JOHN WITHERSPOON &
ANGELA ROBINSON WITHERSPOON

Band of Vices is pleased to announce, MASTERCLASS, a 30-year love affair in art collecting with John Witherspoon & Angela Robinson Witherspoon.

I married John Witherspoon on June 28th, 1987 in my manager’s backyard in Beverly Hills. We stayed together for over 32 years… and we still liked each other. We still made each other laugh out loud… Up until the day he died suddenly… of a massive stroke in his office… in our home in Sherman Oaks. We traveled together across three decades, through feast and famine… the very good… the very bad… and a few times, the very ugly. The first few years we ate alot of chicken and dumplings… mostly dumplings… and then after 8years… John’s career started to take off. The TV series “The Wayans Brothers”, the Friday films with Ice Cube, and that iconic scene from Boomerang, launched John Witherspoon firmly into the stratosphere… alongside Bill Cosby and all the other TV fathers that folks related to. John was the real POPS, and sometimes the crazy Uncle that was never left home alone with the kids. We quickly found our respective roles in our marriage… John became a great provider and protector of our family and I became the caregiver… the carpool driver and holder of the fort. John used to say “I can’t turn down nothin’ but my collar”. He worked constantly on TV and in film, and eventually in animated series… and when he wasn’t booked in Los Angeles, he went out on the road. For some years he did 32 to 35 weekends at the various Improv Clubs, Caroline’s in NYC and Tommy T’s up in Oakland. He was managed by Levity, Inc., the owners of 32 Improvisation Clubs bought and franchised from the original club on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. As times got better we each chose things we liked to invest in. I chose Art and real estate… John enjoyed being a landlord, but he loved diamonds and classic cars, and then...Art. In the beginning, we bought things we recognized: Picasso, Rembrandt, Romare Bearden. Eventually, we found ourselves more interested in Artists of African descent… African Americans and those of the African Diaspora. We met Tony Ramos who introduced us to Betye Saar. We became friends with CCH Pounder and Terrell Tilford and bought sporadically from both of them when they were holding forth on Pico Blvd with their galleries side by side. Looking back on it… we just bought what we loved… I liked to say I bought things that “winked at me in the morning when I came downstairs to make my coffee”. Eventually, we opened a small art gallery called “Art Peace” in Burbank, CA. It was an interesting location… off the beaten path… but it was in an area where we could own the building. We opened in 2004 or 2005 and lasted up into the crash of 2008-2009. Over 300 people attended our first-anniversary party and we took publicity photos with Sidney Poitier, Dr.Cornell West, Katt Williams, Bill Withers, Sharon Stone, and many others in attendance that night. Linda Jones was our publicist and she was in her glory… running folks out to the step and repeat to take photos with me and or John Witherspoon. Artist Betye Saar was in attendance along with Dr.Bernie Casey and Oliver Nowlin, Tony Ramos, and many others. We represented folks who had great chops, but at some point had been overlooked by the white male-dominated ART establishment… So this show… is a product of that time…  a product of a happy marriage… the accumulation of goodies from a happy and prosperous couple… a legacy collection that might travel and represent Angela and John Witherspoon… or might be sold off to the highest bidder, while the widow moves to Spain, or France… the devil is in the details. I would like to see it travel to our hometowns, Detroit and Washington, D.C. for starters. I love you. Angela Robinson Witherspoon