Sullivans’ Haitian paintings become a national treasure

National Gallery features works in first-ever Haitian exhibit

First-time visitors to Beverly and John Fox Sullivan’s home in Little Washington must absorb the shock of wall-to-wall Haitian artworks, a captivating collection spanning seven decades and dozens of journeys to the country considered the poorest and most dangerous in this hemisphere. 

Because Haitian paintings and metalworks are the only artworks on display, they form an unbroken ecosystem of animals, national heroes, voodoo figures and devils coexisting throughout the Sullivans’ historic Virginia home, circa 1810, that might be presumed to feature ancestral portraits and foxhunting prints.  

This week, the National Gallery of Art announced that some of the most prized paintings of the 250-piece Sullivan collection will travel to Washington, D.C., for an exhibit slated to open in September. The Sullivans not only are lending paintings for the planned show, but have agreed to donate 12 significant works to the gallery, the first by Haitian artists to enter the national museum’s collection.

The Sullivans’ pieces will be joined by other works – loaned and donated – from a parallel collection amassed by Kay and Roderick Heller of Franklin, Tenn., close friends of the Sullivans. The gallery described the gifts from the two collections as “transformative,” bringing together “some of the most celebrated Haitian artists of the 20th century,” and helping to move the gallery beyond its European and North American patrimony. 

 “I’m not totally surprised, because the Sullivans and Hellers hold some of the most important Haitian paintings in the United States,” said Jose Zelaya, a Philadelphia art dealer and gallery manager who specializes in the work of self-taught Haitian painters. 

Haitian paintings defy easy definition. Most are bold and bright, but some are somber. Many involve visions, dreams and voodoo ceremonies, but others depict specific events in the nation’s history, or ordinary scenes in daily life. There is a folk-art element, and a powerful no-tricks authenticity that self-taught artists can bring to their paintings. 

 “The Haitians distinguished themselves from other schools in other countries because they looked to themselves to create their own style of painting,” said Zelaya. 

The Sullivans’ artworks celebrate the creative energies of a beleaguered and chaotic nation. Haiti is North America’s shadow: While the United States expanded and thrived, Haiti shrank and suffered. Yet Haiti’s art points to a dogged survival, an inexplicable joy and a shimmering oddity that collectors like the Sullivans can’t get enough of. 

“It is an obsession, sort of an addiction,” said Sullivan, a successful publisher, investor and former mayor of the Town of Washington. “You want more.” 

The collection also tells the story of the Sullivans’ interwoven pursuits and interests across more than four decades. He added: “Every painting brings back memories of note. In a sense they are memories.”

Birth of a collection

The story of how the Sullivans’ acquisitions turned an at-home Haitian art display into a collection that would captivate the director of the National Gallery starts with an aunt’s three-painting legacy and the Sullivans’ Haitian vacation in 1977.

In the 1950s, John Sullivan’s aunt, a New York fashion editor, acquired three paintings by artists considered stars of the Centre d’Art in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince. The art center was established by Dewitt Peters, an American conscientious objector who migrated there in 1943, working for the next 23 years to unleash what he characterized as “talent which lay buried, not aware of even its own existence, in the so-called lower classes.” Though the Centre d’Art initially worked to train artists in accepted techniques, it soon embraced the role of encouraging self-taught artists in Haiti and building international connections for them. 

John Sullivan inherited the three paintings, becoming more interested in them in 1977 when he and Beverly visited Haiti for the first time. At a restaurant, the Sullivans noticed famed British playwright Harold Pinter and Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Fraser, a noted author whom he married three years later. The Sullivans recognized that while Haiti was economically poor, its cultural personality fascinated luminaries in the rich world. They left with several paintings, and the Sullivan collection’s first expansion was underway. 

“When we first went to Haiti, we had no idea we would collect the art,” Sullivan said. “We didn’t know what it was. But we thought Haiti was magical.” The visit put them on a new trajectory, one that would intensify for the Sullivans over the next 45 years. “They really personalized the love the Americans had for Haitians and Haitian art,” said Zelaya.  

Meanwhile, philanthropists were informally exploring ways to convert the burgeoning interest in Haitian art into revenue streams that would support health-related projects in Haiti, where citizens suffered from a variety of treatable conditions. In the late 1970s, Beverly Sullivan began working with Eye Care Inc., a privately-financed project established by Timothy Carroll, a Peace Corps volunteer, diplomat and philanthropic entrepreneur, who was later awarded the Sargent Shriver Award for Distinguished Humanitarian Service. 

Art for Eye Care

Kay Heller, who was already collecting and reselling Haitian art to support a medical clinic in Limbe, Haiti, met Beverly at an Eye Care art sale in Washington. A close collaboration quickly took root, the pair helping to establish a triangular trade, in which art acquired in Haiti was resold in the United States. The profits, in turn, helped Eye Care to build, staff and equip four rural centers in Haiti, train hundreds of local medical assistants and construct the Caribbean’s first laser treatment room for treating glaucoma. Many Haitians’ eye problems were the result of malnutrition and inadequate levels of Vitamin A, and in these cases relatively inexpensive interventions resulted in significant improvements.

John Sullivan already knew Kay Heller’s husband Roderick, a lawyer, investor and entrepreneur, and the two men were supportive of the Haitian venture. The women journeyed more than 25 times to Haiti, buying works they thought would appeal to North Americans. They displayed and resold the art at exhibits in Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles. The Sullivans themselves were usually among the buyers, and their collection continued to grow. 

Beverly Sullivan would bargain for the art she acquired, then beg for cardboard boxes for crating them back to the United States. The work was taxing, and often exhausting, she said at the time, but “seeing a person see again is all it takes– and buying the paintings did it.” 

According to Carroll, a successful exhibit in Washington could generate as much as $60,000 for the clinics in Haiti. He would supplement that revenue by working with an Episcopalian nun to bring in donations. “I was a good beggar,” he said, adding, “I’ve always been attracted to rich people.” At its height, Eye Care managed an annual budget of more than $500,000. 

Enhancing the collection 

The Sullivans aspired to enhance the collection by acquiring pieces by Haiti’s most celebrated artists, which would be considered too pricey for the Eye Care shows. Hector Hyppolite was a legendary Haitian painter who had begun as an itinerant house painter and third generation Vaudu (or voodoo) priest. He initially painted with chicken feathers rather than brushes, using leftover pigments in paint cans. But in 1945, Andre Breton, the French writer and lead theorist of the surrealist movement, traveled to Haiti with Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam, purchasing five paintings by Hyppolite. Breton said the mystically inclined artist “was the guardian of a secret.” 

Hyppolite’s reputation grew with his inclusion in the UNESCO 1947 exhibition in Paris, and American writer Truman Capote soon chimed in with favorable comments. Following his death in 1948, Hyppolite’s reputation continued to flourish. In the mid-1980s, the Sullivans bought a painting by Hyppolite from a fellow collector just after it was exhibited at the Fowler Museum at UCLA.  

After the prize acquisition, the Sullivans’ collection coasted for a time. “The passion had diminished a bit,” John Sullivan recalled. But it revived in 2014, when Academy Award-winning film director Jonathan Demme –“Silence of the Lambs,” “Philadelphia” and “The Manchurian Candidate” – put a portion of his vast Haitian art collection up for sale in Philadelphia. 

The Sullivans recruited the Hellers, and the show jump-started the next expansion of the collection. “We got there, and saw great art, wonderful paintings,” Sullivan said. “It upped our game.” The Sullivans left with five new paintings, and continued making purchases of high-quality Haitian works from dealers, auction houses and other collectors. When a second wave of Demme’s paintings went up for sale in 2017, the Sullivans acquired another half dozen. 

The pandemic effectively shut people in their homes, and restricted travel. But it galvanized the Sullivans’ interest in acquiring new pieces from Haiti. “We really jacked up our purchases,” he said.  

A national treasure

The Sullivan collection grew in size and quality, becoming, as collections can do, its own work of art, more than the sum of its parts. Meanwhile, under the directorship of Kaywin Feldman, the National Gallery was looking beyond European-based artistic movements, determined to incorporate neglected visions that had the power to inspire an increasingly diverse American public. 

A mutual friend suggested that Feldman visit the Sullivan collection, and while she wasn’t an expert in Haitian paintings, she was interested and traveled to Little Washington, where the collection displayed the power of multiple Haitian works arrayed together in a well-lit space.  Focused talks of loans and donations followed.    

The National Gallery’s decision to display those works and bring a selection into its permanent collection, transforms a couple’s quirky artistic affinity into a national treasure thousands of art-lovers will gaze on and consider. 

Alicia Assad Bigio, whose family ran the revered Villa Créole Hotel in Port-au-Prince, applauded the National Gallery’s decision to exhibit Haitian artworks and bring them into the permanent collection. Noting that even while managing the hotel, her mother worked tirelessly to promote and encourage Haiti’s struggling community of artists, Bigio said,

“I cannot tell you how the news of Haitian Art entering the National Gallery of Art would have delighted her. She was an early believer in and promoter of Haitian art saying that it belonged in museums.”

Kanitra Fletcher, associate curator for African American and Afro-Diasporic Art, pointed to the wide range of subjects the Haitian exhibit will display – scenes of daily life, religious ceremonies and history. She also pointed out that African American artists, including Aaron Douglas, William E. Scott and Lois Mailou Jones, traveled to Haiti, where they met with local artists.

“The Heller and Sullivan gifts of Haitian art and the forthcoming exhibition will offer viewers a new perspective on who and which cultures have contributed to the history of modern art,” Fletcher said. “The works from this gift demonstrate that modernism was not confined to only Europe or New York.” 

Imponderable Haiti

Experts continue to ponder just what makes Haiti’s artistic output so compelling to the rest of the world. At the National Gallery, Fletcher sees “multiple meanings that cut across political and religious significances,” the breadth and sense of paradox assuring a continuing interest.

Toni Monnin, a long-time gallery manager in Port-au-Prince, noted the artistic influence of the French, along with the role of the Centre d’Art. But she added, “After 40 years living in Haiti, I honestly believe it’s innate.” 

For his part, Carroll, of Eye Care, observed, “They are proud enough not to give up the way they saw the world, but smart enough to know why people bought art.” 

Pointing to Haiti’s history of often violent political turmoil, Kay Heller perhaps said it most succinctly: “They have nothing to teach the world about governance and democracy, but they understand about creativity.” 

Foothills Forum is an independent, community-supported nonprofit tackling the need for in-depth research and reporting on Rappahannock County issues.

The group has an agreement with Rappahannock Media, owner of the Rappahannock News, to present this series and other award-winning reporting projects. More at foothillsforum.org.