Celebrating the depth and breadth of Black history, culture, and aesthetics, Red Rooster Overtown is proud to present the Legacy Collection, a world-class collection of modern & contemporary artwork from 15 artists worldwide. Housed in the former, Clyde Killens Pool Hall building — a historic site known to host icons such as Muhammed Ali, Aretha Franklin, and Count Basie — Red Rooster partners thoughtfully curated artwork ranging in genre & media to echo the spirit of Miami’s vibrant & diverse Black population, unique history, and bold style. The Legacy art collection blends a tapestry of narratives, colors, and textures to offer a multi-sensory experience that bridges Overtown’s rich cultural narrative, featuring Overtown’s own, Purvis Young, and linking through time to contemporary art masters like Theaster Gates & Kara Walker.
While dining and socializing with us, we encourage you to scan the QR code on your table and take a visual walk-through of the Legacy Collection at Red Rooster Overtown.
Phyllis Stephens (b. 1955) is an Atlanta-based, fifth-generation quilt maker considered by critics to be a Master of Black American story quilts. Having quilted professionally for more than thirty years, she describes her practice as a way to travel through time and revisit fond memories that feature cities and nature scenes as backgrounds and women, children, and families as subjects. Her quilts have been displayed in some of the most prestigious museums and galleries in the world including The Museum of the American Quilter’s Society in Paducah, Kentucky and the Fine Art Museum of Ghana. Her vibrant practice has won her fans across the world; notable collectors include Samuel L. and LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Denzel and Pauletta Washington, and the late Aretha Franklin.
Hugh Hayden’s artistic trajectory is a slow burn that continues to evolve. An architect by training, the Dallas native (b. 1983) continued designing stores for Starbucks while pursuing graduate studies at Columbia University (MFA, 2018). He recently presented American Food, his first solo exhibition in the UK; the show brought together wooden picnic tables, cast-iron skillets, and a multimedia stove as an homage to the history and significance of cooking and dining together in America. As Hayden considers Southern cooking the first uniquely American cuisine—which originated in kitchens run by enslaved cooks who infused recipes with African ingredients and techniques—the exhibition featured a variety of new and recent works, including 26 ‘skillets’, recast from a unique pairing of a wooden West African-style mask and a found cast iron frying pan. The artist holds this mirror up to his own identity as an African American: an abstraction on the African antecedent.
Adam Pendleton (b. 1984, Richmond, Virginia) is an American conceptual artist known for his multi-disciplinary practice, involving painting, silkscreen, collage, video, and performance. His work uses philosophy and historical movements as a basis to investigate language and reevaluate history through imagery with varied interpretations. Sites of Pendleton’s domestic exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and internationally, La Triennale at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and Manifesta 7 in Rovereto, Italy.
Pope.L (b. 1955, Newark, NJ) is a Chicago-based visual and performance artist whose multidisciplinary practice assesses preconceived notions within contemporary culture through painting, performance, installation, video, and sculpture. Aside from his physical body, works throughout his nearly 50-year career have employed a variety of materials including magazine clippings, plastic bottles, and cardboard which allow him to question the foundations of language, gender, race, and community. His work has been exhibited in major institutions worldwide, including Art Basel in Miami.
British contemporary painter Chris Ofili (b. 1968, Manchester, England) works in a vibrant palette and a variety of applied textures to examine both the contemporary and historical Black experience. In intricately detailed works, Ofili deploys inventive figuration through paint and collaged materials such as glitter and magazine cut-outs. His portrait works typically subvert stereotypical features like dark skin and full lips to frame from a place of beauty, with natural elements like leaves and flowers as background elements. Ofili’s work has been exhibited worldwide, notably in New York with a critically acclaimed mid-career retrospective at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in 2014, “Chris Ofili: Night and Day.”
Born in Chicago in 1977, Rashid Johnson is among an influential cadre of contemporary American artists whose work employs a wide range of media to explore themes of art history, individual and shared cultural identities, and personal narratives. Based in New York City, his expansive practice embraces a wide range of media—including sculpture, painting, drawing, filmmaking, and installation—yielding a complex multidisciplinary practice that incorporates diverse materials rich with symbolism. Johnson often uses culturally specific materials including shea butter, black soap, and varied living elements like household plants to explore the individual emblems that combine to create broader meaning in Black American cultures.
Michael St. John’s work conveys a sustained commitment to observing and re-presenting experiences of the everyday. Born in Indiana in 1963 and based in Massachusetts, St. John casts an inclusive and penetrating gaze on the world through which he moves. His practice involves layering newspaper clippings, found images, fragmented language, and everyday objects into captivating collaged portraits of the world at present. St. John also maintains a breadth of curatorial, editorial, and academic professional experience, and his work is in the collections of institutions including The Rubell Family Collection/Contemporary Arts Foundation, in Miami, Florida.
Born in 1978 in Winston-Salem, NC, Rashaun Rucker is a product of North Carolina Central University and Marygrove College. He makes photographs, prints, and drawings that feature Black men embodying and interfacing with birds, referencing Black men being literally and figuratively being pigeonholed throughout their lives and larger issues that silo Black communities into cycles of poverty and neglect. In 2008, Rucker became the first African American to be named Michigan Press Photographer of the Year, and he has received a national Emmy Award and two regional Emmys for documentary photography. He currently serves as a 2021 Resident at the International Studios and Curatorial Program in Brooklyn, New York.
Sanford Biggers’ (b. 1970, Los Angeles) exceptionally varied oeuvre includes paintings, drawings, sculpture, textiles, films, mixed-media installation, music, and performance. Based in Harlem, New York since 1999 after studying at Morehouse College and the School at the Art Institute of Chicago, his work is an interplay of narrative, perspective, and history that speaks to current social, political, and economic happenings while also examining the contexts that bore them. In 2015, he created the socially charged Laocoön (Fatal Bert) inflatable sculpture and began his much-acclaimed BAM series where he re-sculpted African statues with bullets before casting them into bronze to memorialize Black American victims of police brutality.
Stephen Arboite (b.1987) is a multidisciplinary artist of Haitian descent who was born and raised in New York City and now resides in Miami. Arboite’s work considers beauty outside of classical aesthetic paradigms, and places an emphasis on spiritual transformation and evolution of human consciousness. Arboite considers himself primarily a self-taught artist, with a foundation in drawing and painting from State University of New York, Purchase College. His works have been exhibited nationally at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, N’Namdi Contemporary in Detroit and Miami, Prizm Art Fair and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Michigan, amongst others. Some notable collections include the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami, the Eric and Donna Johnson Collection, and the Arthur Primas Collection of African American Art.
The second-floor lounge is anchored by our “Legacy History Staircase” lined with an array of adverts, flyers, and posters of vintage Black celebrities that minted the rich cultural legacy of Overtown that we carry on today. The intentional design and layout radiate throughout the restaurant, telling a story highlighting critical facets of Black culture through soulful cuisine, music, and visual art. The Legacy collection serves as a cultural third-space for people of all walks of life to join in on learning, celebrating, and preserving the artistic freedom and creative excellence of the Black community.