Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys Focus on Collecting African-American Art

In May 2018, in a buzzing salesroom at Sotheby’s New York, the hammer fell on Kerry James Marshall’s Past Times (1997), a sprawling masterpiece that surveys a contemporary pastoral scene in which black figures are seen picnicking, boating, golfing, and playing croquet. Not long after, the price—$21.1 million, the highest figure for a work by a living African-American artist at auction—set off a fierce debate. Were black artists suddenly too trendy and recent rises in attention an overcorrection for generations of...read more.