New book celebrates collector Eileen Harris Norton’s role in shaping Los Angeles's art scene

As the art world descends on Los Angeles and the latest edition of Frieze’s West Coast fair, a new book is highlighting the role that the local philanthropist Eileen Harris Norton has played in nurturing and shaping the city’s art scene. Published by Yale University Press, All These Liberations: Women Artists in the Eileen Harris Norton Collection offers an intimate look at Harris Norton’s influence on the Los Angeles art scene and how she built her vast collection of modern and contemporary art over five decades, championing women artists and artists of colour in particular.

Born in the Watts neighbourhood of Los Angeles, Harris Norton witnessed first-hand inequality and civil unrest, including the Watts Riots of 1965. Sharing many of the concerns of the artists and cultural leaders she supports, Harris Norton approaches collecting from a personal standpoint. “I buy work that I like, not work that I’m supposed to buy or is dictated by the market,” she says. “The artworks in my collection reflect my values and are an expression of my aesthetic.”

All These Liberations highlights her story as a philanthropist and collector, starting with her first acquisition, a print by Ruth Waddy purchased directly from the artist in 1976. “I was blown away by the opportunity to meet an artist of colour. This moment always stuck with me,” Harris Norton says. “As I launch the catalogue, I think back on that purchase and meeting Ms. Waddy. My mom encouraged me to buy that print; she set the tone for how I approach collecting to this day.”

Along with her former husband Peter Norton, Harris Norton has supported artists who have gone on to achieve commercial and institutional success, like Faith Ringgold, Alison Saar, Betye Saar and Lorna Simpson. “What I enjoy most is forming relationships with the artists,” Harris Norton says.

She and Norton also helped fund institutions and curators to collect and exhibit artists of colour, making possible trailblazing shows such as Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, a 1994 exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art curated by Thelma Golden. “We saw a large discrepancy in the lack of work by artists of colour and wanted to make a change so they would be included in the historical narrative,” Harris Norton explains.

In 2014, along with the artist Mark Bradford and the social activist Allan DiCastro, she founded the Los Angeles non-profit Art + Practice to organise exhibitions and public programmes, and to support youth in foster care. The idea for All These Liberations came from Collective Constellation: Selections from The Eileen Harris Norton Collection, a 2020 exhibition at Art + Practice in collaboration with the Hammer Museum that featured women artists of colour in Harris Norton’s collection.

“So much of how I understand the history of art is in learning about the lived experiences that have happened alongside the artmaking—the resources and infrastructures that enable that creation,” says Taylor Renee Aldridge, the editor of All These Liberations and a curator at the California African American Museum. “Eileen is a pivotal figure in this regard: making space for new voices, enabling new infrastructures, supporting artists over decades.”

Aldridge will moderate a conversation about the book with Harris Norton and Alison Saar at Frieze Los Angeles at 10am on 2 March. Texts in the book cover critical topics that artists in the collection address in their work, such as social and political issues, as well as race, gender, bodily autonomy and spirituality. The catalogue also takes into consideration pressing issues of today, including Covid-19, climate change and the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

“I made sure to draw connections between these current events and works in the collection that remark about, and sometimes even prophetically anticipate, these realities,” says Aldridge. “My goal was to make sure this book had a certain sense of posterity.”