Diaspora Stories: Selections from the CCH Pounder Collection

The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center is pleased to announce a new exhibition featuring paintings from the Collection of Emmy® award-nominated actress CCH Pounder. The exhibition “Diaspora Stories: Selections from the CCH Pounder Collection” will open on March 18, 2023, and continue through July 16, 2023.

The exhibition which was curated especially for the DuSable Museum contains 24 works of art by world-renowned artists including Kehinde Wiley, Patricia Renee Thomas, Reginald Jackson, Robert Pruitt, Greg Breda, Ebony G. Patterson, and Mickalene Thomas, among others. Each item was curated and personally selected in collaboration with the DuSable and Ms. Pounder from her extensive collection specifically for “Diaspora Stories: Selections from the CCH Pounder Collection.”

Award-winning actress CCH Pounder is well-known for portraying “Dr. Loretta Wade” on the CBS series, “NCIS: New Orleans” for seven seasons and other notable projects include the television shows, “The Good Fight, “Warehouse 13,” “Sons of Anarchy,” “The Shield,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “ER” and HBO’s “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” which garnered Pounder her fourth Emmy® nomination. Ms. Pounder is currently reprising her role as the clan spiritual leader “Mo’at” in James Cameron’s hit film “Avatar: The Way of Water.” Her numerous film credits include her breakout role in Bagdad Café. A graduate of Ithaca College, she received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the school and in 2021, received the Ithaca College Alumni Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Pounder serves on the Board of the African Millennium Foundation and was a founding member of Artists for a New South Africa. An advocate of the arts, she is active in the Creative Coalition and recent accolades for Pounder include the Visionary Leadership Award in Performing Arts from the Museum of the African Diaspora (MOAD) in San Francisco. 

In addition to her prolific acting career, CCH Pounder has been extensively involved with the arts as a patron, collector, gallery owner and museum founder. Originally from Georgetown, Guyana, Pounder’s collection consists of Caribbean and African artists and artists of the African Diaspora. Her collection is heavily concentrated in Contemporary Art but also includes traditional African sculptures. Recently, pieces from Ms. Pounder’s collection have been exhibited at select museums and organizations.

In 1993 Pounder and her husband, the late Boubacar Koné, founded and built the Musee Boribana, the first privately owned contemporary museum in Dakar Senegal, which they gifted to that nation in 2014. Pounder’s personal collection contains over 500 works of art from which the pieces in “Diaspora Stories: Selections from the CCH Pounder Collection,” were selected.

Perri Irmer, President and CEO of The DuSable Museum stated, “We are thrilled to be welcoming Diaspora Stories: Selections from the CCH Pounder Collection to the DuSable Museum. Ms. Pounder is an amazing talent with a unique and impressive collection of Black artists’ works that we are honored to bring to our Chicago audience. Our mission, reflected through our recent rebranding as The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, is to expose visitors to the entirety of the Black diaspora, telling stories of the Caribbean and Africa as well as America. This exciting exhibition and CCH Pounder’s own history, exemplify this mission.” 

“‘Diaspora Stories,’ centers the imagery of Black people in quotidian narratives, portraiture, spirituality, and history. The exhibition is presented from the point of view of the collector. Pounder has collected hundreds of pieces by African and African Diasporic artists for over 45 years. The curated grouping of paintings highlights the early work of prominent midcareer artists such as Kehinde Wiley, Ebony G. Patterson and Mickalene Thomas, alongside emerging talents like Harmonia Rosales and Patricia Renee Thomas and seminal artists such as Betye Saar and the late Geoffrey Holder, “said Danny Dunson Director of Curatorial Services and Community Partnerships.

About The DuSable Museum

The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, a Smithsonian affiliate, is the nation’s first independent museum dedicated to the collection, preservation and study of the history and culture of Africans Americans and people of African descent. For more, visit www.dusablemuseum.org and follow @dusablemuseum.