Book celebrates Eileen Harris Norton’s visionary career as an art collector and focuses on artists of color, women and others

Viewing art engages our minds, emotions, senses and imagination, strengthening our mental health, expanding our worldview and helping to develop the empathy necessary to understand and appreciate others and our relationship with our environment. Collecting art highlights this emotional connection, especially when we engage with the artists and their work, observe their creative process and space, and understand and contextualize their path and creations.

Collecting art as a philanthropic endeavor, as an investment, or simply because we like what we see has value because expanding the market helps support living artists or preserve legacies. Regardless of how a collection begins or develops, its deeper value is inextricably linked to the collector’s mission and beliefs. While the way the greatest collectors move markets can help advance the careers of living artists, provided they are appropriately compensated, few change art history by highlighting the artists through a consummate and comprehensive approach guided by their own keen eye that looks beyond what constitutes markets at any given moment. Renowned art collector, social activist, art patron and Art+Practice Co-founder Eileen Harris Norton is an example of the latter.

“From the beginning, Eileen pursued collecting intellectually, with an intention and interest in the boundaries of ‘exclusion’ in art history and the gallery world. She chose to develop close relationships with many curators and artists here in the United States and abroad. I remember conversations with Eileen in the 1990s about which artists might captivate her, not to see who or what was ‘new,’ but from the perspective of her experience and insights,” writes acclaimed photographer and multimedia artist Lorna Simpson, whose work explores themes and ideas related to identity politics, in the foreword to the book and catalogue. All These Liberations: Female Artists in the Eileen Harris Norton Collection. “As far as I know, her interest in collecting and philanthropy began with artists and curators. Who better to have many discussions with in the 1990s than Thelma Golden, then a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City?”

We celebrate the work of artists of color, All these exemptions features work by a wide range of groundbreaking artists, including Sonia Boyce, Maya Lin, Julie Mehretu, Shirin Neshat, Adrian Piper, Faith Ringgold, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Sadie Barnette, Mona Hatoum, Ana Mendieta, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O’Grady, Amy Sherald, Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The 272-page hardcover was published in March by Yale University Press and is distributed by Marquand Books. It is available for $50.

Harris Norton began collecting art in 1976 and bought The admonishers (1976), a print by Los Angeles-based artist, graphic artist, cultural organizer, activist and art activist Ruth Waddy (1909-2003). Her mother, Rosalind Van Meter Harris, saw an advertisement in the Los Angeles Times Announcing a printmaking workshop by Waddy at the Museum of African American Art (MAAA), founded by Waddy and printmaker, painter, and historian Samella Lewis (1923-2022). The two women met Waddy at the workshop, which inspired them to purchase the work. The linoleum cut on vellum paper shows men, some with their arms raised, who, as the title suggests, appear to be preaching, while a woman wearing a head covering looks on.

“Of course I had seen art – like Picassos and Monets and all the French Impressionists – but to see a black artist in LA sitting there… We were standing back, but my mom said, ‘We need to talk to the lady,’ so we went over and said hello. My mom said, ‘You need to buy something.’ My mom worked at Thrifty and was a working person, and then there was this woman who was older than my mom sitting there making art. We were thrilled,” Harris Norton recalled in an interview with Golden, who is now director and chief curator of The Studio Museum in HarlemNew York City.

Harris Norton continues the mission of Waddy and Lewis, who had hoped to host an exhibition of local African-American artists, which Lewis described as a “civic and convivial” gathering. The exhibition never took place, but they formed a group called Art West Associated, which sought funding and planning for exhibitions and worked with black magazines such as Beingto help artists sell their prints.

In addition, Harris Norton continues to lead and inspire a culture of thoughtful, relevant, and future-proof art collecting. “Eileen’s collecting methods and patronage reflect her own sensitive aesthetic eye and are in tune with the many sociopolitical currents that have developed around the world in recent decades, often reflecting avant-garde impulses,” writes editor Taylor Renee Aldridge in the introduction.

“Eileen, thank you for entrusting me with this endeavor. It has been a real pleasure to get to know your collection better and to work with you on this endeavor. I really appreciate your spirit, your generosity and all that you have done for so many careers that have had a great impact on my own career as well. So thank you,” Aldridge said at a cocktail reception on May 31 at Good behavior at MADE Hotel in Manhattan, attended by distinguished guests including Mark Bradford, Pamela Joyner, Sherald, Susan Cahan, Jordan Weber and Fatimah Tuggar.

The evening before the elegant cocktail party, Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justicemoderated a conversation between Golden and Harris Norton.

“I wouldn’t be here without Eileen,” Golden said at the Ideas at Ford conversation. “We can’t look at this moment when we’re all excited about being able to go to museums around the world and see the work of black artists, women artists, queer artists that used to be known as regional, without thinking about the way Eileen collected – and seeing that as the norm today. We need to understand how that happened.”