Julian & Josie Robertson Private Art Collection

Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury will host an exciting exhibition featuring the private collection of the late Julian and Josie Robertson and on loan from the Robertson Foundation (NYC). The collection includes 40 works by 28 significant late 19th and early- to mid-20th century artists, including Pierre Bonnard, Willem Kooning, Andre Derain, Paul Gauguin, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Kline, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Pierre Renoir, Marc Chagall and others.

Showing concurrently will be selected photographs from the 1937 Bostian’s Alley Collection and a series of contemporary oil portraits by North Carolina painter, Maria Bennett Hock. Bostian’s Alley was an impoverished black neighborhood located within the 500 block of N. Main bordered by Cemetery, N. Church and Franklin streets in Salisbury. This moving suite of photographs, taken in the depths of the Great Depression, reveal a sense of community pride, as well as a vibrant and dynamic place in spite of the challenges faced by those who called it home.