In 2010, the art historian and collector William S. Arnett came to the realization that the self-taught artists from the Deep South that he was collecting and writing about for more than 40 years weren’t making it into major museum collections. To place the works nationwide, he established The Souls Grown Deep Foundation.
“The mission of the foundation is to document, preserve and promote the understanding of Southern African-American vernacular art,” says Paul Arnett, the Director of the Atlanta-based Souls Grown Deep Foundation. “It’s ultimately traceable to the ways my father began his collecting activities in this field in the 70s. He wanted to document not simply individual artists, or masterworks but to put together a panorama picture of an entire civilization in the Deep South that had not really been understood in a coherent way.” Paul adds, “He collected as an archivist would and not simply in the way a regular old art lover would.”
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Joe Minter, One-Wheel Cycle, 1994, 30 x 77 x 42, William S. Arnett Collection of Souls Grown Deep Foundation. Photo by Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studios
The foundation takes its name from Langston Hughes’ early 20th century poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, aiming to add Southern Black voices into the annals of art history. The mission belies the foundation’s larger goal of telling a more complete and complicated visual story of America. The foundation holds over 1,200 works by some 150 Southern Black artists. The collection includes works of painting, sculpture, assemblage and photographs that document site-specific works found throughout the rural areas of the American South.
Lonnie Holley, Not Olympic Rings, 1994, 50 ¾ x 27 x 24, William S. Arnett Collection of Souls Grown Deep Foundation. Photo by Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studios
In the 1980s, William Arnett discovered Alabama-based Thornton Dial and eventually worked with the artist to bring visibility to Dial’s prolific oeuvre. Dial’s work now sits in the collections of major museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art as a symbol of Southern artistic practice. The Souls Grown Deep Foundation collection also include works by Lonnie Holley, Louisiana Bendolph, Mary T. Smith, and the female artist collective Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers. The foundation and Arnetts have played a key role in helping the artists recognize that their work is “Art” that deserves to shown as a representation of the black experience.
Louisiana Bendolph, “Housetop” Variation, 2003, 98 x 68, William S. Arnett Collection of Souls Grown Deep Foundation. Photo by Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studios
“We have immense belief in this work not only in its significance as art but also in the importance it has in educating all Americans,” explains Arnett to The Creators Project. “We intend to help this work in our collection make its way to the major and cutting edge museum collections of the world because that’s ultimately where it belongs.” He adds, “We don’t see ourselves as the final resting place for this work. We would like to see major exhibitions done of this work in the same way that you can do exhibitions of cubism or abstract expressionism.”
Mary T. Smith, Untitled, 1987, 37 ½ x 30, William S. Arnett Collection of Souls Grown Deep Foundation. Photo by Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studios
To learn more about The Souls Grown Deep Foundation, click here.
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Artists, Movements, and Exhibitions to Celebrate This Black History Month
A Requiem for Thornton Dial, American Artist
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