It’s coincidental, but more than appropriate, that Black History Month marks Rouse’s six-month anniversary as the museum’s executive director.

The museum is taking steps to become, as Rouse says, a professional showcase of African-American art and culture – at a time when more collectors of African-American art are themselves maturing and looking for the best of the best.

When blacks began collecting black art in the late 1970s – some spurred by paintings displayed on the walls of the Huxtable household in “The Cosby Show” – they favored low-end pieces, said Mercer Redcross, co-owner of October Gallery on N. 2nd Street. Now those same buyers “want to know where the top is,” he said.

A good example of that desire was evident last weekend at the National Black Fine Arts Show in New York. Featuring works from 41 galleries from around the world, the event drew 8,000 to 10,000 people, organizers said. People stood shoulder to shoulder viewing and purchasing original works by such African-American artists as Romare Bearden and Henry Ossawa Tanner.

“It was great,” Rouse said. “You saw African-Americans doing the range of art,” from realism to abstract. And Rouse was pleased that her winter exhibition, “Rejuvenating a Collection: Ford Foundation Artists and Acquisitions,” which opened in January, reflected the same range.

The museum is also one of nine across the country participating in the “Perspectives in African American Art” program sponsored by Seagram’s gin. The program provides grants to museums for artists-in-residence programs and commissions to “emerging artists.”

Mixed-media artist Martina Johnson-Allen of Philadelphia has been commissioned to do a piece for the Philadelphia museum.

“The Seagram’s program has been growing,” Rouse said. “To have artists selected by various communities and have them put forth is a wonderful thing.”

Sande Webster, whose gallery at 20th and Locust streets specializes in African-American art, has been in the business for 30 years. She realized early on that there were African-American artists “of comparable quality and ability of Caucasian artists, who were not receiving anywhere near the kind of recognition they should’ve been.” “There’s a real interest in people having access to material that represents themselves,” Rouse said.

To spur that interest, Rouse, 45, has given her 23-year-old institution a new look.

The museum building’s gray concrete interior has been repainted white. Some gallery walls have been painted brown, to set off photographs by jazz bassist Milt Hinton; other walls got the “ice storm blue” treatment to complement paintings and sculpture.

“Exhibits should look a certain way,” Rouse said. “Museums are all about the creation of feelings and illusions.”

The lighting in the lobby is brighter. “It was always dark,” Rouse said, giving the museum “a sense of foreboding.”

Then there’s the collection.

Webster has seen it evolve over the years. The museum “didn’t own anything” when it opened in 1976, Webster said. “As the collection has grown, it has developed a point of view. A lot of artists in the collection are well-established now. It shows the museum had some foresight in its purchases.”

In 1990, the museum used a Ford Foundation grant to purchase works by Moe Brooker, Paul Keene, Syd Carpenter, Howardena Pindell, Charles Searles, Richard Mayhew and John E. Dowell Jr.

With a 1993 Ford grant, the museum bought works from Pat Ward Williams, James Brantley, Charles Burwell, Martha Jackson-Jarvis, Martina Johnson-Allen and Louis Sloan.

The museum is tracking attendance, has inserted programs geared to the community, published a calendar and changed its name. It was formerly the Afro-American Historical & Cultural Museum.

All of this comes as Rouse dreams of getting the museum accreditation and making it “feel like Disneyland, but only for a lot less money.”

Rouse, a museum professional for 19 years, said she wants to bring the African American Museum in Philadelphia into the “museum world.”

“There are standards in our business,” she said. “There are things we have to adhere to,” such as making sure objects are well-lit, that information about a display is easily available, that historical documents are properly displayed.

But “institutions go through cycles,” she said. “We tend to be too hard on ourselves. This institution is going through development, as it should be.”

Nona Martin, the museum’s director of education, notes the museum is more than just a place to hang pictures.

“It’s not about displaying African-American art,” Martin said. “It’s about interpreting and displaying African-American culture.”

“Visitors need to walk away feeling that this was a wonderful experience,” Rouse said. “That’s what will bring them back.”

Camera in hand, Gaston shot and shot and shot . . . and the result is “a mini-series on the eloquence of backs, the subjects set against the gleaming symbol that is Capitol Hill.”

The collection, focusing on individuals rather than on large crowds, shows the character of the event from a single marcher’s point of view. It opens FRIDAY with a free reception from 5 to 9 p.m. at October Gallery, 217 Church St. The show also can be seen there throughout the month during the gallery’s regular hours, Mondays-Fridays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from noon to 6 p.m. Info: 215-629-3939.

FEET FEAT. You’ll get your kicks when they do their kicking – “they” being the members of the Veryovka Ukrainian National Dance Company, which is touring the United States for the first time. The troupe, which draws on folk music, art and dance from across the Ukraine, comes to Philadelphia FRIDAY to perform historical ballads, Cossack and chumak songs and dances, scenic compositions and works of holiday celebrations. The troupe was founded in 1943 by Hrihory Veryovka in Kharkov, shortly after the city was liberated from the Nazis. It continues today under director Anatoly Avdiesky and has performed regularly throughout Europe, Canada and Mexico – but this is its first trip to the States. The “All Star-Forum” program is at 8 p.m. at the Academy of Music, Broad and Locust streets. Tickets: $14-$40. Info: 215-735-7506.

MANN MADE. “I’ve spent a lot of time in L.A. the past year, playing little shows, writing songs, but basically not doing much,” confesses Aimee Mann, the throaty pop-rock chanteuse best known for her hits with Til Tuesday (remember “Voices Carry”?) and last year’s “That’s Just What You Are” from the “Melrose Place” soundtrack. Mann was supposed to parlay the latter hit with her own album, “I’m with Stupid,” a most tuneful jangle-pop collection with a surprisingly hard and sometimes bitter core. But the disc’s release was delayed until just last week because Mann’s record label Imago abruptly folded, and it took eons for a new distribution deal to be hammered out with Geffen. “I was always thinking I can’t go anywhere, ’cause any minute now it’ll come out,” sighs the singer/songwriter, who headlines TLA with a band SATURDAY night. “I feel like I’ve finally been let out of a cage.” Semi-Sonic opens Mann’s show at TLA, 334 South St. 8 p.m. Tickets are $13.50. Info: 215-922-2599.

Up the spiral staircase, in an office above their sunlit Powelton Village gallery, the couple speak together of their lives and work, closely intertwined for 24 years.

The gallery business came about almost by accident. Mercer is, by nature, the collector. Of trains. Of clocks. “And stained glass,” interjects Evelyn. ”You forget!”

They met and married while students at Fisk University in Nashville, then came to Mercer’s home town of Philadelphia in the late ’60s to complete their educations. He wound up with a job at the Federal Reserve Bank and she became a city social worker before they both took jobs at the same real estate office. Neither knew much about art.

But Mercer became intrigued with the splashy sports paintings of LeRoy Neiman and went to an auction of the artist’s works one day in a Philadelphia hotel. “I wanted to see them,” he says, then adds, “I wanted to own one.”

“Maybe we were just art collectors waiting to happen,” Mercer says.

So, the Redcrosses began acquiring art, first by known white artists like Neiman, Salvador Dali and Alexander Calder. But soon they began seeking work by African Americans and discovered there were few places to find it. Their quest became a treasure hunt that led them to artists working in obscurity, paintings unsold, sometimes 50 or 60 of them stacked in a basement.

These explorations “opened up a whole new world,” says Evelyn, a striking woman who on this day is wearing a bright red dress and large, ornamental earrings. “We decided that if we had trouble finding these works, others did too.”

She goes on. “African American artists needed a place to showplace their work. They couldn’t get shows (at existing galleries); that helped us establish a need.”

The Redcrosses opened the first October Gallery in a storefront on Lancaster Avenue in 1985. (The second is at the Gallery, 10th and Market Streets.)

“This is almost a natural extension of our relationship,” says Evelyn, who grew up in tiny Orangeburg, S.C. “We always did things together.”

“We are of one mind,” says her husband.

In the beginning, people flocked to the gallery. At least to look. “They were eager in terms of supporting us,” Mercer says, “but of committing and buying – that took longer.”

EDUCATING CONSUMERS

Mercer promoted relentlessly, trying to educate would-be buyers from the moment they entered the gallery. Many African Americans could afford the works, which range from $15 to $30,000 or more. Mercer’s job was to show them how the art was necessary to their lives, how it fit in.

“We know what a BMW will do for us, what a silk dress will do, what belonging to Little League will do,” he says.

Here was an American art form being expressed by African Americans. “Art that shares history and culture,” Evelyn explains.

When people saw the Redcrosses collecting this art themselves, they became curious. “If I’m willing to give up a $5,000 car for a piece of art, people want to know why,” says Mercer.

One reason was investment: Undervalued for years, some of the works purchased for maybe $500 at the beginning of the decade increased tenfold during the prosperous 1980s.

The Redcrosses mounted shows all over the country, in Washington, Chicago, Boston, California, even Utah. They found clients this way. They found more

artists this way. And artists found them, too.

Prominent people such as former Phillie Garry Maddox and rap musician Fresh Prince (who favors the athletic pieces of Ernie Barnes) began collecting art bought from the Redcrosses. Alvin Poussaint, Harvard professor and Cosby Show consultant, bought. Louis Sullivan, U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services, bought. Actress Cicely Tyson dropped in. Young Penn students brought their parents to the Powelton gallery.

REACHING OUT

In continuing to reach out to those who may not be exposed to art collections, the Redcrosses recently adopted the Andrew Hamilton public school at 57th and Spruce Streets. “We try to make what we have here available to the students,” Evelyn explains.

The advantages of their joint business and all-consuming cause are obvious. ”Two heads are better than one,” says Mercer. The downside: “When you get home, it’s hard to turn it off.”

Their three children, ages 22, 19 and 15, have always been involved with the galleries and have traveled with their parents from show to show. “My (15-year-old) daughter can handle a $10 sale or a $100,000 sale,” her father says.

As they’ve grown older, the children have contributed their opinions and recommendations. However, says Evelyn, “Sometimes they’re sick of hearing about the business.”

Often, Evelyn says, when she and her husband would hang a new work and talk about it, the children would act as if they were ignoring them. But when a guest would drop by, it would be the children who would tell the visitor all about the piece.

Their work, says Mercer, is “consuming, it takes everything. But we can’t forget the dream and the vision.” And, increasingly, “We have a lot of people who share the vision.”

artists such as Tom McKinney, Ellen Powell Tiberino and Richard Watson. Sharing the walls are the works of Dane Tilghman, Andrew Turner, Dressler Smith and other emerging artists who have been hard pressed to find showcases.

The galleries brim not only with art once rarely seen, but also with new consumers eager to buy. These clients, predominantly black, range from working people with modest poster-and-print budgets to lawyers, physicians, politicians and other professionals who spend big bucks on original pieces. They are graduates fresh out of college, retirees and newlyweds who now believe it is more hip to start housekeeping with a Cal Massey print than a Cuisinart.

“Black people have always bought fine clothes and fine cars, rather than fine art,” said Crump, a painter for more than 40 years whose work is in many private and public collections. “People could always spend $30, $40 on a Saturday night. Now they are spending it on art.”

As Thomas Gunn of Laverock, Montgomery County, an international money broker, put it, his 125-piece collection is “fun. I just enjoy what I buy, and if it appreciates in value, that’s fine. But if not, I still enjoy it.”

In the city, the boom in black art centers on the Lucien Crump Art Gallery and the newer Chosen Image, Heritage, Mocha, Phoenix Rising, Crockett Atelier and October galleries. But it is not confined to Philadelphia. This decade has seen the creation of such thriving businesses as the Malcolm Brown Gallery in Shaker Heights, Ohio; the N’Namdi Gallery of Detroit; Isobel Neal Gallery in Chicago; Liz Harris Gallery in Boston; June Kelly in New York, and Sun Gallery in Washington.

The phenomenon has grown under the media spotlight. Black Enterprise and Essence magazines have regularly published articles on the importance of supporting artists and the investment potential in art purchases. Bill Cosby’s TV home is filled with art by Brenda Joysmith and Ellis Wilson, among others; Cosby collects originals, such as fellow Philadelphian Henry Ossawa Tanner’s The Thankful Poor, which he purchased in 1981 for $250,000. At the time, it was a record price for a work by a black artist.

More significant, experts say, the burgeoning of black galleries has been a direct result of the art establishment’s systematic exclusion of artists of color, as documented in a report on New York galleries and museum exhibitions during the last seven years.

Compiled by Howardena Pindell, a Philadelphia-born artist and former associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art, the report found that as of mid-1988, 39 galleries – including nearly all of the most prestigious spaces – represented only white artists; only 10 galleries represented a selection of

artists that was less than 90 percent white, and one of those was in the process of closing.

This, Pindell wrote, in a state where 11,000 black, Asian, Hispanic and Native American artists live and work.

Counteracting that exclusion have been not only the galleries but also African arts festivals and, in some cities, a handful of pioneering museums.

Philadelphians’ interest has been piqued by the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum, where there have been at least 100 shows and hundreds of thousands of visitors since it opened in 1976.

The museum’s role, executive director Rowena Stewart said, is “helping people become aware that within our community there is a core group of artists who are affordable and speak for us. Now it’s almost a no-no to walk into someone’s home and not see any Afro-American art. The trend is to have at least one piece, particularly if you are of Afro-American descent.”

Indeed, Mercer Redcross, who with his wife, Evelyn, owns the five-year-old October Gallery, 3805 Lancaster Ave. in Powelton, contended that Philadelphia was becoming “the national mecca for all kinds of black artists and black art” – for reasons as diverse as the mere presence of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a supportive city government and the magnetic pull of an already large and respected community of black artists.

There is no one black aesthetic, no single definitive quality that identifies an artist’s work as African-American, any more than there is for European, Asian or Caucasian art. And many black artists aim to broaden the term black art until it loses its stereotype – namely, representational images of urban bliss or misery and 1960s political protest art.

However, most new buyers of black art are seeking just that: realistic, figurative “work that reflects themselves and their experiences,” said Redcross. “People are hungry for something that reminds them of themselves.”

George Nock, a former New York Jets running back who grew up in North Philadelphia, can attest to that hunger.

Wildlife and fantasy were the primary inspirations for Nock, a Ben Franklin High School graduate who does pen-and-ink drawings, acrylics, watercolors and sculpture.

Since he began creating representational art inspired by black heritage about three years ago, he said, “I kept recalling the response. My sales had been about 50-50 wildlife and fantasy. Since then, 70 percent of my sales have been (figurative) African-American art.”

Nock’s one-man show at the Crump Gallery features 60 pieces of all these kinds of work. The show opened Saturday and will continue through Aug. 25 at the gallery, at Germantown Avenue and Johnson Street.

The gallery owners speak with an almost missionary zeal when they discuss their work. “We are experiencing an aesthetic growth that reflects our (African) heritage,” Crump said. “When it was time to plant crops, we used to put a piece of sculpture in the home; we used sculptured works in all recreational events, like weddings, harvests and so on.”

At Chosen Image, 6521 N. Broad St. in East Oak Lane, owner Sandra Broadus sees “a new awakening for our people. It’s growing every day and it’s important to educate and nurture our customers through this process, and make it possible for as many artists to share in this as possible.”

One early black-art advocate is white. For 20 years, Sande Webster of Sande Webster Gallery, 2018 Locust St., has sought to focus attention on artists whose work “continues to be stereotyped” and kept at the periphery of the art world.

Among Center City’s gallery owners, she said, she remains alone in her crusade.

Webster is voluble in her praise for the new black galleries, and is counting on them to quickly educate new buyers to appreciate more than figurative work.

Joe Tiberino, a white artist, has sponsored black-art showcases at Bacchanal, the South Street bar/restaurant he has co-owned for eight years, accepting just enough from sales to recover costs. Last year’s sculpture show of black cowboys by Phil Sumpter “went over very well,” he said.

“It’s not about profit for us.”

The galleries, needless to say, do not have that luxury. At the October Gallery, the Redcrosses envision glory days ahead. Recalling the 1970s’ golden era of the city’s music industry spearheaded by soul producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, Redcross said the couple aimed “to become the Gamble and Huff of the black art world.”

The Redcrosses, who founded the gallery in 1984, pioneered selling black art in hotels across the nation. They have an inventory in the thousands, they publish prints and they constantly promote their business, often by donating partial proceeds to such causes as the United Negro College Fund.

Ismail and Sharifa Abdul-Hamid, who own Heritage Gallery, 51 N. Third St. in Old City, have more modest goals. The gallery, which opened June 24, also carries Native American and Mexican-American art, and its current show, closing Sunday, combines both.

“The marketplace is barely scratched,” said Ismail Abdul-Hamid. “Our competition is not each other, it’s the video store, the record store, the gold jewelry. So people are beginning to buy seven albums instead of 10 and then buying the art.”

Another couple, Wanda and Terry Crockett of Crockett Atelier, plan to move their business from their Oak Lane home into a commercial space “within 18 months to two years,” said Wanda Crockett. “We’re specializing in finding and restoring to their rightful place older artists who couldn’t get into traditional galleries and literally threw their works in the basement.”

Lucien Crump, the acknowledged dean of the group, has competition right in Germantown, from Sameriah Allen of Mocha Gallery, 10-12 Church Lane. But, Allen said, “Lucien and I complement each other; he refers people to me, I sell prints of his work. We’re a lower-end gallery in price, we try to accommodate all budgets.”

Chosen Image’s Sandra Broadus founded her business because “people kept coming in wanting to buy my personal collection off the walls.” Her two-year- old gallery carries “50 percent traditional African scenes, 40 percent modern African-American art and only rare or unique abstracts and landscapes.”

Not all the stories are happy ones. Lucinda Johnson of Phoenix Rising, 2247 N. Broad St. in North Philadelphia, is struggling to recoup a $10,000 loss

from a burglary. She is re-establishing her business from her home, coping with the struggling artists she handles, serving private clients and working a full-time job with the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program. Like most of these owners, she said, “the bulk of my gallery income comes from the framing I do, so the break-in devastated me. But I really want to remain in North Philadelphia.”

With all her problems, Johnson remains committed to her field and to educating prospective buyers, such as Clarence Weaver, who browsed through Crump’s gallery recently.

Said the Philadelphia police officer, “It will be nice to have my history where I can look up and see it every day.”

College. “You find that this ignorance toward black artists continues in the galleries.”

Hendricks is one of many black artists who say they are discriminated against professionally because of their race. However, other minority artists contend they have never encountered racial prejudice in galleries; they say the role race plays in their art work has been overblown.

“Good art is good art,” notes Barbara Beatty, 48, a free-lance illustrator who paints landscapes with no black images and says she has encountered no prejudice from Philadelphia galleries. “A gallery owner looks at my slides and has no idea what color I am. This is simply not a problem.”

Ulrick Jean-Pierre, a Haitian artist who moved to Philadelphia 11 years ago, also contends gallery owners are colorblind. “They can relate to my work and its spiritual influences,” he says. “I can please myself and please everyone else.”

For others, the issue is not so simple. Cal Massey, a 63-year-old artist in Moorestown, N.J., who does portraits and drawings of black men and women, remembers when Art Expo – a huge annual exhibit of paintings and prints in New York – exhibited no black artists.

“No one thought they could sell black images,” says Massey. “No one thought blacks or whites would be interested . . . You have to blame galleries to a large degree for not exhibiting black art. For the assumption is made that blacks have no money and whites are not interested.”

“Black artists are not dealt with on the same level as white artists,” adds Hendricks, a nationally known realist painter whose work often focuses on young black people in urban settings. “And good black artists in this country are just not well known enough.”

For their part, gallery owners in Philadelphia contend there is no racism. ”I select my artists based on the slides I see,” says Benjamin Mangel of the Mangel Gallery in Rittenhouse Square. “Many times, I have no idea if the artist is black or white. You just want the art to be very good.

“I would like to exhibit more black artists,” adds Mangel, who has shown Hendricks’ paintings since 1980. “When I had a group showing of black

artists, I was accused of not showing any women artists.”

Like some artists, some art experts say the problem with gallery owners starts with education.

“Black art is not taught to future curators and critics in colleges. Only the latest edition of H.W. Janson’s standard text, ‘The History of Art,’ mentions a black artist. It’s not racism per se – it’s lack of familiarity,” says Liz Harris, who used to own two galleries in Boston and represents several black artists.

There are other issues to contend with when the topic of racism in the art world comes up. One concerns the subjects that black artists decide to paint.

“The notion of ‘black art’ is still confused. People think of it as political or protest art. That’s not all there is,” says Harris.

Some black artists are so reluctant to be categorized by race that they refuse to participate in shows like those tied to Black History Month, she says; she herself looks forward to the day when art won’t wear a racial label, ”when there will be just ‘art,’ period.”

“I don’t want to be viewed as an artist who paints the civil rights struggle,” adds Beatty, who is represented by a Washington, D.C., gallery. ”I am tired of hearing about it and would prefer to paint exactly what I want. That is the kind of freedom I enjoy.”

But can black art sell? And if it can’t, is that the reason why it is often rejected by some galleries?

Many gallery owners and artists believe that customers demand broad themes, that a painting of a ghetto scene will not appeal to everyone.

“Obviously, even a warm painting of a black family with black babies is not going to sit in a white family’s living room,” says John McDaniel, an abstract painter and exhibition coordinator at the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum.

Others say that the marketability issue is simply a smoke screen for discrimination.

“It all depends on the policy of the gallery owner,” says Massey. “If the gallery owner is prejudiced, then you’ll see no black artists exhibited. Good art will sell if it is shown. There are black and white customers out there who are interested in this kind of work.”

“Very often, as in many disciplines, the subject is misunderstood,” says Evelyn Redcross, who along with her husband, Mercer, runs the October Gallery at 3805 Lancaster Ave. in Powelton Village. “Some of the galleries don’t respond to black art because they don’t understand it, or they refuse to open their minds to what black artists are doing.”

Redcross and her husband, who had been avid art collectors for the last 12 years, opened the October Gallery in 1985 to give exposure to black artists who were ignored by the big Center City galleries.

“There were people out there who demanded the art,” says Evelyn Redcross.

The Lucien Crump Art Gallery, at Germantown Avenue and Johnson Street in Germantown, also carries original art, posters and lithographs, mostly by black artists.

Crump, a painter and former junior high school art teacher, opened the neighborhood gallery seven years ago.

“When I decided to open, I wanted this gallery to be a service to the community,” Crump says. “If I made money, that was fine, but at the time, it wasn’t important.” Today Crump is thriving on a block where few stores selling more practical goods and merchandise succeed.

“My message to the American art family,” says Hendricks, “comes from the mouth of Hobson Pittman: ‘You are too good not to be better.’ ”