Walter and Linda Evans, Committed to African-American Art

What led you to start collecting? Walter: It all started in the 1960s with a date at a Philadelphia museum I’d never visited. I was 19. To impress my date, I read up on the European Impressionists , whom I’d never heard of! I kept on reading and visiting American museums. More than 12 years later, in 1978, I bought my first piece, a portfolio of 22 silkscreen prints by the American painter Jacob Lawrence. From then on, I wanted our two daughters to know that African-American artists are as important as modern European ones. What’s in your collection? Walter: About 700 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints by artists such as Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, Archibald Motley and Horace Pippin. Some of them were part of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s. Many manuscripts, letters, photographs and autographs recall Black history. I have around 20 letters by Toussaint Louverture, who led the Haitian revolution. I’ve also established a large collection of rare books and manuscripts, held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript…