Kinsey Collection Exhibition at L.A.’s SoFi Stadium Features Works of Art by Black Painters, Sculptors, Photographers, and Writers

From left: Collectors Bernard and Shirley Kinsey and son Khalil. (COURTESY OF ADAM PANTOZZI/SOFI STADIUM)

The process of creating art, much like the Black experience in America, relies on an innate ability to see beyond the limits of circumstance and a belief that something beautiful will come through faith and commitment. When art and book collectors Bernard and Shirley Kinsey — founders of the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection — first met a then-emerging artist by the name of Samuel Dunson in 1999, they commissioned an oil painting from him, simply because they delighted in his style. What would emerge the following year is a piece called The Cultivators, depicting a family confidently navigating a field of books.

“We use it as our lead image, or logo, because this young brother saw that in us, that we were about sharing and cultivating knowledge,” says the couple’s son, Khalil Kinsey, GM and chief curator of the collection. Now, following an international tour underway since 2006, the Kinsey Collection is the first art show to be displayed at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium that doubly marks its first presence in a sports and entertainment venue.

The exhibition — which opened at SoFi in February and is currently extended through June — features more than 70 works of art by prominent Black artists (including Charles Ethan Porter, May Howard Jackson, Elizabeth Catlett, Sam Gilliam, Ernie Barnes, and Romare Bearden), sculptures, photos, rare books and letters (from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X) and was curated in collaboration with historian Larry Earl. According to Kinsey, “It really does chronicle, in a chronological way, the evolution of African-American life in the United States through the lens of artistic contribution.”