Fortune Teller
In 1885, Nelson A. Primus moved from Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked and studied portrait painting, to San Francisco, California, where he lived in the city's predominantly Chinese community. "Fortune Teller," a work for which he is now well known, is an example of his realistic portrayal of life in Chinatown during the end of the 19th century. In this work, with deft painterly skill, Primus depicts a red-robed fortune teller smoking a pipe at a makeshift desk of papers. The dark, decaying environment, rendered in deep tones and gestural brushstrokes, adds a mysterious aura to the scene, and the feeling of isolation parallels the ghettoization that the Chinese endured during this period of American history.
The Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art
One of the most important collections of African American visual art dating from the 18th century to the present, the collection includes 62 works from Edward Bannister, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Robert S. Duncanson, Richard Hunt, Jacob Lawrence and others. This collection forms the foundation of a multidisciplinary center for the study, understanding and appreciation of African American art and culture. Items from the collection have previously rotated in the Evans Center Gallery and through unique exhibitions such as the 2012 "Life's Link: A Fred Wilson Installation," and the 2017 travelling exhibition of Jacob Lawrence's work.