The Politics of Art - Paul R. Jones donates collection of Black art to University of Delaware

Black Issues in Higher Education, March 29, 2001 by Robin V. Smiles

Paul R. Jones chose to donate his extensive collection of African American art to the University of Delaware, but not without making sure an HBCU would benefit.

On more than one occasion Paul R. Jones has been entangled in some of America's most politically and racially charged events of the 20th century. At the height of Jim Crow, he was denied admission to the University of Alabama's law school on the basis of race. During the dawning of the civil rights movement, he weathered controversy by hosting Black and White leaders from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in his Birmingham restaurant. In the late 1960s, he helped mediate the Watts riots in Los Angeles as a community relations specialist for the government. And just months before Watergate, he was in charge of rounding up the Black vote during the campaign to re-elect Nixon.

And just as he has mixed business and politics so strategically in his professional life, the 72-year-old Jones has ventured to do the same with his private collection of 1,000 pieces of African American art. The collection includes sculptures, paintings and photographs by Black artists such as Charles White, Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Selma Burke, David Driskell and Herman "Kofi" Bailey and is currently being appraised to assess its monetary value.

"I love my art and I am passionate about it, but I also try not to divorce the business of art -- the politics of art," says Jones.

The politics of art?

Where others might view a genre such as African American art in isolated grandeur, for a conscious collector such as Jones it is more important to place that glory in the broader context of American art. The result is a chance to put African American artists in, as Jones describes, "their rightful place."

Such politics lies behind his recent decision to donate his collection to the University of Delaware. The president of the university, Dr. David P. Roselle, made the announcement Feb. 14. The university has a strong program in American art, as well as one of the top art conservation programs. Those two elements were key to Jones' quest to find a home that would not only benefit his collection, but African American artists, students and scholars.

ART AS A TEACHING TOOL

An Atlanta businessman since 1978, Jones initially wanted his collection to be housed at one of the historically Black colleges in that area. The Howard University alumnus envisioned a setting complete with a curatorial staff and the resources to make the collection readily available for both scholars and students. But the area schools were not able to promise the resources needed to both preserve the collection and utilize it as a teaching tool. As one college president said to Jones, they would not be able to "digest the collection properly."

After exhausting his search among the Atlanta-area HBCUs, Jones turned to the University of Delaware, with whom he had established a working relationship over the past nine years. The University of Delaware had put together an exhibition of his collection in 1993. And in 1998, they sponsored an exhibition of photographs by P.H. Polk from the Jones collection.

The story behind the initial meeting between Jones and the university has become local legend around the Newark campus. As the story goes, an art history professor from the university had come to Atlanta to serve on the committee for a doctoral student at Emory University. During the trip, he visited Jones in his home, where the collection was on display. The professor saw the collection, and according to Jones, "in a matter of 10 minutes" was on the phone with folks back at Delaware trying to arrange for an exhibition.

Belena Chapp, director of museums at the University of Delaware, was on the receiving end of that first telephone call. "I am glad I said yes," says Chapp.

The two exhibitions were intimate projects that allowed Jones and the University of Delaware to gain a mutual respect.

"What captured Jones' attention was the way that students were involved in those projects," says Chapp. "From undergraduates to graduate students -- art history to sociology students, the university utilized students as colleagues in the museum. We gave them an opportunity to conduct original research and to make contributions in areas that have not been delved into."

Chapp describes the university gallery as a teaching museum. "Students are able to work directly with art objects, and to create in the realm of their experience a tool for communication and learning," she says. "The goal is to teach students not only to look, but to see -- to understand the art in a greater sociological context."

For Jones, the university's commitment to using art as a teaching tool was key to his decision to donate the collection.

"They were committed to renovating space immediately and having some of the collection always on exhibition," says Jones. They also discussed the possibility of a new building in the future for the collection.

At present the collection will be the centerpiece of the university's new Center for the Study of American Material Culture, which focuses on interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to research and training.