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“It was all really impossible. The street was very antagonistic, and it was sort of hidden away. I managed to survive; I made a lot of friends of other craftsmen sometime in there.” - Art Smith

As the Interpretation intern this summer, I was asked to research the connections between Smith’s jewelry and modern dance. I quickly saw that his early collaborations and friendships with other creators heavily influenced his artistic practice. Smith found inspiration in a community of artists, many of whom shared his identification as a black, gay man. Although many of these artists—Smith included—faced discrimination, they built a network of mutual support. I felt that these early connections, which sparked and propelled Smith’s career, were worth sharing. The circle of creative individuals Smith surrounded himself with and the collaborative practices that emerged reinforce the important role art can play in building communities and in fostering both artistic and social solidarity.

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After graduating from Cooper Union in New York City in 1940, Smith worked for the National Youth Administration and took a night course in jewelry making at New York University. In 1946, Smith opened his own shop on Cornelia Street in the Village. Singled out for his race in an otherwise predominantly Italian area, Smith faced harsh discrimination and violence, including an attempt to run him over and the smashing of his store window.

Speaking of this difficult time, Smith said: “The thing that really sort of saved the day, in a sense, were a couple of civil rights organizations.… They did rally around a number of these incidents, and they did have street meetings and demonstrations indoors as well, and they did have petitions, and a lot of what you might call liberal, or just decent people of the Village rallied to our aid.” (Oral history interview with Art Smith, 1971 August 24–31, Smithsonian Institution)

Art Smith (American, 1917–1982), Storefront Window at 140 East 4th Street with Art Smith and Woman in Reflection, ca. 1955, gelatin silver print, Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell.

Smith was able to make it through these tough times thanks to the artists he befriended as well as the socially conscious community that surrounded him. One of Smith’s most influential friends was Talley Beatty, a prominent black dancer and choreographer. It was Beatty who brought Smith to the Manhattan parlor of Frank and Dorcas Neal, its members virtually all black artists—painters, dancers, writers, musicians.Frank Neal, a dancer and painter, and his wife, Dorcas, known as an excellent hostess and chef, hosted hours of conversation every weekend night and, often, once or twice during the week.

Speaking about the salon, Dorcas explained: “I guess you could say this was a safe place to be. It was a place for a group of people who were just different to be in the company of those who were the same. It was all like a family situation. This was a breeding ground for a certain group of artists at a certain time when they had nowhere else to go...They all faced a lot of the same problems and a lot of the same questions regarding their careers and their place in the world, which was white at the time. I think they were able to answer many of those questions for each other and solve those problems and become successful in the world…. For those in the group who were black and gay, and that wasn’t everybody, it meant the world just to see that there were others like them in the arts.”

Dancer Talley Beatty recalled the many conversations around the arts: “It was highly animated, wonderful. Everything was criticized. No one came away unscathed. It was very sociopolitical. A black gathering, very sociopolitical.… At the salon, we could discuss our observations and frustrations together and argue about them, which is what inevitably happened.” (Hajdu, David. Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996. 114–16.)

Unknown photographer, Art Smith Holding a Wire-Loop Ball, ca. 1955, gelatin silver print, Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell.

Beatty would eventually introduce Smith to other influential choreographers and dancers, such as Pearl Primus, for whom Smith would create jewelry pieces that moved with the dancers and enhanced the visual appeal of stage performances. These collaborations would shape his designs, influencing the way he saw jewelry and its relationship to the human body. He kept on with his practice of crafting jewelry out of a variety of metals and materials, making his works accessible and affordable for people of widely ranging economic backgrounds.

Smith steadily built his career, ultimately moving his shop to a less hostile area in the Village, West 4th Street. He continued to collaborate with and find support in the New York artist community. By the mid-1950s, Smith’s career was flourishing; he received feature pictorial coverage in both Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, and boutiques across the nation sold his work. His new location, where he remained until three years before his death in 1982, became another gathering place for avant-garde musicians, beat poets, actors, and artists.