List of illustrations -- President's statement / David P. Roselle -- Collector's foreword / Paul R. Jones -- Director's foreword / Janis A. Tomlinson -- Introduction / Amalia Amaki -- Political sight : on collecting art and culture / Amalia K. Amaki -- Collage and photomontage : Bearden's spiralist reflections of America and Africa / Sharon Pruitt -- Nanette Carter's discursive modernism : the collage aesthetic in Light over Soweto #5 / Ann Eden Gibson -- Reign(ing) in color : towards a wilder history of American art / Ikem Stanley Okoye -- On the surface : color, skin, and paint / Marcia R. Cohen and Diana McClintock -- Collecting memory : portraiture, posing, and desire / Carla Williams -- Flash from the past : hidden messages in the photographs of Prentice Herman Polk / Amalia K. Amaki -- African American printmakers : toward a more democratic art / Winston Kennedy -- Afterword : an appreciation / Margaret Andersen -- Preservation for posterity : the Paul R. Jones photography collection / Debra Hess Norris -- Artists' biographies -- Notes on contributors.