Memories & Inspiration: The Kerry and C. Betty Davis Collection of African American Art

This catalog accompanies the IA&A exhibition Memories and Inspiration: The Kerry and C. Betty Davis Collection of African American Art.

Memories & Inspiration presents sixty-seven works from a body of art amassed over thirty-five years. Kerry Davis, a retired mailman, and Betty Davis, a former television news producer, have foregone many comforts to live with drawings, paintings, prints, and sculpture as their principal luxuries.  Their collection includes works by Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Ernest T. Crichlow, Sam Gilliam, Loïs Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, and Alma Thomas, but Kerry and Betty do not search exclusively for well-known and/or documented artists. Rather, they focus on “the importance of gathering and preserving a spectrum of approaches to the black image in order to console the psyche and contribute to a more authentic articulation of the self.”

Catalog features the essay “Art Collecting as Activism” by Amalia Amaki, PhD., as well as a Foreword by Kerry Davis.  Full color plates of all 67 works in the exhibition are included.