This Influential L.a. Collector Bought The Artists No One Else Would. The Art World Is Finally Catching Up

Few group person done much to style Los Angeles’ creation segment than Eileen Harris Norton.

The third-generation Californian, calved and raised adjacent Watts Towers successful South Los Angeles, bought her first artwork astatine nan Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, co-founded Art + Practice successful Leimert Park, and has spent 50 years collecting artists who were, successful galore cases, her friends and neighbors. She besides became a awesome unit down a procreation of depository curators who person systematically changed who and really institutions crossed nan state collect.

The metropolis now has an opportunity to prosecute pinch her bequest done an exhibition, “Destiny Is a Rose: The Eileen Harris Norton Collection,” astatine Hauser & Wirth successful downtown L.A. done August.

Featuring much than 80 useful — galore of which hung successful her location until precocious — nan show offers uncommon penetration into a renowned collector whose acquisitions are marked by sustained support for women artists, artists of colour and Southern California-based artists, and a belief successful creation arsenic an motor for acquisition and societal change.

Eileen Harris Norton grew up adjacent nan Watts Towers pinch a mother who took her to plentifulness of arts and civilization events. She later became 1 of nan astir influential collectors successful nan city.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

During a caller question and reply that began successful nan leafy courtyard of nan gallery, Harris Norton shared nan communicative of her collection, revealing nan individual extent of her relationship to nan creation and artists successful nan process. It’s a worldly history of a culture: 1 Harris Norton didn’t conscionable witnesser aliases document, but actively built.

The notoriously backstage collector is lively and disarmingly funny. She noted that her kids telephone nan celebrated absurd creator Mark Bradford “Uncle Bradford,” and that erstwhile she first met him, he was “living successful this spread and creating these beautiful pieces.”

When she addresses nan favoritism she encountered successful nan creation world, she doesn’t sanction nan group overtones. She pitches her sound higher, widens her eyes, and lets nan imitation convey her meaning. “Now everyone says, ‘Oh, Eileen, I wish I had a Mark Bradford,’” she says. “And fto maine show you, they had their chance to bargain a Mark Bradford 20 years ago, and they were like, ‘Meh, I don’t know.’”

Several visitors extremity by to congratulate Harris Norton connected nan show. A curator from nan Brooklyn Museum tells her that a Kara Walker pop-up artist’s book, 1 of galore useful Harris Norton has talented to nan institution, will look successful an upcoming show.

For decades, nan ascendant relationship of L.A. creation centered connected Ed Ruscha’s deadpan photographs, David Hockney’s shimmering pools and nan perceptual experiments of nan Light and Space artists. What Harris Norton’s postulation makes clear is really overmuch that communicative near out. It is Womanhouse and Judy Chicago. It is nan Watts rebellion and Noah Purifoy. It is nan Chicano printmakers successful East Los Angeles and nan Black artists of Leimert Park. Not abstracted movements, but a continuous speech betwixt artists responding to akin biology and societal conditions that nan institutions tasked pinch paying attraction mostly grounded to return into account.

Lorraine O’Grady’s “Mlle Bourgeoise Noire” (1980-83), a gown made from 180 pairs of achromatic meal gloves — worn during performances critiquing nan removal of Black artists from nan mainstream creation world unless they made activity that conformed to achromatic expectations, aliases what she called “art pinch achromatic gloves on.”

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“Everybody was going to New York and buying whoever was popular,” Harris Norton recalled. “Then they’d travel to our location and go, who is that?”

There was nary dearth of viewing worldly successful Harris Norton’s house. A photograph by Uta Barth, “Deep Blue Day” (2012), which usually hangs successful Harris Norton’s bedroom, is connected nan acold wall of nan first gallery. A image of Harris Norton by Don Bachardy hangs nearby, arsenic does a photograph of Harris Norton’s boy Michael beneath an arbor by Kwaku Alston, a kaleidoscopic people by her neighbour Miriam Wosk, and Kerry James Marshall’s plates emblazoned pinch protestation slogans including “We Shall Overcome.”

Curator Ingrid Schaffner calls nan miniature sculptures by Betye Saar and Takashi Murakami installed connected discrete shelves “the location gods” — useful that, for illustration nan others, “anchor Eileen’s day.”

When Harris Norton was increasing up, her mother took her to museums and performances, and taught her that beauty was a right. Leaving nan vicinity for taste events yet led to leaving for schoolhouse astatine Alexander Hamilton High School connected nan Westside. “I was ever an outsider,” Harris Norton recalled.

Before marrying Norton Utilities laminitis Peter Norton successful 1983, Harris Norton taught bilingual acquisition successful nationalist schools. The first portion of creation she bought successful 1976 was a linocut from nan creator and activistic Ruth Waddy astatine a printmaking demonstration. This marked nan opening of Harris Norton’s penchant for workplace visits to assemblage rounds, and individual relationships to marketplace value. Harris Norton and her hubby collected together passim their marriage; aft their divorcement successful 2000, she continued connected her own.

Amy Sherald, “When I Let Go Of What I Am, I Become What I Might Be (Self-Imagined Atlas)” 2018, lipid connected canvas, is viewed astatine “Destiny is simply a Rose: The Eileen Harris Norton Collection” astatine Hauser & Wirth successful downtown Los Angeles.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“I’d spell truthful acold arsenic to opportunity that nan Nortons were nan glue that sustained nan young artists of nan time,” said conceptual creator Charles Gaines. “They first introduced and supported galore of nan artists who, arsenic their reputations grew, expanded nan value and estimation of nan metropolis globally.”

Gaines said his activity was still nether nan radar during his first L.A. show astatine Leo Castelli Gallery, and only 2 pieces sold. One went to Harris Norton.

“It was inspirational,” Gaines said of his canvases that surfaced stereotypical, racially inflected words from documents pinch nary definitive group content. “It demonstrated that I could get support for difficult work.”

“Destiny is simply a Rose” is organized successful 5 chapters: “Home,” “Essence,” “Near,” “Far” and “Deep,” and proceeds successful mostly chronological order. “Near” gathers activity from nan 1980s and ‘90s, chiefly by L.A.-based artists Harris Norton met during workplace visits astir her Venice neighborhood.

“A female named Nancy Cutler utilized to lead tours,” Harris Norton explained. “She’d rent a bus, springiness america boxed lunches, and we’d sojourn possibly 10 studios.” Harris Norton stood out. “I was, well, different, and had a different constituent of view.” That quality led her to get useful including Alison Saar’s “Bye Bye Blackbird” (1992), featuring an angelic brace of wings assembled from worn-out footwear soles, and May Sun’s lightbox sculpture “Reconfiguring nan Urban Landscape” (1992), which uses robust bars connected soil to brace an illuminated image of demolition from nan L.A. riots pinch a hexagram from nan “I Ching.”

Betye Saar, “Souvenir of friendship,” 1977, mixed media, portion of “Destiny is simply a Rose: The Eileen Harris Norton Collection” astatine Hauser & Wirth successful downtown Los Angeles.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“She really made a conscious effort to support artists who weren’t being embraced by nan creation world astatine nan time,” Sun explained. “Like artists of color, experimental artists, artists reasoning beyond nan mainstream.”

After first gathering Harris Norton astatine nan Santa Monica Museum of Art — wherever Sun was 1 of six inaugural artists — Sun developed a narration pinch nan collector, who yet commissioned her to make 1 of nan family’s yearly Christmas gifts. Each year, nan Nortons collaborated pinch an creator to nutrient an editioned work, sending it to friends on pinch a wide web of curators and depository directors.

“It had a subversive broadside to it,” Schaffner said of nan yearly gift. “It came pinch awesome generosity, but it was besides a measurement of putting artists they mightiness ne'er person heard of earlier successful nan hands of nan establishment.”

Sun’s contribution, for example, a group of printed silk napkins, ended up successful nan Brooklyn Museum’s imperishable collection.

At a clip erstwhile fewer museums had modern creation departments — “you couldn’t constitute a dissertation connected a surviving artist,” Schaffner notes — Harris Norton funded nan scaffolding that would prolong nan artists she collected. She underwrote curatorial travel, including a 1997 travel to nan Johannesburg Biennial, wherever a cohort of American curators, among them Nancy Spector and Thelma Golden, encountered a genuinely world creation world. She seeded what became nan Contemporary Curators Conference, an yearly gathering that gave a nascent procreation a spot to convene.

Exhibition curator Ingrid Schaffner astatine “Destiny is simply a Rose: The Eileen Harris Norton Collection” astatine Hauser & Wirth successful downtown Los Angeles.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Schaffner points retired respective striking black-and-white photographs by Catherine Opie and Lorna Simpson that archive those years, identifying younger versions of seminal creation world figures.

“Far” traces description successful 2 directions: geographic, arsenic Norton’s oculus moved beyond California to Japan, Cuba, England; and social, into activity breaking caller crushed connected questions of gender, sexuality and post-colonial histories. When Japanese artists arrived connected nan West Coast, and MOCA hosted nan formative “Superflat” exhibition, titled for nan artists’ anime-inflected aesthetics, Norton added Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara to her collection, understanding, earlier most, nan taste value of nan event.

Among nan astir affecting displays successful nan accumulation is simply a grouping by Jerome Caja, a queer capacity creator from nan Bay Area who died of complications from AIDS successful 1995. His miniature fingernail polish paintings of mundane objects — a purse, a lipstick tube, a stiletto — are adjacent parts playful and macabre.

“Deep,” nan exhibition’s last movement, features David Hammons’ “Traveling” (2001-2), a large-scale drafting created by bouncing a hoops first successful ungraded and past connected a portion of insubstantial lifted disconnected nan wall by a battered suitcase, a reference to nan region betwixt “street” civilization and nan gallery’s achromatic walls. On nan opposing wall, Lorna Simpson’s four-panel photograph activity “You’re Fine” (1988) depicts a reclining woman, her backmost turned to nan camera betwixt nan phrases “you’re fine” and “you’re hired,” and a database of beingness exam tests. Here, nan Black female body, transformed first into a suite of aesculapian information and past into an employee, is recalled arsenic nan humanities tract of organization surveillance and societal scrutiny.

Many awesome museums, Schaffner says, “would springiness eyeteeth for these useful today.”

Because Harris Norton collected these acclaimed artists while they were still comparatively unknown, she is often described arsenic prescient. But nan word suggests a capacity to expect what nan creation marketplace will value. Those acquainted pinch her legacy, however, opportunity Norton wasn’t predicting nan future; she was building it. At that time, accumulating useful by women and artists of colour moving pinch nontraditional materials that defied general categories, wasn’t only uncommon — it wasn’t done.

Here, Patrick Martinez’s bluish and reddish neon sign, “Promised Land” (2022), hangs beside a video of Bradford playing hoops successful a voluminous antebellum hoop skirt successful “Practice” (2003). John Outterbridge’s miniature shopping cart, packed pinch scraps of colored cloth and sewn sacks, is mounted connected nan wall facing Hammons’ “African American Flag” (1989), suspended from nan ceiling.

And Betye Saar’s “Souvenir of Friendship” (1977), a mixed-media collage featuring an ancient photograph of nan artist’s aunt overlaid pinch lace, shares abstraction pinch Lorraine O’Grady’s “Mlle Bourgeoise Noire” (1980-83), a gown made from 180 pairs of achromatic meal gloves — worn during performances critiquing nan removal of Black artists from nan mainstream creation world unless they made activity that conformed to achromatic expectations, aliases what she called “art pinch achromatic gloves on.”

“This is nan civilization I want to beryllium in,” Schaffner said, looking around. “We’re allowed to beryllium successful this world because of what she built, her dedication, her vision.”

In nan area of nan last assemblage is an Alma Thomas coating that usually hangs successful Harris Norton’s kitchen. “Untitled” (ca. 1968) is simply a instrumentality of concentric circles — chestnut astatine nan center, past saffron, vermilion, peony pink, cerulean — each ringing composed from individual daubs of overgarment that are some chopped and portion of a larger whole. It’s easy, opinionated earlier it, to deliberation of Harris Norton’s power moving successful nan aforesaid way: outward, successful ever-widening circles, from a azygous constituent of sustained attention.