A giant is landing in the Twin Cities.
Entertainment power couple Alicia Keys, 17-time Grammy-award winning singer and songwriter, and her husband Kasseem Dean, known as the rapper and producer Swizz Beatz, are bringing their massive exhibition “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys,” to the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Organized by Kimberli Gant, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the show includes nearly 100 artworks by artists of the global Black diaspora. This is its third stop after Brooklyn and Atlanta. The show opens Saturday.
The timing is pertinent, with the five-year anniversary of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police on the horizon and as President Donald Trump’s administration pulls back funds for organizations that center marginalized artists.
Here are five things to know before heading into “Giants.”
Prince is a connection for Keys, who recorded music with him and, with his permission, covered his song “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore,” and she also inducted him into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In a December interview with the Star Tribune, Keys alluded to the wounds that remain locally and the continued collective healing from George Floyd’s killing nearly five years ago. That also inspired her to bring the show here.
“We know that there is so much healing that has to happen — that is happening,” Keys said. “We are the custodians and guardians of each other’s healing.”
Jamel Shabazz’s photograph “Breezy Boy Breakers, Midtown, Manhattan, NYC,” 2011, is part of the exhibition “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys.” (Jamel Shabazz/Mia)
Of the nearly 100 works in the show, visitors can expect to see huge Kehinde Wiley paintings, Soundsuits by Nick Cave, photographs by Jamel Shabazz and St. Paul’s Gordon Parks and an installation by Ebony G. Patterson, among others.