A Paducah group that works to preserve Black history in Western Kentucky bought more than a dozen paintings by the late Helen LaFrance — a Black artist celebrated for her “memory paintings” of rural life in the region – at auction this weekend.
Paducah Historic Preservation Group raised more than $100,000 to purchase and preserve 14 works by LaFrance being sold at a private auction facilitated by James R. Cash Auctions & Real Estate.
Ultimately, 20 paintings by the renowned Graves County native will be kept in the group’s collection — after benefactors donated an additional six works by LaFrance. Three of the donated paintings came from the auction, while the other three were sourced from private collections.
The paintings, which include renderings of downtown Mayfield, agricultural scenes, family life and community gatherings, will be mounted at the Paducah School of Art & Design and rotated to regional art institutions when the school has other exhibits. The Kentucky Center for African American Heritage in Louisville will help manage the rotation.
“This collection will be available for western Kentucky, the state of Kentucky and the world to see,” PHPG president Rhonda McCorry-Smith said in a social media post. “I am looking forward to the next step of our vision for an African-American art and cultural museum for our region. This is a long term project and we will need your support.”
Among the group’s acquisitions is a work titled “Church Gathering,” which contains a small self portrait of LaFrance as a young girl at an Easter gathering outside of a country church. According to the auction house’s social media channels, the work generated the highest bid of the auction, which also included a painting of the now-demolished Graves County Courthouse that was badly damaged in December 2021 tornado outbreak.
PHPG leadership said it hopes to investigate the possibility of creating a permanent museum space to exhibit LaFrance’s works, as well as other historic works, objects and documents related to Black history in the region. The group formed in 2022 with the goal of highlighting African-American history in the region, mounting projects like a driving tour of Black history locales in Paducah and driving conversations about public art in the Western Kentucky city.
McCorry-Smith said the next steps for the group are getting the acquired works appraised, insured and hung at PSAD. She also hopes to do due diligence when it comes to the group’s goal of establishing a prospective museum by examining possibilities for collaboration as well as funding sources, including state agencies, endowments and other potentialities.
(This story first ran on WKMS, the public radio station at Murray State University.)
A native of western Kentucky, Operle earned his bachelor's degree in integrated strategic communications from the University of Kentucky in 2014. Operle spent five years working for Paxton Media/The Paducah Sun as a reporter and editor. In addition to his work in the news industry, Operle is a passionate movie lover and concertgoer.
