VMFA’s GIANTS brings fans of the arts close to the works of legends

GIANTS at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts brings some of the works from music stars Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz to Virginia’s landmark museum. The exhibit opened in November with a visit from the musicians.

Dozens of screaming fans greeted the two superstars in the early days of the exhibit opening. The pair of musical superstars, real names Alicia and Kasseem Dean, spoke with kids before they visited the exhibit, now open through the spring.

And while my second visit to the exhibit may have been less raucous, it was still just as thrilling. Featuring 130 works by 40 Black artists from Africa, Europe, the United States, and the Caribbean, GIANTS offers a glimpse into modern works that highlight a myriad of social issues through painting, sculpture and photos.

Here’s Valerie Cassel Oliver, the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, describing the two massive portraits of the collectors painted by Kehinde Wiley that open the exhibit.

“They’re very rich and vibrant, very true to Kehinde Wiley’s practice quoting, in terms of gesture, European standards of grandeur and status,” she said of the towering paintings that pose the Deans in the Western European painting styles historically reserved for the ruling class.

The exhibit also has a unique audio angle: the Deans created a playlist of the songs they would listen to while viewing the art.

"Music, as you can imagine, is a big part of their lives," she said. "It is a mode of expression as easy and simple and essential to the Deans. They wanted audiences to experience the art in the same way."

A series of photos by Kwame Brathwaite from the 50s and 60s highlights the beauty and glamour of Black women taken in an era where such beauty was often reserved for white folks.

"It became a celebration of pan African cultural and beautiful aesthetics," she said of the portraits featuring natural hairstyles. "It captures the shifting dynamics of Black life in the United States."

The non-fiction works of Time Life photographer Gordon Parks, taken as Black communities began to make their own foothold in culture and the civil rights movement, highlights an experience often underrepresented.

"The movement toward Black communities becoming self-sustaining, the push towards the Black power movement which has a socioeconomic movement to it," she said. "You see the working class, the dignity in the working class. The dignity in an elderly Black couple on their way to church."

Among more abstracted images are lead images for the collection, 'Deliverance' by Amy Sherald which shows two black men on motorbikes rearing up their front wheels.

"There's a kind of joy and freedom and skill in these images," Cassel Oliver said, noting she had local street bike gang the Broad Street Bullies involved in the gallery's opening night.

"In one hand they're road warriors, but they're so skillful at this," she said. "It's so striking."

The sprawling gallery explores many themes and stories, often through the lens of the Black experience. Cassel Oliver says that lens is more important now than ever.

“It’s essential to understanding the presence, both historically and contemporarily, that these artists exist, they’re doing amazing things, and what they have to say is really profound for all of us,” she said.

Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys runs through March 2026.

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.