Pitt Magazine / Summer 2010 / Cara Masset
Two lovers glide into a museum gift shop, holding each other’s hands. They peruse reproductions of the artwork they just viewed in the galleries of the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. The couple selects a Picasso print. He likes it because of the still life’s composition and arrangement. She likes it because the artist is so well known. They pay for the print with gift money from their wedding a few days before. Then they step outdoors into winter, snuggling closer and cradling their new purchase. It’s 1949, and the newlyweds are culminating a whirlwind 90-day romance with a honeymoon of dreams, spent touring art museums in New York City. The two soon return to Atlanta, where they’re both working. Vivian Davidson Hewitt (SIS ’44) is a librarian who’s teaching courses on reference and public library services at Atlanta University. Her husband, John Hewitt, is a writer who’s teaching English at Morehouse College.
They hang the Picasso print in their living room—the original centerpiece of their long, creative journey together. Long before Vivian Hewitt ever thought of love and romance, her parents moved out of North Carolina and settled in New Castle, Pa., some 50 miles north of Pittsburgh. Vivian and her four siblings grew up in a home decorated with a prized oil painting of a cow pasture—a wedding gift to their parents. The painting was a fixture in her childhood and she set her sights on college. Eventually she studied at nearby Geneva College, where she majored in French and worked part-time in the campus library. When it came time to choose a profession, elders counseled her about her top choices. They encouraged her to study library science instead of social work, to explore a fresh frontier, with its opportunity to break new ground, especially as a Black woman.
So Vivian moved to Pittsburgh, where she pursued a second degree at the Carnegie Library School, a program that was later absorbed into what became Pitt’s School of Information Sciences. Some of her classes were held in the Carnegie museum and library complex adjacent to campus. She often passed through the art galleries on her way to class, glimpsing frames full of color and beauty. On those strolls, she enjoyed looking at the paintings but never imagined the role that art would later play in her life.
In 1944, after earning a degree in library science, Vivian was hired at the Wylie Avenue branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, becoming the first African American librarian to work in the Carnegie Library system. Within several years, she was ready for other challenges. She took a teaching position in Atlanta, beginning in the fall of 1949. A few days after she got off the train in her new city, she was introduced to John Hewitt. They were engaged by Thanksgiving and married at Christmas.
With that first Picasso print purchased on their honeymoon, the Hewitts began to fill their life together with art. There was something powerful about the notion of collecting creative works, something that made them feel especially alive. Art on the wall was colorful, intellectually stimulating, and welcoming, too, for family and friends.
Initially, they couldn’t afford to purchase original art, so they pursued their avid interest in other ways. They perused books and magazines to learn more and to find images that spoke to them. They visited galleries when they could. They looked, and looked some more, honing their sensibilities.
When Vivian became pregnant, the couple moved to New York City to be closer to John’s family. They migrated North, just as Vivian’s family had done a generation before. In their new home, John carefully cut art out of magazines and hung the reproductions in their bedroom or in their son’s nursery. They gifted prints of artwork to each other on special occasions like birthdays and Valentine’s Day. Then, during a trip to Haiti—where Vivian had a chance to use her college French—the Hewitts bought their first original painting. It was a portrait of three women at a market. The couple realized they were increasingly drawn to images of Black life and to artwork created by Black artists.
John continued writing, focusing on medical journalism, while Vivian advanced her work as a librarian, ultimately becoming chief librarian of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 1964, they bought a brownstone on the Upper West Side. Over the years, they renovated their residence—largely, says Vivian, to accommodate art and books. They lined the walls with narrow wooden planks designed so that paintings could be hung easily between them, and the walls wouldn’t look too cluttered. They installed track lighting to feature the art. They even began hosting art receptions in their vaulted living room on Sunday afternoons. They’d clear all their paintings off the walls, hide them under beds or in closets, and then invite artists to hang their most recent works.
During 50 years of marriage, the Hewitts acquired lithographs and charcoal sketches, oil paintings and woodcuts. They bought what they liked. Some of the art was bright and inspirational and included family themes; some of it was more somber and pensive. They got to know the artists—Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Hale Woodruff, and Ann Tanksley among them. In 1996, President and Mrs. Clinton invited the Hewitts to the unveiling of the painting “Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City” by Henry Ossawa Tanner; it was the first painting by an African American artist to become part of the White House’s permanent collection. The Hewitts were there because of their reputation as pioneers among collectors of African American art.
What began for the couple as a mutual quest to decorate their home ultimately shaped the art world. John and Vivian’s private collection, which some critics have cited for its uniqueness as the most diverse private Black art collection in the nation, is now a public treasure. Last fall, a permanent installation of the Hewitt Collection of African American Art opened during a fanfare gala at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture in Charlotte, N.C. Paintings from the walls of the Hewitts’ duplex are now on display in a brand new museum building.
“What a building,” Vivian recalls saying, with admiration, when she arrived at the gala and saw a geometric wonder jutting into the sky. Her granddaughter chimed in that it was “totally awesome” that her family’s collection of art had inspired such a monument. The Hewitt Collection was the impetus for construction of the downtown building.
In 1998, after the Hewitts had long been retired, NationsBank bough 58 pieces of their art collection as a promised gift to the African American Cultural Center in Charlotte, N.C., where the bank was headquartered. Now Bank of America, the bank gave the Hewitt Collection to the cultural center with the stipulation that the art collection be displayed in a large space with climate control and security. The center would need an upgrade. Board members decided to build an entirely new museum downtown with the Hewitt Collection as its cornerstone exhibition.
While the building was being designed and constructed, the collection was first shown at Charlotte’s Mint Museum of Craft + Design in the Bank of America Gallery. Then it embarked on a decade-long tour of museums throughout the county in cities where the bank had a presence. Although the Hewitts had intended to travel together as their art collection toured nationwide, John died in 2000. Vivian was left to be the prime patron for the art that had so enriched the couple’s life.
She attended nearly every opening reception, visiting more than 25 cities across the United States. She flew to Seattle and Dallas and Memphis and Tulsa and Baltimore. At each opening, Vivian gave short speeches welcoming guests to view the art she had collected with her husband. She always included three talking points about how anyone can become an art collector: “You don’t have to be wealthy. Invest in your own cultural heritage. Support local artists.”
Vivian is now 90 years old, and she still paints her toenails red and holds court in the Hewitt brownstone. She’s enormously proud of the fact that she and John are part of a movement to elevate African American art—and that they’ve been able to share their art with so many people. “Hundreds of thousands of people have seen it,” she says of the Hewitt Collection. “Kindergartners to adults, people of all races have seen it.”
Over the years, the Hewitts shared their art with other institutions as well. A portion of the Hewitt Haitian Art Collection belongs to the African-American Research Library and Cultural Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The Hewitts also contributed paintings to the University of Pittsburgh, Geneva College, and the Delta Arts Center in Winston-Salem, N.C. Additional pieces from the Hewitts’ home still make their way to the Gantt Center in Charlotte, too.
June Kelly, and art dealer who owns a SoHo gallery and was painter Romare Bearden’s agent for 13 years, says the Hewitts are part of the first generation of African American art collectors who amassed a large body of work. “They were in tune with society but at the same time looked beyond and saw art as a vehicle to have a voice in society,” she says of the Hewitts. “They saw the need to advance the works of African American artists. They have made an important contribution to our American culture.”
Even though the art they collected together is spread across the country, Vivian still has plenty of paintings on her walls—and she’s still collecting. As always, she’s surrounded by scenes of color and joy. One of her favorite paintings is hung so she can see it as soon as she steps through her front door.
“When I open the door and see her swinging, I love it,” she says of the painting of a girl on a wooden swing, wearing a summery white dress with a red stripe. The girl is caught in a breeze, floating toward the sun. It reminds Vivian of the promise of her childhood, of all the grand adventures that were to come.