“We thought it was important to look at 21st-century contemporary artists,” Pollard says. “We wanted to reframe it as contemporary African American artists and their work and the legacy that they’re carrying on from ‘Two Centuries’ and [artists who] had different approaches to their art and different approaches to the idea of creation.”

Black Art devotes some of its running time to Black art collectors and those trying to preserve its heritage. One of them, notably, is Kasseem Dean, a.k.a. Swizz Beatz, the musician, DJ, rapper and record producer who has created the Dean Collection space (he and his wife, singer-songwriter Alicia Keys, also plan on opening a performing arts center in Macedon, New York).

“One of the reasons that we were so attracted to Swizz Beatz is he’s contemporary; he’s hip, the young audience would probably understand who he is and gravitate toward him,” Pollard says. “And knowing that people like him, Sean Puffy Combs, Jay-Z and Beyonce are collecting art, I think would be an opportunity—a window to open up to younger people to sort of say, ‘Let’s go to these museums.’ It gives people an opportunity to see that people of their generation—what I call the hip-hop generation—are into artwork.”

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