The spry, fit octogenarian Bernard Kinsey will readily tell anyone in earshot that the world-famous Kinsey African American Art and History Collection is a family affair.
The award-winning exhibit started in 2006 with a show in Los Angeles at the California African American Museum and has been featured in 39 museums around the world, was birthed from Bernard and his wife Shirley’s penchant for travel and art. The duo that met on the campus of Florida A&M University as undergrads in 1963 and who have been married for 57 years, began traveling and collecting art in the 1970s and never stopped, accumulating roughly 700 pieces.
Since the Kinseys started sharing their collection with the world, over 16 million people have seen it at places like the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, EPCOT Walt Disney World, the University of Hong Kong Museum and Gallery, and California’s SoFi Stadium, among others.
The couple’s son, Khalil, is the Collection’s general manager and chief curator, adding to the family aspect. The Kinseys also want Collection visitors to feel as though they are walking into the Kinseys’ living room for an intimate experience of Black artistic and historical excellence.
This focus on Black excellence reflects one of the Collection’s most foundational principles – the “Myth of Absence.” The principle is so big to the Kinsey’s that on MLK Day, Monday, Jan. 15, they will host a “Conversation” on the topic at Antioch Missionary Baptist Church (500 Clay St., Houston, 77002) from 6 p.m. – 8 p.m.
The Defender spoke with Bernard Kinsey about the upcoming MLK Day conversation to learn more about the significance of the “Myth of Absence.”
Defender: Can you explain the concept of “The Myth of Absence”?
Kinsey: We began to learn when we had this first exhibition in 2006 that it resonated with people – Black, white, Latino, Asian – because nobody knows this story of African American accomplishment and achievement. So, one of the concepts that we have really embraced is the concept of the “Myth of Absence.” You’ll see the myth of absence all over this exhibit. And the myth of absence says that we, Black people, are the invisible presence in the United States. It says simply that we have just been omitted from the public record about our accomplishments.
“There are the stories that made America, and there are the stories that America made up. And essentially, everything you read in your history books in high school and college was made up because we are not in it.”
BerNArd Kinsey
We start with not having a last name. We start with people not recognizing our craft, being furniture makers, ceramics producers, silversmiths, ironsmiths, architects. We did everything from 1501 to now, everything that would happen in the Americas. And I don’t mean just the United States. I’m talking about from Patagonia (the southernmost tip of South America) to Canada. And all of that came about because of Black genius. So we have a section that you’ll see here. It’s called “Early Genius.” What is early genius? Early genius is Black painters. We have five of the top six Black painters from the 19th century. We have a saying: “There are the stories that made America, and there are the stories that America made up.” And essentially everything you read in your history books in high school and college was made up because we are not in it. So, when you come and see the Kinsey Collection for the first time, short of going to the Smithsonian, you are going to see Black folks in every aspect of life and doing extraordinary things.
Defender: How does this “Myth of Absence” speak to Black people’s past, present, and future?
Kinsey: There are two words that our ancestors woke up with every day: resistance and expectancy. They woke up saying, “We’ve got to resist this slavery, this Jim Crow, this segregation, and this voter suppression.” Do you know 400 laws have been passed to keep Black people from voting in 2024? So, this fight ain’t over. And then the other one is expectancy. If the only thing you do is resist, you can’t have a good life. At some point, you’ve got to put some of that love and focus on your family so you can provide for them properly. If you’re always fighting and pushing and all that, you can’t have the kind of life you want to have.
And that’s what’s so hard for Black men, particularly, to be able to operate in this country because you are working on both sides of this coin. You are fighting on one side, then you’ve got to act and do all those things, being a father and a brother and a husband and all those kinds of things. And it’s complicated. A lot of our brothers, particularly, go one way or the other. So, what we are saying is if you know who you are and where you came from, that changes. Because for the first time, you’re filling that hole in your heart. We know that Black people have a big hole in their hearts. And the hole is, “I don’t know who I am” and “I don’t know where I came from.”
“There are two words that our ancestors woke up with every day: resistance and expectancy.”
Bernard Kinsey
Defender: Can you share a little more about the upcoming MLK Day conversation, “The Myth of Absence”?
Kinsey: That conversation is gonna be powerful because it’s gonna be the three of us talking about it – Shirley, Khalil, and myself. We start in 1595 with this African American girl named Esteban and basically blow up the myth that we came here in 1619 only as enslaved people. And the only way you know this, we have a 1598 document of a marriage certificate of two Black people in St. Augustine (Florida). 1598! I mean, it’s just remarkable. So, you’ve got to ask yourself, nine years before Jamestown was even founded, there were Black people getting married in St. Augustine and nobody knows about it? There are the stories that made America and there are the stories that America made up. And the “made-up” part is that we didn’t do anything.
Black people have swallowed the pill and white people have swallowed the pill. And unless we change that, we are not gonna be able to walk outside and get a cab late at night because they think every Black person is a criminal. And that’s what makes it so bifurcated in this country. Particularly people who are striving for good lives to already be ascribed a different kind of person only because of skin color. Your skin speaks before you do. That’s one of the other predicates; that facts matter. We believe in this simple principle: learn, use, teach. When you come here, you learn something new. You start using it. How do you use it? Stop using the word “slave.” Say “enslaved.” Stop using the word “plantation.” A plantation was a prison. Stop using “mercantilism.” Mercantilism is kidnapping. Stop saying that there was something that was discovered. How can you discover something that’s already occupied? So, the vocabulary that the Kinsey family gives you gives you a different predicate to be able to start thinking differently and articulating who we are and where we came from and filling that hole we have in the heart.
