An opening reception for “Gordon Parks: Selections from the Dean Collection” was held on April 25, midway through the “Vision and Justice” conference organized by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Dean and his wife, 15-time Grammy Award–winner Alicia Keys, thanked the gallery audience, which included Hutchins Center director Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, history of art and architecture and of African and African American studies Professor Sarah Lewis, and the exhibition’s consulting curator, Maurice Berger. Keys called her husband “the most brilliant person I’ve ever met.”

“I never stop being awed by him and the vision that he has,” she said. “It’s so purposeful, I could just cry.”

Dean began collecting photography when he was a teenager — his first big purchase was an Ansel Adams. The 40-year-old Bronx native started talking to the Parks Foundation seven years ago, noting that Parks captured “the essence of life, the essence of time, essence of where we came from, the essence of us.”

“The most important thing is us owning us,” he said at the reception. “Us having the conversation, leading the conversation about us. Us doing homework and research to learn more about us and us having more patience with us. And I mean everybody when I say us because we all contribute to the big conversation.”

Earlier this year, the hip-hop producer launched The Dean Collection 20 St(art)ups, to help emerging artists stage their own shows on their own terms. Dean provided seed funding for a show at a location of their choice; they kept all of the profits.

His advice to young people who may not see themselves represented in a gallery or museum, or among the collecting community?

“Think of creative ways to get in front of people,” he said. “Set up in some places that it might not be normal to see your work, instead of saying, ‘Oh, this gallery is not looking at me, I must be nobody.’ Most people want to go off of the hype more than the reality, and the reality is to get it in front of the most people who appreciate [your art], and sometimes that’s not going to be in a gallery.”

The Dean Collection provided 20 grants around the world — “and none of those artists showed in galleries,” Dean said. “Not taking anything away from galleries, but sometimes if you get stuck, you have to go that next level yourself.”

Dean, who got a degree from the Owner/President Management program at Harvard Business School in 2017, said his favorite Parks piece is the 1966 image of Ali driving a Cadillac convertible in Miami.

“Just seeing Ali like that — not playing the superhero he was, just letting his shoulders relax when he’s in that Cadillac —  I can almost envision being on the side of the road,” he said. “It spoke to me.”