Five things to know about Alicia Keys & Swizz Beatz’s ‘Giants’ show at Minneapolis Institute of Art

A giant is landing in the Twin Cities.

Entertainment power couple Alicia Keys, 17-time Grammy-award winning singer and songwriter, and her husband Kasseem Dean, known as the rapper and producer Swizz Beatz, are bringing their massive exhibition “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys,” to the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Organized by Kimberli Gant, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the show includes nearly 100 artworks by artists of the global Black diaspora. This is its third stop after Brooklyn and Atlanta. The show opens Saturday.

The timing is pertinent, with the five-year anniversary of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police on the horizon and as President Donald Trump’s administration pulls back funds for organizations that center marginalized artists.

Here are five things to know before heading into “Giants.”

Prince is a connection for Keys, who recorded music with him and, with his permission, covered his song “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore,” and she also inducted him into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In a December interview with the Star Tribune, Keys alluded to the wounds that remain locally and the continued collective healing from George Floyd’s killing nearly five years ago. That also inspired her to bring the show here.

“We know that there is so much healing that has to happen — that is happening,” Keys said. “We are the custodians and guardians of each other’s healing.”

Of the nearly 100 works in the show, visitors can expect to see huge Kehinde Wiley paintings, Soundsuits by Nick Cave, photographs by Jamel Shabazz and St. Paul’s Gordon Parks and an installation by Ebony G. Patterson, among others.

Casey Riley, Mia’s curator of photography and new media, said the show is “a celebration of those works of art, as well as a testament to the visionary collecting ethos of the Deans … their collecting practices reflect their personal values and professional commitments.”

“As artists ourselves, we have a deep concern for fellow living artists and ensuring they receive fair recognition for their work,” Keys wrote in the exhibition catalog essay. “Our aim is to create a vibrant community where everyone receives the recognition they rightfully deserve.”

The art pieces are like songs in an album. Individual pieces might be savored and loved, but together, they tell a larger story. This is most apparent in one of the show’s biggest pieces — a series about the cultural history of Botswana by artist Meleko Mokgosi, associate professor of painting and drawing at Yale University.

Keys noted that she wants viewers to feel the whole thing.

“One of my favorite personal albums that I did is called ‘Here,’” Keys said, adding that it’s meant to be experienced top to bottom. That’s also true of Mokgosi’s 30-plus panel piece.

“The way that he expressed this particular work, it could only be shown all together,” Keys said. “I just found that to be so brave and bold and powerful.”

“The show ends with this theme of ‘On the shoulders of giants,’ and I think anyone who cares about ancestors or relatives and how the people who have come before us have shaped our possibilities in the now will take away a feeling a pride,” Riley said.

The Deans love seeing people interact with the work.

“When we are able to be in a space together experiencing art, we’re able to feel like we belong, like this space is ours [too],” Keys said. That excitement and joy can be overwhelming, she added, but she’s grateful for all of it.

Besides, added her husband, “the more work out there that represent the youth and the people, I think the more great artists we can discover and develop.”

The idea of being giant is about size and metaphor, and what these works assert to the viewer: cultural genius, historical presence, a sense of place and pride in identity.

“This is a show of really big works, and it was a bit of a jigsaw puzzle figuring out how to put it into the galleries, but also to show things optimally,” Riley said. “There are a lot of big personalities and big statements embedded in these works.”