Wells Shares Delaney Legacy
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Wells Shares Delaney Legacy
Denbo Center hosts Monique Wells, Beauford Delaney estate and Delaney advocate.
The Denbo Center for Humanities & the Arts held a luncheon on February 20, 2025, for community partners involved in the Delaney Legacy Project in Knoxville. This continues the Denbo Center’s investment in regional arts that began in 2020 with a symposium, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, on Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin and held in collaboration with the Knoxville Museum of Art (KMA) and other community partners.
Monique Wells is co-founder of the travel planning service Discover Paris! and the creator of Entrée to Black Paris tours and activities. In 2010, she was instrumental in bringing attention to the unmarked Paris grave of Knoxville-born artist Beauford Delaney, laid to rest there after his death in his adopted city in 1979.
Wells raised money for a tombstone and for plaques across the city commemorating Delaney’s work and life, working with the US Embassy and numerous Delaney supporters. She maintains an important blog about Delaney titled after her nonprofit association, Les Amis de Beauford Delaney. She also has established important ties with the Knoxville Delaney Legacy Project—originally chaired by Knoxville’s Sylvia Petterson and now by the Rev. Renee Kesler at the Beck Cultural Exchange Center—and connected numerous historical and arts organizations around Delaney’s legacy.
Wells was invited to campus for numerous events, including speaking at the GeoSym conference hosted by UT’s Department of Geography and Sustainability and using the Delaney archives at Hodges Library.
Attorney Derek Spratley, executor of the Delaney Estate, partnered with Professor Amy Elias, director of the Denbo center, to host a reception and informal talk by Wells at the center during her five-day Knoxville visit. Invited were key supporters of the estate, family and community friends, as well as KMA executive director Steven Matijcio; former KMA director David Butler; Renee Kesler, President of the Beck Cultural Exchange Center; Dean of UT Libraries Steve Smith; and Robert J. Hinde, executive dean of the UT College of Arts and Sciences.
Elias gave a short welcome to the Denbo Center and then ceded the floor to Stephen K. Wicks, Barbara W. and Bernard E. Berstein, curator at the KMA, who emphasized the importance of Delaney to the region and the art world.
Spratley introduced Wells, who riveted the audience with the story of discovering Delaney’s Paris grave and her efforts to mark the grave and his places of residence, and also to hold a Paris exhibition of his work in 2016.
“It was thrilling to be able to host Monique at the Denbo Center,” said Elias. “Helping to continue Beauford Delaney’s legacy in his hometown, and working with such outstanding partners as Derek Spratley, Stephen Wicks, and Renee Kesler, is an honor.”
Wells wrote about her visit on her Les Amis de Beauford Delaney blog.