“My house is like a library,” Belinda Tate says, “an educational resource for my family and friends, filled with books, artifacts, and ideas.” For Tate, director of Diggs Art Gallery at Winston-Salem State University, it’s also home to a wonderful art collection assembled through years of traveling around the world, featuring some of the best contemporary African-American artists and the extraordinary work of African women.

“I especially love the work of African women,” Tate says. “They go unsupported by their communities and are commonly expected to give their art up when they marry.” It’s those cultural expectations, she explains, that make it all the more remarkable when African women devote their lives to art. More than just a commercial endeavor, African women artists bring an intense spirituality to their art, believing it’s their life’s mission and purpose. “That spirit is reflected in their art,” Tate says.

That same spirit of independence, if not devotion to art, expressed itself when Tate purchased a 1920 bungalow in Washington Park. The home had been vacant for more than a decade, and was described by both Tate’s father and a real-estate friend as a “money pit.” But Tate ignored the naysayers, and instead, imagined housing her personal art collection inside the home.
“When I got the house, when it rained … it rained on the second floor,” Tate recalls. “My friend was right, it was a money pit.” 

Tate repaired the roof and stripped the interior down to its bare studs to replace electrical, plumbing, and structural elements that were badly in need of updating. After 10 years of unhurried renovation and remodeling, Tate now finds comfort inside the space. Surrounded by art, the home reminds her of her life’s journey, and continues to inspire a quiet spiritual connection to the continent of her ancestors.

That connection, and the impetus of her art collection, got its start when she visited Goree Island off the coast of Senegal as a junior in high school. A popular destination for Roots tourists, the island was infamously the last stop for slave ships before they made the voyage to the New World. It was there that Africans passed through “the door of no return” on their way to a lifetime of slavery in America. Tate describes the trip and her experience as profound. “I fell in love with Africa,” she recalls.

With a growing passion for her ancestral art, Tate accepted an invitation to study art history at Yale University. While there, she met her husband, H. Kwasi Prempeh, a law student from Ghana, while conducting interviews on the meanings of hundreds of different symbols found on Adinkra Cloth — the traditional textile of the Ghanaian people.

Whether its African fabrics, indigenous materials, handmade craftsmanship, or five generations of family pottery, the interior of Tate’s home tastefully mixes creativity with centuries of culture and history.

“I didn’t grow up with pictures on the wall,” Tate admits. Still, for the director of one of the South’s leading showcases of African and African-American art, Tate is quick to remind us that “art speaks to you; it is a mechanism for storytelling, and these are the pieces that welcome me home every day.”