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historical notes
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The hip-hop super producer Kasseem Dean, better known by his stage-name Swizz Beatz, and his wife, Alicia Keys, are passionate art collectors. Their holdings have come to be known as the Dean Collection, which includes more than 1000 works from a range of artists, including Kehinde Wiley, KAWS, Jeffrey Gibson, Ansel Adams, Lorna Simpson, Derrick Adams, Mickalene Thomas, and Nina Chanel Abney. The couple has commissioned artists like Reginald Sylvester II to make portraits of their children. The collection is dynamic and ever-growing, with newly acquired work regularly uploaded for easy viewing on the Dean Collection’s Instagram account, where followers can see works such as Henry Taylor’s Cornerstone (2016–19), which depicts a homeless man on the streets of Los Angeles holding up a sign asking for food, or Paul Anthony Smith’s So What (2016), a vision of a colorful Caribbean carnival scene. |
