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Monday performances Tuesday theater Wednesday pop music
Romare Bearden, 
Rain or Shine
[[margin note]] Washington post: 9/23/03
by Black Gopnik
Washington Post Staff Writer
Despite a hurricane that shuttered the National Gallery for two days, its retrospective of the work of African American artist Romare Bearen is drawing substantial crowds. 
In the show's first week, the gallery had counted 9.753 visitors as of Sunday. On Saturday, after the mayor had asked people to stay off the District's tree-strewn street, about 3,000 people came out to see the exhibition anyway. That was up from the 2,700 who turned up on the show's first day. 
Those numbers come nowhere near to breaking records, but they are very good indeed for an artist who might be entirely unknown to many habitual museum-goers, and who doesn't figure in any of the standard histories of art. 
Month devotees of African American culture, Bearden (1914-88) is an artistic superstar, rivaled only by the older painter Jacob Lawrence, whom Bearden knew and admired. Some of the city's interest in Bearden comes directly from its large black population, which can point to him as a rare hero in the white-dominated world of high culture. 
In fact, the Bearden show is the National Gallery's first solo for an African American artist. The gallery says this is not a sign of any exclusionary programming but rather an indicator of just how few blacks every go the chance to break into the art world's very highest ranks. Ruth Fine, the exhibition's curator, explained that the gallery has hosted only a handful of retrospectives of modern or contemporary artists, mostly in the 25 years since the East Building opened. Those few shows have been of such certified greats as Alexander Calder, Mark Rothko and Georgia O'Keeffe. "To be the eight or ninth in the company doesn't seem exclusionary to me. It's just his turn now," Fine sad of Bearden.
One side effect of the Bearden show may be to draw more African Americans into the gallery, and perhaps keep them coming back. In a majority-black town, black visitors aren't often seen at the National Gallery outside of its successful school outreach program. Fine tells of African American visitors to the show who've come up to her and said, "Thank you so much for doing this for us."
The show may have an equally important effect aside from its obvious constiuency among the blacks. With luck, it will give Bearden notice beyond the world of African American culture and make him known and appreciated to a much larger audience. Fine tells the story of one traditional National Gallery visitor- white, middle class and elderly- who happened into the show by accident and then said to her, "I've had the strongest emotional experience I've every had in any exhibition in my life."
Bearden's single achievement was to shove the vexed and powerful experience of African Americans into the white mainstream of Western art- and more that mainstream seems to be taking note of it at least. 
 Basketball star Grant Hill of the Orlando Magic, who owns 15 Beardens, including one in the show, said: "To me this is history. To be able to have the first African American exhibit here, and to have a piece of mine in it and be part of it. . . it's just truly amazing."
STRONG ART
The National Gallery's landmark Bearden retrospective has been getting more heartfelt reaction than some shows of more famous artists. Orlando Magic forward Grant Hill is a collector of the Afican American art who has already acquired 15 Beardens. During a video interview that launches today on The Post's Web site, he describes his feelings for Bearden's art as "love at first sight."
Hill discusses the art of Romare Bearden with Blake Gopnik, the POst's chief art critic, in a video at www.washingtonpost.com.
"The Art of Romare Bearden" is at the National Gallery of Art through Jan. 4. For information visit www.nga.gov.
[[image]]
BY STACI E. MCKEE- WASHINGTONPOST.COM
NBA star Grant Hill takes in the Bearden show, where he has a work on loan.