Q: Why is it called the Wedge Collection?

A: The name Wedge started because I used to hold these Sunday afternoon salons, a kind of a meeting place/art opening in my loft in Toronto. It was a wedge-shaped space where I was showing the art, so Wedge Gallery. Over time, these events became successful. The name stuck as a way of thinking about wedging artists who I was passionate about into the mainstream of contemporary art, into the story of art.

Q: What do all of these photographs have in common?

A: As a collector, I was never interested in images of oppression. I grew up with so many images of Black people that were about hunger, starvation, war, oppression. I felt, in a very inherent, very personal way, that my mission was to pull out more images about uplift and about achievement, more images about the beauty of ordinary Black life, which were lacking in the media when I was growing up.

As a 10-year-old, I would go across the river to the Detroit Institute of Arts, and I can remember seeing beautiful works like James Van Der Zee's Couple in Raccoon Coats, a 1930s Harlem Renaissance photograph that was burned in my brain even as a little kid. I carried these ideas of almost a Black imaginary, like “what could life be like in different places and different eras?” It was an education project for myself about my own community, not having it so present in my life day to day, growing up in a small Canadian town.

Q: Tell us a little bit about the music in the gallery.

A: I was so thrilled when the curator at PEM, Stephanie Tung, called me to say she had a vision for the show here that would be revolving around music. She had visited me in Toronto and saw how important music was to me. We drove around in my car playing music. She knew how deeply music affected me. As a collector, I can't think of these images without seeing them in my home, above my bed, in my private study, music playing while I'm with my family in my home. n my dental clinic, music playing while I'm seeing images by Jamel Shabazz in my waiting room, or a photograph by Kehinde Wiley at the reception desk. Always the music playing in the background. Music is for me almost like I can look at the picture and hear the sounds, hear the music. It's all one thing for me.

Stephanie ended up going back to soundtracks that I'd created, some of them 20 years ago. In the galleries, you'll hear music by artists like Sean Paul, who's a dancehall singer, DJ and producer from Jamaica. There'll be music that you'll hear from various artists from Brazil, from the U.K., like Massive Attack, groups that I love, music that I grew up enjoying. For me, music has always been right there as an artistic expression, just like art collecting.