Pictured above: Former Razorback star Darrell Walker enjoyed a long career in the NBA. (Photos provided)
Mention Darrell Walker in most corners of Arkansas, and his name recognition is almost instantaneous among Razorback fans. The Chicago native carved a permanent place in the Hogs basketball pantheon for scoring 1,325 points in three seasons (18th all-time) plus ranking fourth all-time in steals (230) and sixth in made free throws (524).
Under the late Eddie Sutton, Walker and his mates reached the NCAA Sweet 16 in 1981 and 1983. He was second-team All American the latter year, as well as an NABC All-District selection, All Star and Player of the Year. He was twice named Southwest Conference Defensive Player of the Year before entering the ranks of the NBA, where he played for five teams over a decade as a pro.
Recently, Walker reentered the Arkansas basketball landscape, this time from the bench. Now in his fifth season as the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s head basketball coach, Walker has had a transformative effect on the Trojans program. He led the team to an outright Sun Belt Conference crown in his second season, landing him Sun Belt Coach of the Year honors.
Walker, who holds the additional distinction of being the only active coach with head coaching experience at the NBA, WNBA, Division II and Division I levels, resides in both the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame and the University of Arkansas Hall of Honor.
In fact, he is so closely associated with the hardwood that many people did a double-take when, in January, the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock announced Walker as one of the newest directors for the AMFA Foundation. Many of those outside of the coach’s immediate circle had no idea of the depth of his art appreciation that has fueled decades of collecting various works.
“It started in 1990 or ’91,” Walker said. “Bernard King is a hall-of-fame basketball player who I played with on the [NBA’s] New York Knicks, and we wound up playing together again in Washington. He was always on me about other interests, like museums and art. I’m a young player focused on my career and hanging out with everybody else in their 20s.
“When I got traded to the [Detroit] Pistons in ’89 or ’90, I just took it upon myself to start collecting and visiting museums and visiting galleries, artists’ studios and educating myself on the road. Just got hooked on it.”
King was a revelation to Walker, who said his mentor’s passion for art was something uncommon among the other players he encountered.
“Bernard had been doing it for a long time as an NBA player, and you didn’t see that. You see it now because it’s the ‘in’ thing to do, but when he was doing it and I was collecting art, that was not the ‘in’ thing to do,” he said. “He and I would talk art, talked about all the great African American artists that were out there in the world. We’d go visit this studio, go visit this artist, go to this museum.
“I also read a lot; I really read a lot about art and stayed in tune with it every day. Over time, my collection just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”
When asked what it was that captured his attention about what King was selling him about art, Walker said he has always been captivated by the creativity it takes to move an idea to the canvas, camera or clay.
“Some people can be so creative to do abstract work, to do photography, to do sculpture, to do figurative work,” he said. “Everybody in my collection, I have some relationship with the artist. That makes it even better when you have a relationship with them and are able to go to the studio and hang out with them, go to dinner with them, share a glass of wine.
“Art, to me, you get to wake up in the morning and look at it, but it’s also preserving my history as an African American man in this country. My collection is strictly an African American collection of photographers, sculptors, painters — you name it. I’m also cultivating and preserving my history for myself and for my kids and for my grandkids.”
Walker’s collection, which now numbers about 90 works, has developed as his knowledge and his understanding of given schools of expression has deepened significantly.
“As a young collector, you tend to look at the figurative because that’s what you see is the people,” he said. “I gravitated toward figurative works first and then I graduated toward abstracts after I became a more educated art collector. I got better, kept reading to understand abstracts.
“You’ve got the great Sam Gilliam, who’s one of the most unbelievable abstract painters who ever lived. Norman Lewis was another abstract painter who was in the same group with Jackson Pollock and all those other abstract painters. In the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, he was the only African American in Life magazine photographed sitting at the table with all the abstract expressionists. There are so many good artists out there and so many good artists in my collection, but I really, really like those two.”
Walker said the decision to join the AMFA Foundation came in part from how impressed he was with the new museum building christened last year. He said the downtown Little Rock jewel can hold its own against museums in much larger cities.
“The museum is spectacular,” he said. “All the people that went out fundraising and gave their money to get this project done, it’s one of the jewels of central Arkansas. For me to be able to be on the board of this museum is a huge, huge honor.”
Walker and the Trojans basketball team at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.
In the same way he was mentored, Walker has taken steps to introduce the next generation to the art world. He recently took his Trojans to view a Whitfield Lovell exhibition at AMFA. He said there’s common ground between his two great loves — art and basketball — which he sees in the final product of a well-orchestrated team.
“Sometimes you can see when your team plays basketball correctly, there’s a beauty and a creativity of getting on a fast break, and the ball doesn’t touch the floor,” he said. “All that stuff is creativity — how the ball moves around through to the open man, the open shot. All that has its own creativity.”
The AMFA Foundation is a nonprofit entity that owns the 14,000 works of art in the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Foundation Collection. The foundation board manages the endowment’s investments, supporting the museum’s ongoing operations and growth, and oversees art acquisitions and care of the collection.
In addition to Walker, the AMFA Foundation directors include Warren Stephens, chair; Ben Hussman, vice-chair; George O’Connor, treasurer; Victoria Ramirez, secretary; Terri Erwin; Michael Mayton; Harriet Stephens; Robert W. Tucker, past chair; and Stan Hastings, AMFA Board of Trustees president.
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