As part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ recent announcement of awards granted to arts organizations across the United States, the Knoxville Museum of Art was one of several local entities receiving significant grants in support of specific activities. The KMA received a $40,000 grant for the exhibition Beauford Delaney: Through the Unusual Door, which will open February 7, 2020 and run through May 10, 2020, with an accompanying catalogue. Also receiving grants locally were the Big Ears Festival in the amount of $20,000 to support artist and exhibition costs of the Festival, and Knox County in the amount of $10,000 to support the annual Children’s Festival of Reading.
The Delaney exhibition will include more than 40 paintings, works on paper, and letters that will examine the 35-year relationship between Delaney and writer James Baldwin that reveals how their intellectual exchange affected the creative output and worldview of each.
KMA Executive Director David Butler indicated the importance of this exhibition.
“Beauford Delaney: Through the Unusual Door” is one of the most important and ambitious exhibitions the museum has ever organized. It represents a first opportunity to showcase our rich Delaney holdings—the KMA owns more Delaney works than any public institution in the world—in the context of significant works on loan from collections across the country and through the lens of Delaney’s long relationship with writer and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin. As an institution that celebrates the rich and diverse visual legacy of East Tennessee, we are immensely proud and honored to focus the world’s attention on the most important artist Knoxville ever produced.”
