Throughout their over 40-year marriage, collectors Bernard and Shirley Kinsey have celebrated their heritage by seeking unusual souvenirs. From an early version of the Emancipation Proclamation to correspondence between Malcolm X and Alex Haley, the couple has amassed a trove of rare artifacts and artwork that spans four centuries and embodies the hardships and triumphs of the African American experience. Originally housed in a wine cellar in the Kinsey’s Los Angeles home, items from their private collection form The Kinsey Collection.
The feature picture is called “The Faces of My People” by Margaret Burroughs b.1917 and made of woodcut on paper. The Faces of My People Margaret Burroughs (b. 1917) Woodcut on paper
Over 100 artifacts, documents, and artwork spanning some 400 years of history will be on display in NMAAHC’s exhibition The Kinsey Collection: Shared Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey — Where Art and History Intersect. Select items from the extraordinary collection of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey, originally housed in their Los Angeles home, will illustrate the hardships and triumphs of the African American experience.
Organized by the Bernard and Shirley Kinsey Foundation for the Arts and Education. The exhibition will honor the lives of famous African Americans such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as those whose history is not as well known. The Kinsey Collection will use objects including slave shackles, photographs, and written documents from the periods of slavery through the Civil Rights movement.
