Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz’s art collection arrives at Newfields: ‘Giants’ opens in Indianapolis

The private art collection of music stars Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean) has arrived in Indianapolis. The exhibition «Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys», organized by the Brooklyn Museum and sponsored by JPMorganChase, opens to the public on September 19, 2026 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, where it will remain until February 28, 2027.

The show presents around 134 works — paintings, photographs, sculptures and mixed-media art — by 37 African-American artists, exploring Black identity, creativity and power. Among them are iconic names such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, legendary photographer Gordon Parks, Kehinde Wiley (the author of former president Barack Obama’s official portrait), Amy Sherald, sculptor Nick Cave, Barkley Hendricks, Mickalene Thomas, Deborah Roberts, Arthur Jafa, Nina Chanel Abney, Titus Kaphar and Ernie Barnes.

Collected over two decades, the Dean collection is considered one of the world’s most significant private holdings of contemporary African-diaspora art. The exhibition is divided into three thematic sections the curators call «giant conversations», and opens in a personal way: visitors are greeted by a keyboard used by Alicia Keys herself and Swizz Beatz’s records from his days as a young DJ, before he launched his career as a renowned hip-hop and R&B producer.

For Newfields this is the fifth stop of the traveling exhibition, after the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Newfields president and CEO Le Monte G. Booker described the event with «total enthusiasm», saying the institution is writing «a bold new chapter» in its engagement with contemporary art. The opening celebrations begin today, September 18, with a preview party, while Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz themselves will attend the weekend’s events.

The Keys–Dean couple is increasingly expanding its influence in the art world: as The Art Newspaper reported this month, together with auction house Bonhams they launched an initiative to guarantee artists a percentage of secondary sales of artworks — a voluntary program auction houses hope will catch on.

Source: IndyStar