Like her career in theater, arts patron and costume designer Myrna Colley-Lee’s art collection developed from her emotional connection to the arts.
Baton Rouge residents can now reap the benefits of Colley-Lee’s artistic eye through “Reflections: African-American Life from the Myrna Colley-Lee Collection,” an exhibition on display at the LSU Museum of Art through Oct. 1.
The show includes a selection of 50 works from Colley-Lee’s broad collection, including a diverse range of fabricworks, collage, paintings and photography. Baton Rouge is the last stop for the exhibition, which has been on tour nationwide since spring 2013.
Colley-Lee began her career as an arts educator in North Carolina before deciding to pursue a life in theatre, working in set and costume design as a member of the Black Arts Movement beginning in the 1960s . Living among artists, Colley-Lee said she never set about collecting with a plan, but if she saw something she liked, and could afford it, she bought it.
She was unconsciously drawn to figurative works of Southern African-Americans and life, collecting diverse media and styles predominantly by African-American artists including Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett and Radcliffe Bailey.
Colley-Lee maintained her love of teaching and realized she could use her collection to educate the public about the successes of African-American artists, she said. She partnered with arts organization International Arts and Artists to bring the works to the public, and a visual story of African-American life in the South emerged.
The show’s underlying theme of southern life offers a point of familiarity that members of the Baton Rouge community can relate to and access, LSU Museum of Art curator Courtney Taylor said. Depictions of delta landscapes, shotgun houses and open bayous offer an entry point for art novices to connect with the works, she said.
“Whether you’re African-American or not, I think you can see yourself in the images depicted,” Taylor said. “You can see yourself in the houses that are here or the landscape that is here because we share this place and we share this environment that structures our lives.”
Aside from southern imagery, the show’s exploration of African-American identity in America is timely, Taylor said. Discussions about race relations in the United States have reached a fever pitch in recent years, and art can offer enough space from personal tensions to prompt deeper contemplation and constructive dialogue, she said.
Visual arts garner reactions from people, whether they hate the piece or love it, Colley-Lee said. Exploration of self and black identity is a common theme among the works in the exhibition, and seeing that exploration play out pushes people to explore the idea for themselves, she said.
“(The art) encourages the dialogue between what if and what is,” Colley-Lee said.
