Finance and Fine Art with Russell Goings

Overview

Kicking off Season 5: Behind The Dream

On Q Performing Arts, Inc. invites you to FINANCE TO FINE ART a moderated conversation with special guest RUSSELL L. GOINGS, Wall Street pioneer, celebrated art collector, former pro athlete, founder of Essence magazine, quintessential Renaissance man and author of The Children of Children Keep Coming, Season 5’s opening show.

Discussion with Russell Goings, moderated by James T. Barber of UBS with a pre-event tour of the Kinsey Collection at 5:30 pm and post-event book signing for The Children of Children Keep Coming.

Honorary Hosts:
Irene Blair Honeycutt • Sensoria Literary Festival
Sonya Crump-Greene • Wells Fargo

Supported by partnerships with the Gantt Center, JSW Media Group and Mint Museum’s Romare Bearden Society

Event Sponsors | Arts and Science Council • Kravis Barber Group • NC Arts Council

Russell L. Goings
Author of The Children of Children Keep Coming

Russell Goings graduated from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1959 as a star athlete. He briefly played professional football, but instead of pursuing fortune on the gridiron, Goings went to Wall Street. He proved a skilled investor, rising to become the first Black brokerage manager for a New York Stock Exchange member firm. Later, he became the first Black owner of an investment firm, which managed the assets of some of the world's largest companies along with many legendary athletes and entertainers. He was a co-founder of Essence magazine and became chairman of the Studio Museum in Harlem.  It was during his time at the Studio Museum that Goings connected with many leading Black artists: Jacob Lawrence, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett and Romare Bearden, with whom he struck up a deep friendship. Bearden became extremely influential in Goings' life: they spent nearly every day together for 12 years roaming bookstores, museums and discussing a wide range of literature and art. Goings recorded much of their time together in notebooks and hours of audio recordings. He also became heir to one of the largest collections of Bearden's works in the world. From the first collage Bearden created, to the last, Goings' collection includes numerous rarely seen drawings and sketches.

The inspiration for The Children of Children came from a set of Bearden's felt pen and watercolor drawings that depicts key figures of the Black narrative. Bearden felt the epic struggle of Blacks needed to be told in a worthy form. He charged Goings with the task, a task which Goings would fulfill many years later. In the mid-1990s (having cared for Bearden until his death in 1988) he returned to school at Fairfield University,
where he studied writing and began to work on his Griot song.  Says Goings, to "do this in a form that allows me to express who I am, something about our people and put it into a literary form that perhaps will have some legs -- that would mean something."