Fired Up! Ready to Go!: Finding Beauty, Demanding Equity: An African American Life in Art. The Collections of Peggy Cooper Cafritz by Peggy Cooper Cafritz (review)

For beginners, a standard question might be, "Who is Peggy Copper Cafritz?" "She is a terrestrial constellation connecting stars across galaxies in the fine art universe" (203), writes artist Hank Willis Thomas. While few black art cognoscenti would need to ask who Cooper Cafritz is, seldom few may know the legend beyond her defining roles as the founder of the Duke Ellington School for the Arts in Washington, D.C.; as a co-chair of the Cultural Equity Committee of the Smithsonian; and as an avid collector of African American, African, and Caribbean artists. In these frank moments—this one revealed in a conversation with Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem—the volume offers something priceless. The memory stick in Shainman's possession, and several loose-leaf binders of the collection that Cooper Cafritz had previously sent to Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem, helped to reassemble the inventory of the works that were lost.