ABOVE: Detail from Romare Bearden’s Home to Ithaca (1977). Art by African Americans is predicted to explode in popularity—and profitability—in the coming decade. One collector says Bearden is the most undervalued artist in America today.

Let’s pick a sentence from this week’s edition of BusinessWeek and just think about it, really ponder it for a while: commenting that he thinks art by black artists is just starting to catch on with wealthy white investors, one expert says, and we quote, “There isn’t much else to collect that hasn’t been overexploited.”

Let’s just take a second, let that sink in.

Yeah, so, uh, looks like it’s time for those African Americans to be exploited, huh? After decades of neglect by mainstream collectors, they’re going to come charging in, Amexes at the ready, oohing and aahing at artists they couldn’t give a damn about before they got the whiff of profitability around them. Charming. Naturally, we have mixed feelings about this, since it also means that a) long-obscure artists will finally get some play; b) it will bring the price for African American artists into parity with their paler colleagues; and c) the people who supported black artists when no one else did will make a killing if they choose to sell. So maybe this is equality, even if it seems kind of crass. Too bad you missed the National Black Fine Art Show, which closed yesterday. Happy Black History Month!

LINK: BusinessWeek > Black Art Is Buried Treasure