Savannah's Art Museums: Walter O. Evans

In the continuation on the series of how Savannah’s art museums received their collections, I want to look next at a Savannah native who has become one of the foremost collectors in the United States, Dr. Walter O. Evans. He grew up in Savannah in the 1940s. Evans who was black was not allowed to attend the local art institutions because of segregation. But through a good education at home and in school he learned of black artists and other blacks of achievement. Evans as he went to school later to become a surgeon began to attend art museums around the world. But to his dismay African Americans were not represented even in museums that were not segregated. Evans pledged to do what he could to change the absence of African American artistic representation in the art world.
Evans receive a degree from Howard University and completed his medical degree at the University of Michigan. Dr. Evans worked in Detroit as a surgeon for twenty-five years. In 1978 he purchased a portfolio of John Brown’s Legacy by Jacob Lawrence. This purchase ignited an enthusiasm for art collecting. He soon was forming relationships and purchasing paintings and commissioning paintings from the leading African American artists. 

He began what has become his lifelong purpose of collecting African American art. He collected in the early days paintings by Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Richard Hunt, and others. Because not many people were collecting these artists he was able to create a large collection. He currently holds more Lawrence and Bearden works than any other privately owned collections.  He was also able to expose the art world to these painters whose paintings are now recognized worldwide. Evans once said of collecting, “I get joy out of tracking the items down, the rarity of it. I want to own it. That may be selfish, but that’s what makes me a collector–not an investor…I want to invest in my culture…Culture defines a people and art is a significant part of that definition, like music and literature.”

Evans not only wants to buy the art but he wants to share the art for others to see the magnitude of the Black artists work and the culture they represent. He and his wife, Linda, assembled a selection of over 80 works from their collection, which they arranged to tour over 45 museums. They established The Walter O. Evans Foundation for Art and Literature to serve as an educational resource for African American art and culture. Evans whose collection has expanded to over 700 works has been included on several most important art collectors lists. His collection is on the short list of greatest African American artists collections. A collection he can and did say proudly that he could no longer afford because of the interest in these painters. Something he had a hand in making occur.

Evans has returned to his native city of Savannah now that he has retired. Here he and his wife have contributed to the culture of the city. He has donated seventy of his works to the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art. It is comprised of paintings, illustrations, and sculpture valued at more than $7 million. The works donated include several of Romare Bearden's collages and paintings, landscapes by Robert Scott Duncanson and Edward M. Bannister, and the Genesis Creation series by Jacob Lawrence. His reason in part, “My mother still lives here. Savannah is my home. I want children here to learn from my collection, to see themselves represented on gallery walls. I also envisioned my collection living at an institution that would not only respect and appreciate the works, but that would also create meaningful educational components around the works. I’m fortunate that such a place exists in Savannah: SCAD.” Its proximity to what was once the home of Savannah’s black movers and shakers, West Broad Street will help in the economic development of a street that in the 1940s was the place of the Union Station train depot and nearly 200 black businesses, including Wage Earners Savings and Loan Bank, Savannah Pharmacy and the Star and Dunbar theaters.

This donation has according SCAD President Paula Wallace, “…….. the opportunities for SCAD students, and students worldwide, to study such important and historical works of African American art are priceless.” Evans has returned home to share with the residents, something he did not have the privilege of seeing in his own day, part of one of the world’s best collections of African American Artists.
 

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