DURHAM - Earlier this year, an Atlantic Beach couple lent several paintings by noted African-American artist A.B. Jackson to the art museum at N.C. Central University.

With the exhibition's end came a surprise: The couple, Mary Jo and Dick Bell, donated the paintings and others -- 14 in all -- to the museum.

The collection is valued at nearly $200,000 and is the largest gift the museum has ever received.

"We're ecstatic," said Kenneth Rodgers, the museum's director. "It is an amazing gift that fills several voids in our collection."

The late artist's collection of watercolors, prints and drawings focus on the lives of everyday African-Americans. One work is from Jackson's "Porch People" series, a depiction of ordinary folks sitting on their front porches.

"He mined an area of Afro-Americana that very few artists examined," Rodgers said.

The Bells have long been avid collectors of North Carolina art and in the 1960s owned a gallery in Water Garden, a mixed-use complex in Raleigh that Bell, a landscape architect, designed. In retirement, the Bells have looked for ways to share their art collection.

"We've been fortunate to be able to collect so much art," Dick Bell said in a news release. "Now we're happy to disseminate it -- to share the work of such great artists as A.B. Jackson."

Jackson earned two art degrees from Yale in the mid-1950s. He taught art for 10 years at Norfolk State before joining Old Dominion University as a full professor and the school's first black faculty member. He died in 1981 at the age of 55.

Portions of the Jackson collection will be shown next in November, Rodgers said.

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