How Romare Bearden's Estate Is Bringing the Artist's Work into the Digital Realm

"Even the estate of an artist as acclaimed as Romare Bearden has trouble tracking down the thousands of works he made over the course of his five-decade career. Known as one of America's foremost collagists, Bearden created a distinctive style that can often be easily recognizable, but tracking down every single work he made, including ones not in that mode, can be a difficult task, especially when it comes to compiling a catalogue raisonné for the artist."

""Bearden was a social worker, and by virtue of just his way of life, he was giving things away to friends of his who were outside of the art world. And so, these things weren't necessarily being documented as transactions," said Elizabeth Gorayeb, the director of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute (WPI), which is publishing a catalogue raisonné for Bearden with the late artist's namesake foundation."

"But, the Bearden Foundation has managed to ascribe 2,400 artworks to him, and approximately 800 more were identified by the WPI team that is compiling his catalogue raisonné. Of these 3,000 works, 210 of them form the basis of the first chapter of The Romare Bearden Catalogue Raisonné Project, an in-progress compendium of all the known works by the 20th-century artist and only the second catalogue raisonné for an African American artist to ever be compiled."

Romare Bearden produced thousands of works over a five-decade career, many of which remain difficult to locate. The Bearden Foundation has ascribed 2,400 artworks, and the Wildenstein Plattner Institute identified approximately 800 additional pieces, totaling about 3,000 known works. Two hundred ten works formed the basis of the first chapter of an in-progress compendium of Bearden's output. Bearden often gave works to friends while working as a social worker, leaving many pieces undocumented as transactions. Digitization of his archive of ephemera uncovered new discoveries, including a portrait of Edmonia Lewis that appeared on a 1969 greeting card.

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