At The Diggs Gallery, 'A Legacy Reunited' And The Art Of Friendship

An art exhibition opening in Winston-Salem Friday is, at first glance, a substantial collection of prints encompassing the last five centuries. But it's much more.

In fact, the exhibit reflects a friendship that began with one of the city's most well-known families. A Legacy Reunited: The Gordon and Copey Hanes Print Collection is opening at The Diggs Gallery, an African-American art gallery on the campus of Winston-Salem State University. Legacy unites prints donated by the Hanes family to both The Diggs Gallery and Salem Academy and College.

For ages, prints like these were the digital photographs of their day: detailed renderings of images that could be easily mass-produced and freely distributed. Professor Lisandra Estevez says the breadth and depth of the Hanes prints reflects their innovative spirit as collectors.

"You'll start to see that they'll choose prints that have deeper passages of ink. They become more atmospheric, so visually you can actually see some of their preferences," Estevez says. "And they were very, I think, astute collectors and very knowledgeable about art history."

Diggs Gallery Director Endia Beal says that is thanks, in part, to the decades-long friendship between Gordon Hanes and artist and the Gallery's namesake, James Thackeray Diggs, Jr.

"When you're friends with artists, what happens is you get to know about other artists. So it's not a coincidence that we have a Selma Burke, or a Melvin Edwards," Diggs says. "I mean, they had a juried exhibition that basically created our public art collection on the campus of Winston-Salem State University."

Visitors move through the collection chronologically, experiencing prints by Rembrandt, Picasso, Romare Bearden, Robert Rauschenberg and others. The exhibit will run through Sept. 20th.