Collecting is a passion that often starts close to home then branches out. This panel traces the paths that collectors, galleries and collections have taken from supporting local artists from the African diaspora towards developing projects internationally. Catherine Sarr and Julie Crooks reflect on the works that initially impacted them and how this led to other connected interests and causes. How do they hope to support the flow of works and ideas across the global channels of the diaspora?
Catherine Sarr, CEO of ALMASIKA and Co-Founder SARR Prize, Chicago
CCH Pounder, actress, New Orleans
Julie Crooks, Curator/Head Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, Art Gallery of Ontario
Moderator: Larry Ossei-Mensah, Curator and Co-Founder of ARTNOIR, New York
Catherine Sarr is the Founder and CEO of ALMASIKA, a fine jewelry brand rooted in symbols, shapes, and stories that transcend cultural boundaries. Through the Sarr Collection, Sarr and her husband, Mamadou-Abou Sarr, support emerging artists notably with the Sarr Prize in partnership with Les Beaux-Arts de Paris, and a residency program in the United States in partnership with Villa Albertine. Sarr is actively involved in many philanthropic and civic activities. She is a board member of the Terra Foundation for American Art, a member of the Palais de Tokyo International Board, of the Committee on Arts of Africa and of the Woman’s Board of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2022, Sarr, a French national, was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) by the French Government. She lives in Chicago with her husband and children.
Actress CCH Pounder’s collection contains over 500 works of art from the Caribbean and African Diaspora. Originally from Georgetown Guyana Pounder and her husband, the late Boubacar Koné, built the Musée Boribana in 1992, the first privately owned contemporary museum located in Senegal, which they gifted to that nation in 2014. Pounder has loaned numerous pieces to institutions including Xavier University, Kent State and also for exhibits at Somerset House in England and The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, MI.
Pounder serves on the Advisory Board of the African Millennium Foundation and was a founding member of Artists for a New South Africa. Recent accolades include the Visionary Leadership Award from MOAD in San Francisco; the Sweet Arts Award from the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, the National Urban League’s 2017 Women of Power Award.
Julie Crooks is Curator, Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Since joining the AGO in 2017, she has curated several significant exhibitions, including Free.Black.North (2017), Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires (2018), Fragments of Epic Memory (2021) and Moridja Kitenge Banza And there was Light (2021).She has actively participated in bringing works by Black artists into the collection, including Dawoud Bey, Paul Kodjo, Marc Padeau, Ming Smith, Malick Sidibé, and most notably the Montgomery Collection of Caribbean Photographs.
Larry Ossei-Mensah uses art as a forum to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around us. He has organized exhibitions globally featuring artists such as Firelei Báez, Amoako Boafo, Arthur Jafa and Ebony G. Patterson. In 2021 Ossei-Mensah curated Boafo’s debut museum solo exhibition, ‘Soul of Black Folks’, at Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. With Rehema Barber, Ossei-Mensah co-curated ‘Unmasking Masculinity for the 21st Century’ currently on view at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art. Ossei-Mensah is the co-founder of ARTNOIR, a global collective designed to celebrate the artistry and creativity of Black and Brown artists worldwide.
The Art Basel Miami Beach 2022 Conversations program is curated by Emily Butler.
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