V. Joy Simmons’s Collection Is Host to an Entire Constellation of Black Artists

From the road, it’s exhausting to overlook the neon signal studying black owned that seems within the upstairs window of V. Pleasure Simmons’s Los Angeles house. To the left of that signal is her entrance door, which has stained-glass home windows depicting an elegantly dressed Black couple. When she was designing her house within the Nineteen Nineties, Simmons commissioned Varnette Honeywood, working in collaboration with Joyce Dudnick, to make these stained-glass home windows. “I at all times wished stained glass doorways since you used to see that in wealthy folks’s homes again within the day,” Simmons informed ARTnews this previous summer time. “Once I constructed this home, I wished that.”

There are much more clever treasures contained in the two-story home, positioned in Baldwin Hills. Simmons usually retains greater than 150 objects on show, from small-scale items sitting on cabinets to medium-size lithographs and work hanging on the partitions. And there are towering sculptures throughout: Upon coming into the home, one of many first stuff you see is a set of columns that Lauren Halsey painted in 2019; one aspect of the columns portrays girls, the opposite, males.

Simmons began amassing within the Nineteen Seventies, when she was in her first 12 months of medical faculty at UCLA. Again then, her first buy—a 1973 lithograph by Elizabeth Catlett, titled Which Means?, exhibiting a Black lady’s face trying in three instructions—price $50. “That’s by no means come down,” she mentioned.

Works by Romare Bearden, Robert Colescott, Betye Saar, Raymond Saunders, and Howardena Pindell, whose 1974 mixed-media abstraction hangs in her bed room, additionally type cornerstones of Simmons’s assortment. However artists from the following era whose work she has lengthy supported, like Kerry James Marshall, Mark Bradford, Kehinde Wiley, and Carrie Mae Weems, have additionally change into core to her holdings. Close to a 1989 Marshall portray hangs a portrait by Christen Austin and {a photograph} by Thandiwe Muriu, each of whom are greater than three a long time youthful than Marshall. “I attempt to have a younger artist in dialog with a Kerry James Marshall,” Simmons mentioned. She has at all times been keen on intergenerational juxtapositions like this: Marshall’s work as soon as hung not removed from Bearden’s.

Elsewhere round the home is a who’s who of main Black artists: Henry Taylor, Noah Davis, Lyle Ashton Harris, Pope.L, Shinique Smith, vanessa german, and Deborah Roberts, amongst many others. The uncommon work within the assortment by a white artist is an Andy Warhol display print from the 1985 “Reigning Queens” sequence representing Queen Ntombi Twala of Swaziland.

Simmons has a watch for uncommon finds. Close to a espresso desk displaying a sculpture by Patrick Martinez resembling a birthday cake for Martin Luther King Jr., there sits a church pew, the place a sofa may usually be. The reclaimed object was a part of a fee Genevieve Gaignard did for the Prospect New Orleans triennial; the artist additionally made an set up for one of many house’s loos. Within the yard is a bottle tree sculpture by Dominique Moody. The work is a part of a protracted custom within the American South, with roots in Western Africa and the Caribbean, during which blue glass bottles positioned on tree branches are supposed to push back evil spirits. And within the stairwell to the second flooring, there are upscaled variations of Daniel Joseph Martinez’s museum admission tags for the 1993 Whitney Biennial. These tags collectively spell out the phrase i can’t think about ever eager to be white. On the prime of the steps is a two-sided household portrait within the form of a waist-high entrance gate that Simmons commissioned from Glen Wilson.

Simmons by no means cared if she exhibited her assortment in a different way from others, or if she was shopping for artists others wouldn’t purchase. “I wished my assortment to look the way in which I wished my assortment to look, and I didn’t need something that anybody else had,” she mentioned.

Simmons has lived in South Los Angeles nearly her whole life. Her household moved to the View Park neighborhood in 1963; the household nonetheless owns her childhood house. She was a member of the primary Tenth-grade class when Crenshaw Excessive College opened in 1968.

At Crenshaw Excessive, she started taking an curiosity within the arts. She took lessons with artist Alonzo Davis, who died this previous January, and purchased his work years later. As a part of a type of lessons, 16-year-old Simmons made an assemblage that she thought was “fairly implausible.” Davis politely disagreed, telling her, “Simmons, you’ve bought a watch, however perhaps try to be a collector.”

A couple of years later, throughout her freshman 12 months at Stanford College, Simmons paid a go to to her aunt and uncle, Janet and Ron Carter, who lived in New York. Janet, who died in 2000, was an early board member of the Studio Museum in Harlem; Ron is an acclaimed jazz bassist. They’d works by Jack Whitten, Melvin Edwards, and Howardena Pindell, amongst many others. “That was the primary time I used to be in a position to see artwork in a house like this, and that’s once I mentioned, ‘That is it,’” she informed me of her resolution to change into a collector. She would quickly purchase the Catlett print, and within the coming years change into a frequent customer to Brockman Gallery, an influential LA house identified for its help of artists of coloration that Davis cofounded along with his brother in 1967.

Simmons made frequent journeys to the Carters’ house throughout her day off from faculty, immersing herself of their social circle and seeing necessary exhibitions for Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence. Her uncle usually hosted joint birthday events with Edwards, and artists like Valerie Maynard, Merton Simpson, and Terry Adkins have been additionally frequent guests. After her first 12 months of medical faculty, she even took the summer time
off to dwell with them whereas she labored as a flight attendant for Trans World Airways. (A furlough introduced on by a recession swayed her to return to medical faculty.)

Janet Carter hosted fabulous soirees and introduced collectively a neighborhood of artists, curators, and collectors. Simmons has carried on her work, making her own residence a locus for the LA arts neighborhood. EJ Hill not too long ago held a e-book signing in Simmons’s house for a brand new monograph, and Lauren Halsey’s Summaeverythang neighborhood heart staged a fundraiser there. A pair years in the past, Simmons even hosted a reception for Koyo Kouoh, the late curator who was set to arrange the 2026 Venice Biennale, when she visited LA from South Africa.

“Janet Carter taught me about not solely being a collector and buying the work, however what it means to be a patron,” Simmons mentioned. “You had folks over. You entertained. You had these soirees. You supported artists after they wanted stuff.”

Furthermore, Simmons added, “Buying is one factor, however there’s a greater function available.”

Simmons began attending UCLA Medical College within the mid-Nineteen Seventies, as a part of a rising cohort of younger Black physicians. She estimated that she could have been solely the tenth Black lady to graduate from her program. For greater than 4 a long time now, she has been a working towards radiologist.

She moved to her present home in 1979, a 12 months after she bought married. She was finishing her medical residency on the time, and her daughters, Naima and Amy, have been born not lengthy after. However when she bought divorced in 1987, she wished a contemporary begin and determined to rebuild the home from scratch. She took an structure class at UCLA and a building class at Los Angeles Metropolis Faculty, which was down the road from the medical heart the place she was working. Simmons recalled considering, “I would like the women to have the ability to see that you are able to do one thing as a single lady.” To others, her imaginative and prescient could have appeared a bit odd, however she mentioned she felt “blessed that folks purchased into my little dream—I used to be simply praying I may pull this factor off.”

Simmons designed her house in order that her assortment dangle can at all times be in a state of change, as she steadily loans works to institutional reveals. She estimates she strikes issues round three to 4 occasions a 12 months. This previous summer time, once I visited her house, Mickalene Thomas’s rhinestone-and-paint portrait of a Black lady, Have a look at What You’ve Grow to be (2005), had not too long ago come again from the artist’s survey on the Broad in LA. Simmons mentioned she was additionally targeted on taking works out of storage that she hadn’t seen shortly, like a Lorna Simpson diptych from 2013 and an undated Raymond Saunders collage she purchased a long time in the past. Two sculptures by Dominique Moody that lengthy guarded the house’s again doorways are taking a break from being on view. “I pay extra for storage than I do my mortgage,” Simmons mentioned, her infectious laughter filling the room.

She at present buys round 10 works a 12 months, and insists on seeing them in particular person earlier than committing to the acquisition. “Not one of the items in right here have been acquired simply by a PDF or something like that. I’ve to see the work. I’ve to really feel it,” she mentioned, describing her amassing habits as “instinctive.”

“If there’s a by way of line,” she continued, “it’s supporting artists and having the antennas up to have the ability to spot expertise.” Across the time she began amassing, she noticed that her friends have been going after the greats, like Bearden, Lawrence, and Catlett, so she determined to show her consideration to rising artists. Early in an artist’s profession, she mentioned, is “whenever you have an effect simply by buying the artwork and supporting them that means.”

Round 2011, on the advice of artist Mark Steven Greenfield, Simmons visited a solo exhibition by Kenturah Davis. Simmons was blown away, remembering that she mentioned to herself, “this can be a expertise.” She referred to as Davis and requested if she would make a portrait of her mom. On the time, Davis was uncertain about her trajectory as an artist, however Simmons inspired her.

“It meant every thing,” Davis informed me of that fee. “I couldn’t absolutely grasp it on the time as a result of I used to be nonetheless attempting to determine the right way to be an artist and make a profession of it.” Davis nonetheless had a full-time job at that time, however the fee empowered her to go away it. Simmons’s patronage “helped me department out,” Davis mentioned, including, “it’s superb how she simply follows her instinct with work she likes and her dedication to supporting artists she thinks are doing attention-grabbing issues.”

Past her amassing, Simmons, like her aunt Janet, has been an necessary patron each for the LA artwork neighborhood and nationally. In 2024 she joined the six-member board of the California African American Museum (CAAM), appointed by the governor. Her daughter, Naima J. Keith, is a former deputy director and chief curator at CAAM, however Simmons’s historical past with the establishment dates again to the ’90s. She can be a commissioner of the Smithsonian American Artwork Museum, and has served on the boards of the Santa Monica Museum of Artwork (now the ICA LA), LAXART (now the Brick), the Mistake Room, and the Watts Home Venture, in addition to her alma mater Stanford.

When wildfires devastated components of Los Angeles firstly of 2025, together with the traditionally Black neighborhood of Altadena, Simmons knew that CAAM needed to do one thing. She referred to as up the museum’s government director, Cameron Shaw, insisting that CAAM be responsive.

“It was simply heartbreaking,” Simmons mentioned about watching the wildfires. She recalled considering, “We’ve to do that exhibition, and we’ve got to do it now. We will’t wait till the autumn. We have to get this on the market now.” The exhibition, titled “Ode to ’Dena: Black Creative Legacies of Altadena,” opened in April, just some months after the fires, highlighting the works of artists who had as soon as referred to as Altadena house, like John Outterbridge and Charles White, in addition to up to date artists who had been impacted, together with Davis, Moody, La Monte Westmoreland, and Martine Syms.

On this occasion, Simmons mentioned she didn’t thoughts being “a pushy board member.” She informed Shaw that she would assist discover the funds to appreciate the exhibition as a result of CAAM needed to be the primary one to inform the story—one other LA establishment shouldn’t beat them to it.

“When the fireplace occurred, she was ready to shortly acknowledge what may very well be accomplished,” Davis mentioned. “I’m nonetheless amazed at how shortly they have been in a position to pull this factor collectively, however that form of flexibility, creativeness, and assertiveness even to make one thing occur—she’s so good at that. Pleasure is an actual visionary to acknowledge the place to seek out alternative, even within the face of plenty of loss.”