"Real art" was out of reach for V. Joy Simmons, '74, when she was an undergraduate. But she had the eye for it, if not the cash. Even then she started to surround herself, on a shoestring budget, with posters of the work of artists such as Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence. When she got to medical school at UCLA, she bought an Elizabeth Catlett print for $50; it took her five months to pay it off.
Simmons majored in human biology at Stanford, didn't take art history and doesn't think of herself as an expert collector. But as she built her career as a radiologist, she also immersed herself in the Los Angeles art community. "It just took me over," she says. She made it a point to be at shows for emerging African-American artists and now delights in throwing "little soirées" at which she tries to encourage and mentor future patrons.
She studied architecture and general contracting for the construction of her house—"a little black girl can build!" she declares—and then filled it with creations from rising stars, including Mark Bradford and Mickalene Thomas. A former member of the University's Board of Trustees, Simmons also hosts groups of Stanford students to show them what art can mean to them individually and, she hopes, how inseparable it should be from their homes.
Mike Antonucci is a senior writer at Stanford.
