NBA star's art on display

DURHAM, N.C. - Four-time NFL Pro Bowler Calvin Hill never had any trouble interesting his young son in sports. It took a little longer for basketball star Grant Hill to develop his father's passion for art.\n"I did grow up in a household with a lot of art," the Orlando Magic's forward says. "I guess at the time, I didn't really appreciate it or realize it did have an effect on me."\nIt was obvious to all who watched Hill lead Duke University to back-to-back NCAA titles in 1991 and 1992 that, like his father, a career as a professional athlete awaited once his college days were over. Calvin Hill, who played for three NFL teams, and wife Janet took young Grant to museums and galleries, but Calvin Hill wasn't sure if his son would buy art that wasn't merely decorative.\n"I thought perhaps if he ever bought a house, he'd buy art to decorate his house," Calvin Hill says. "But to become a collector, I didn't envision that at all."\nA six-time NBA All-Star, Hill hasn't just become a collector, but one who has amassed a museum-quality collection of American works, including pieces from renowned artists Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett and John Biggers. They're among the 46 paintings and sculptures in a new exhibit at Duke's Nasher Museum of Art, titled "Something All Our Own: The Grant Hill Collection of African American Art."\n"There are many successful, intelligent people who are interested in sports but not in arts and this is a chance to get them interested," says Kimerly Rorschach, director of the Nasher Museum.\nThe first piece Hill bought for himself combined both basketball and art. Titled "Duke Fast Break," the print by Ernie Barnes, a former NFL player, featured Johnny Dawkins, Duke's associate head coach who played for the Blue Devils from 1983-1986.\nThe 33-year-old Grant Hill remembers using his mother's credit card to buy the work, which featured Barnes' trademark elongated figures, made familiar in the 1970s TV comedy, "Good Times." Hill doesn't remember what he paid for "Duke Fast Break," but says he imagines it wasn't too much since he was still in college.\n"I thought it was a neat little connection, my first piece of African-American art, done by a local Durham artist, of a Duke fast break," Hill says. "I bought that to decorate my apartment. But little did I know that it would be the start of something."\nHill credits his father with advising him while acquiring his art collection, which is much larger than the 46 pieces in the show. But Calvin Hill, whose own collection mostly features work by women from third-world countries, says his son's choices are his own. His only suggestion: Buy what you like, not just something that might increase in value.\n"I would say that each of these pieces reflects what he feels and how he feels," Calvin Hill says. "I've tried to suggest certain things to him, but it's him, not me."\nDuring a recent preview, Grant Hill discussed the pieces in his collection, which Rorschach says has a "stylistic continuity and story line." Hill described how each reminded him of a relationship or event in his life. Catlett's sculptures, he says, remind him of the strength and nurturing of black women, something brought home by the birth of his daughter.\nA painting by self-taught artist John Coleman, titled "Coffee Break," shows an older man and younger man talking across a kitchen table. The work reminds the basketball player of his relationship with his father, and how it was "a blessing to have a father, having someone to sit me down, give me advice, tell me when I'm right, tell me when I'm wrong."\nSays Rorschach of Hill's choices, "He clearly had a vision for his collection."\nMany of the show pieces have a softness or yearning to them, including a 6-foot-tall painting of smiling Malcolm X by Edward Jackson. Hill purchased the piece during the 1996 NBA All-Star weekend in San Antonio, and says he likes it because it portrays a relaxed version of a man better known for his militance and anger.\nHill's 13 works by Bearden begin with 1941's "Serenade" and end with "The Evening Guitar," a watercolor and collage painted in 1987, the year before Bearden's death. In between, Bearden experimented with more abstract pieces and landscapes, such as 1973's "The Rain Forest, 'An Old Dream'" before returning to works of almost faceless blacks in everyday situations such as bathing and cooking.\nThe exhibition also includes Catlett sculptures, all of women or women and children, and works on paper, including "To Marry," which depicts a couple kissing at the top and a man who has been lynched at the bottom. It's part of a series Catlett created to illustrate the Margaret Walker poem, "For My People."\nThe one work by Biggers is a mysterious lithograph titled "The Upper Room," which shows two women lifting a one-room house while a third woman puts her hands on one of their backs.\nGrant Hill's representatives and officials at the Nasher declined to discuss the value of the collection. But Ron Rhoads Auction reported that Bearden's "Woman With Greens" sold for $104,500 at a Feb. 4 auction. In 1998, a Bearden collage titled "Sunday Morning Breakfast" sold for $79,500. Catlett's sculptures sell in the $150,000 range, while smaller bronze pieces typically cost $30,000.