Noah Davis

Noah Davis Will Live Forever

Photographer Christian Witkin captures the last living photos of a young painter at the Underground Museum that embodies his spirit

Despite being one of the most fluid and ever-expanding fields of human endeavor, art has unfortunately become one of humanity’s more elitist practices. And its exclusionary state has been compounded through the contemporary art world’s perpetuation of racist and classist divisions. Disparities of inclusion exist in nearly every aspect of the field—from the racial breakdowns of museum staffs and visitors to the percentages of artists of color in museum collections.

Standard galleries and museums have traditionally operated as rarified spaces whose aesthetic fail to resonate with certain groups— and this has allowed contemporary art’s gatekeepers to restrict the scope of legitimization and access to these same individuals and communities. After over a century of this type of selective reach, museums are finally beginning to recognize these shortcomings, and are addressing them through more equitably curated exhibitions and programming.

Painter and installation artist Noah Davis was about to be part of this paradigm shift prior to his sudden death from a rare form of soft tissue cancer in 2015. Davis, co-founded The Underground Museum in 2012, with his wife Karon, and it has existed as a revolutionary space in the contemporary art world ever since.

Located in the predominantly black-and-Latino neighborhood of Arlington Heights in Central Los Angeles, the museum has been able to bring quality art to a community that at the time of its founding had no access to it within walking distance. The UM, as it’s affectionately known, now serves as everything from a gallery space to a garden to a film club.

Davis’ founding of the UM was heavily influenced by his father, Keven Davis, a sports-and-entertainment lawyer who represented several notable athletes and musicians during his career. In 1990 he agreed to work pro-bono for two aspiring tennis players named Venus and Serena Williams. Davis’ mother, Faith Childs-Davis, was a teacher who encouraged Davis and his brother’s pursuit of art.  After growing up in Seattle, he would go on to study painting at the Cooper Union in New York, and his brother, Kahlil Joseph, pursued film in L.A., working with director Terrence Malick and for photographer and commercial director, Melodie Mcdaniel.

In 2004, Davis moved to L.A. and secured studio space in the same building where Joseph was making work with several other artists. According to sculptor Thomas Houseago, this was the period when Davis began to talk about a “museum” that he wanted to build to bring together “art, entertainment and music.”

In 2008, he married Karon Vereen at Art Basel Miami Beach, and was included in the Rubell Family Collection’s “30 Americans” exhibition. The exhibition included renowned African-American artists such as Kara Walker and David Hammons— and at 25 years old, Davis was the youngest artist in the show.

Before Davis’ father’s death in 2011, he charged his sons with creating something that could amplify the collective image and voice of their community. The result would be the UM, one year later. Davis and his wife started it with storefront spaces that also doubled as the couple’s home and studio.

After several years of producing exhibitions that included he and his brother’s works, and recreations of pieces by notable artists that museums and galleries would not loan because of the UM’s location, Davis began to attract the attention of artists and curators—particularly Helen Molesworth. She had taken a new position as chief curator at MOCA in 2013, and after seeing Joseph’s m.A.A.d video installation at the UM, she decided to included it in a 2015 exhibition. Eventually, Joseph and Davis’ relationship with Molesworth would lead to a partnership with MOCA to loan works from their collection to the UM for exhibitions. Molesworth recognized that there were audiences and conversations that the UM could spark, that MOCA would never be able to, and thus gave the UM permission to use and interpret artwork from the MOCA collection however they chose.

Despite being hospitalized and overtaken by his illness in 2015, Davis continued to draft exhibition ideas for the UM—and while he was not able to see the second MOCA collaboration exhibition, “Non-Fiction,” he was able to leave this realm knowing that a new and more inclusive pathway of inspiration had been created for the next generation.

In May of this year, the UM hosted a talk between Thelma Golden and Lorna Simpson. During the discussion, Simpson referenced Davis’ legacy, and the UM, as essential to the artistic impulse and creativity of the community it serves. When a member of the audience asked Simpson how she nurtured those sentiments in her daughter, Zora Casebere took the opportunity to respond with her own perspective, stating that her mother has always vehemently supported her curiosity and creative pursuits.

“What’s become really important to me is just the intersections of things—and using art to study history, and using history to study art,” she said. “And figuring out how to consistently question, reevaluate, and broaden the way that I see the limits or boundaries of anything.”

These boundaries that Casebere referenced are some of the same ones that Davis sought to eradicate with the creation of the UM. The Arlington-Heights neighborhood, along with the contemporary art world at large, has now been left with a legacy that will continue to spur curiosity and creativity – particularly among those who have traditionally been excluded. Davis left us with the future of the contemporary art world: a multilayered and boundless canvas that can connect emotionally with humans of all backgrounds.