Eden Williams grew up surrounded by creativity. Her parents, E.T. and Lyn Williams, have collected African-American art for more than five decades, during which E.T. served on the boards of the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Studio Museum, among others.
"I wasn't conscious of it initially," Ms. Williams said during a recent conversation in her parents' art-filled Sag Harbor home. As a teenager, she said, her attention began to shift away from her friends as she became aware of all the talk about art, and as people came to look at her parents' collection.
She noticed that visitors "got lost in the stories of the artists and the movements. And I would get lost, too, listening to my parents speak about why they got a certain painting, or why they believed in a certain artist. What I learned to respect most about their collecting was that they really were pioneers at a time when African-American artists were not revered in the same way they are beginning to be now."
And yet, when she went off to Harvard in 1987, it was to study American history. The idea of a life in the art world did not occur to her. Instead, after graduation and a year off, she embarked on a career that spanned marketing and publishing, working for such companies as Niche Media, Plum TV, and Modern Luxury, before pivoting, in the late '90s, to Washington, D.C. Working on domestic campaigns and fund-raising for Andrew Cuomo when he was U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development "opened my eyes to how it works in Washington. We got a lot accomplished, and I felt really good about that job."
It wasn't until 2017 that Ms. Williams launched her own marketing firm. Her clients include Purist magazine, the high-end furnishings retailer One Kings Lane, and Deutsch Family Wines and Spirits, but her primary focus is the "art advisory space -- promoting and supporting artists and introducing their work to collectors."
On the artist side, it's arranging studio visits and facilitating introductions to dealers, collectors, curators, and enthusiasts. On the collector side, it's "knowing what they're looking for, the type of work they like, and trying to match that with some of the artists I work with."
Her interest in the art world grew as her parents were promoting the painter Claude Lawrence. "I was working at home and saw more and more curators coming over as my parents were trying to build his legacy. It was a lot of work, and seeing my parents doing it, my dad especially, I started helping him."
Since Ms. Williams divides her time between New York City and Sag Harbor, as do her parents, her father suggested she meet with Julie Keyes, a Sag Harbor gallerist and consultant with more than 30 years of experience in the field.
"I told her I wanted to work with her on bringing in Black artists, who were underrepresented and underappreciated." Ms. Williams introduced Ms. Keyes to the painter Erika Ranee. "Julie took a look at her work and said, 'Wow, let's do that.' "
"Afrofuturism," a multi-site exhibition organized by Ms. Williams and Ms. Keyes of work by Black artists, followed. The first show, held at Greenport's Natali/Keyes Gallery in February, featured the work of Mr. Lawrence, Ms. Ranee, Faith Ringgold, and Clintel Steed. Not long after, Keyes Projects organized a show of paintings by Cullen Washington Jr. at AB NY in East Hampton.
At the same time, The Church in Sag Harbor presented "Padraos," a series of collages by Leslee Stradford inspired by Herman Bennett's book "African Kings and Black Slaves: Sovereignty and Dispossession in the Early Modern Atlantic." Dr. Stradford and Mr. Lawrence had been The Church's second artists-in-residence in 2021.
An exhibition of work by Thornton Dial, Dr. Stradford, and Ms. Ranee followed at Keyes Art in Sag Harbor.
Of Mr. Lawrence and Dr. Stradford, Ms. Williams said, "There was a frenzy around them. It's so nice to have them back in our community -- they are both such incredible talents."
She has no interest in opening a gallery of her own, she said, preferring to "shuffle and pivot and move around as I need to. There are a lot of potential clients in Los Angeles, for example, that I've been speaking with."
The internet is another source of information and discoveries. The artist Reginald Sylvester II, for example, is based in Queens, but Ms. Williams found him through Instagram and visited his studio. They are now discussing a collaboration.
The Williams family's Sag Harbor roots are deep. E.T. Williams, now in his 80s, began coming there as a child. Over the years, while building a successful career in banking and real estate in the city, he bought his current house, built in 1830 by David Hempstead, who was the head of Sag Harbor's A.M.E. Zion Church. The church is believed to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Coincidentally, Colson Whitehead, the author of the multiple-prizewinning novel "The Underground Railroad," was a Sag Harbor friend of Ms. Williams. "We knew at a young age that he would be something spectacular," she said. "We used to play all the time. He had an amazing vocabulary. Everything was just on another plane."
Of the village, which she began visiting in the mid-1970s, Ms. Williams said, "It's been a great opportunity for me to really expand my horizons and expand my cultural understanding and appreciation. Because, where I grew up in Manhattan, it was a mostly white environment. But here in the SANS area, it was predominantly Black. It was great to have some like-minded people to hang out with and exchange experiences and ideas."
She acknowledged that during the past few years, work by Black artists has come into vogue, "and a lot of them are making it into the big leagues. But there are also a lot who aren't, and those are often abstract artists. I feel my mission right now is to help primarily the abstract artists. It's all about helping people, in the end."
