How Atlanta-Based Curator Karen Comer Lowe Built Her Accessible Collection of Black Art
Portrait of Karen Comer Lowe with works by Mildred Thompson, Donald Locke, and Sheila Pree Bright. Courtesy of Karen Comer Lowe.
Bisa Butler, Forever, 2020. © Bisa Butler. Courtesy of Museum Associates/LACMA.
“All art collections start off small, [but] those small steps are vital to building a collection that fascinates and means something to you,” Karen Comer Lowe said to Artsy in late January. The Atlanta-based curator, educator, and art advisor is currently a curator in residence at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, and recently co-organized its presentation of “Black American Portraits,” on view through June 30th, along with museum director Liz Andrews and curator-at-large Christine Y. Kim.
With over two decades of experience, Comer Lowe’s art collection is a reflection of her curatorial practice as a key advocate of 20th-/21st-century art by artists of the Black diaspora. Projects include “African American Abstraction” (2000) at City Gallery East, which notably featured one of the first exhibitions to place the abstract works of Mildred Thompson and Frank Bowling in dialogue with one another. More recently, she organized the Atlanta stop on Hank Willis Thomas’s tour of his monumental outdoor sculpture All Power to All People (2022), a 28-foot-tall Afro pick with the Black Power salute painted on its handle.
Installation view of “Black American Portraits” at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, 2023. Photo by Michael Jensen. Courtesy of Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.
Comer Lowe’s interest in collecting began while she was a student at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She initially enrolled to pursue an art practice, but shifted gears to become an art historian, using her passion to unearth forgotten artists of the Black diaspora. It was this communal relationship with artists—going to artist shows, events, and pop-ups—that inspired her to collect her first artwork, by a former colleague, Chantée Benefield, upon graduating.
“This was before social media, so I had to find her. I called her…[and] bought a piece called Mambo. I still have it today and I will never sell it,” Comer Lowe said. “It was $250 and I paid for it over [installation] payments.” Mambo is a small abstract painting of various patterns interlocking with one another, overlaid on top of two silhouettes of Black femmes. The patterns resemble textile-based works from the South, like the quilts of the Gee’s Bend.
Fahamu Pecou, installation view of Lowered, 2013. Courtesy of Karen Comer Lowe.
One of Comer Lowe’s proudest pieces in her collection is Fahamu Pecou’s Lowered, a work on paper that is partially made with coffee. Comer Lowe encountered the work after a studio visit with the artist. “I was just drawn strongly to this work. I was so excited about it…and was more intrigued by the work when I knew the process,” Comer Lowe said. She arranged to acquire one of the works from the series that, unbeknownst to her, was acquired by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. “It’s still exciting to me to know that I have the one [work] of a series that Crystal Bridges has.”
Comer Lowe’s various roles as an art advisor, curator, educator, and collector are not separate hats but part of her multidisciplinary approach to preserving and sharing work by artists of the Black diaspora. “Now that I am at Spelman, which focuses on women of color in the diaspora, [the work] I have collected since have all been by or about Black women,” Comer Lowe said. “And I even have been thinking about the older works that I’ve acquired prior to [Spelman] and deaccessioning them so that I can have a tighter focus on the collection to support Black women.”
Sheila Pree Bright, A Quiet Moment with Stacey Abrams (Governor Race 2018), 2018. Courtesy of Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.
Comer Lowe’s tenure at Spelman began in the summer of 2022, and her curatorial work can be seen currently in the presentation of the much lauded exhibition “Black American Portraits,” which first showed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2021–22 and features new additions for its Atlanta stop. “There is a Sheila Pree Bright, which I’m really excited about as I have Bright in my collection,” Comer Lowe explained. She also expressed enthusiasm for the addition of sculptures by Augusta Savage and a newly commissioned work by Calida Rawles. “Because we are here at Spelman College, it makes it feel even more necessary because we are exposing these works to students and are able to teach them,” she noted.
“Portraiture is a way of defining ourselves [outside of] others defining what Blackness is. I think it’s wonderful to highlight…through the Black lens of defining Black people,” Comer Lowe continued. “This exhibition is really a history of Black portraiture. It’s a who’s who of the contemporary art space (like Amy Sherald, Bisa Butler, Kehinde Wiley)…it’s exciting to see it all in one place,” she added.
Calida Rawles, Thy Name We Praise, 2023. Courtesy of Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.
Comer Lowe’s collection and practice are a testament to community bonds and the support of emerging Black artists. “I can’t put down $100,000 for a work of art. I work in the field,” she said. With that in mind, Comer Lowe recommits her focus by using her resources to support emerging women artists of the Black diaspora. This includes the painter Ariel Dannielle, whose paintings draw inspiration from Kerry James Marshall and Alice Neel to create paintings that celebrate Black joy as resistance. Comer Lowe also acquired When Have You Known Wholeness to Be a Triflin Matter by painter Ebony Marshon, which features a cropped view of a woman’s head wearing a headscarf and staring aimlessly away from the viewer.
“As a curator I am exposed to so much great art,” she said. “I see art that moves me and I want people to understand that collecting is not just for the wealthy. You can collect at all levels.”
Correction: An earlier version misstated the closing date of “Black American Portraits” and inaccurately rendered a quote indicating that Comer Lowe owns a work by Calida Rawles. The text has been updated.
