CLEVELAND — Black History Month’s national theme is African Americans and the Arts this year. In Cleveland, Ernestine and Malcolm Brown set a standard. They opened what’s said to be the country’s first black-owned, for-profit gallery devoted to African American art.
Their daughter Rhonda K. Brown, the City of Cleveland’s first senior strategist for arts, culture, and the creative economy, said her life became anchored in the arts at an early age. Her parents are no longer living, but she’s continuing their legacy by bolstering art and culture in Cleveland.
“Art has the ability to transcend all boundaries,” Brown said during an interview at city hall in between overseeing the installation of a new art exhibition. “What I love about bringing art to others is the narratives that the work shares and people being able to see themselves. No matter where they come from, no matter what their background, everybody is able to see and connect."
Brown’s role with the city is to support artists, increase opportunities to celebrate art and culture, attract people and money, and be a liaison between the public and Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration.
Last month, Brown and the city announced its Transformative Arts Fund. The $3 million grant program will help Cleveland artists and partners in the city create public art projects.
"Every great city is anchored with incredible arts and this city is no different,” Brown said.
She credits her parents for igniting a passion for art. They owned the Malcolm Brown Gallery in Shaker Heights from 1980 to 2011. She said her parents hosted African American artists from around the country to bring exposure to their masterpieces. She said the gallery was a place for conversation and education.
"I have a very strong memory of lots of people coming to be in our gallery, coming to experience African American masters from all over the country and the diaspora to see their work (and) to learn,” Brown said.
Brown shared photos of artists Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden, and Hughie Lee-Smith during their visits to Cleveland and her parents’ gallery.
"There's lots of African American Art now… all the auctions are flooded with African American artists,” Brown said. “In the 1980s to 2011, it was the opposite, and so my parents were really doing as much exhibiting as they were educating around African American art."
Brown said there was no better teacher than her father, who was an accomplished painter.
“He was the first African American member of the American Water College Society in the country in 1974,” Brown said. “I was the one out of me and my brothers that sat with my dad almost every night. I used to clean off his palette board, and he just kind of taught me with his very gentle way how to create.”
One of her dad’s paintings hangs on her office wall.
“What I love about this piece is are they in the city? Are they in the country?” Brown explained to News 5 Anchor Damon Maloney.
Lessons from her father and the family business paved the way for Brown to become an accomplished painter herself.
“Yes, the art seeped into me,” Brown said.
Her work can be found nationwide in galleries and other spaces, including Martha’s Vineyard, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Memphis.
Brown said the new art exhibition at city hall, Discover the Promise: Impact, Legacy & Perspective, celebrates artists with ties to Cleveland. It’s open now through May 25, 2024.
“You’ll see abstraction. You'll see portraiture. You'll see deeply connected narratives and also personal stories through the work,” Brown said.
She said it’s an exciting opportunity to showcase high-quality pieces from emerging, mid-career, and distinguished artists in a building that many only see as a place to take care of the “business of the day.”
Brown said that she wants to make her city and her parents proud with the new role.
"I think this is the completion of the circle that they started a long time ago in 1980,” she said.
