(Left) Renée Stout, Elegba (Spirit of the Crossroads), 2015-2019, Mixed media, 39 x 17 x 13 in., Gift of the artist and Hemphill Gallery; (Upper right) Renée Stout, Mannish Boy Arrives (for Muddy Waters), 2017, Acrylic and latex on wood panel, 16 x 20 x 1 1/2 in., Director’s Discretionary Fund, 2018; (Lower right) Renée Stout, Escape Plan A, 2017, Acrylic, varnish, and collage on wood panel, 10 x 10 x 1 1/2 in., Director’s Discretionary Fund, 2018
It is with great enthusiasm that we announce The Phillips Collection’s significant acquisition of three works by Renée Stout. This three-part acquisition, a “unit” in Duncan Phillips terms, is made possible through the Director’s Discretionary Fund and a gift of the artist and Hemphill Fine Arts.
“Best known for engaging African American heritage, but also her personal history, Renée Stout is a visual storyteller par excellence,” said Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Phillips Collection Vesela Stretenovic. “There is a lot of magic and ancestral spirits in her work, embodying self-expression and self-empowerment. As The Phillips Collection approaches its centennial in 2021, the acquisition of three works by this highly admired DC-based artist marks a significant moment in the museum’s collecting, staying true to its founder Duncan Phillips’s approach of acquiring an artist’s work in units.”
Renée Stout is a recipient of the Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award (2018), David C. Driskell Prize (2010), a Joan Mitchell Award (2005), The Pollock Krasner Foundation Award (1991 & 1999), the Anonymous Was a Woman Award (1999), and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1993). Her work is included in such collections as The Afrika Museum, Berg en Dal, Netherlands, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The High Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Stout was the subject of the exhibition Tales of the Conjure Woman at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in 2013; a solo exhibition Funk Dreamscapes from the Invisible Parallel Universe at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, in 2018; and Church of the Crossroads: Renée Stout in the Belger Collection at the Belger Center in Kansas City, Missouri, in 2018.