directly from the artist? What really is the difference between an original, a reproduction, or a print? Why should that matter? Why does some art cost so much money? Is it Black art, or art created by Black people? How and why exactly does art appreciate in value? What is the ethics to buying and selling it?

I had mad questions.

On my way out, Dark Skinned was sitting on a stool at the door. He asked me if I was a collector. Intoxicated by the sensory overload of the last hour of hugging the studio walls, I responded ditzily: “Not yet, but I want to learn everything about Black art so I can be.” He handed me his card and said “send me an email.” It was in that instant I realized that it was his studio. I froze. He broke the awkward silence on my end by saying “and don’t take a long time.” O.K. Dark Skinned.

I went to his studio three to four times a week for the rest of the summer. We talked a little, but mostly he painted while I studied and asked questions. Dark Skinned assigned me book after book, starting with Halima Taha’s masterful Collecting African American Art: Works on Paper and Canvas; Samella Lewis and the African American Experience by Samella Lewis; and The Other Side of Color by David C. Driskell. There were many other books, and I devoured all of them.

I also spent a lot of time looking through his completed works. There were hundreds of them. All summer I read books about the history and traditions of Black Art and asked questions. In a short while I began to live in the luscious language of art. I was able to discuss form, style, voice, palate, medium. And over time, I began to be able to historically locate the works contemporary Black artists within the contexts of the rich traditions of those who came before them.

Days before moving my life to the West Coast at the end of Summer 2016, I purchased my very first piece of original art, “Emasculate”.

“Emasculate” by Charly Palmer. A 48 x 24 acrylic on panel

I was in the throes of writing my first book at the time, so Jim Crow racism was heavy on my mind. When I got to UCLA, I immediately hung the piece in my tiny office. It was my muse.

Since my purchase in 2016, the value of that piece has more than tripled. I continued to collect Palmer’s art, and I eventually branched out and began collecting works by other Black artists. I had developed my own taste and eventually became “a collector”.

As for Dark Skinned, better known as Charly Palmer: I loved his work so much, I ended up collecting him too.

karida.eth and charly palmer wedding, August 2020

Black Art is Love.