By Cameron Lee
December 13, 2024
The iconic painting by Durham-born artist Ernie Barnes, The Sugar Shack, is now on display in Charlotte at the Mint Museum Uptown for the first time ever. The painting, best known as the cover for Marvin Gaye’s 1976 album, I Want You, and its use in the closing credits for the television sitcom, Good Times, was also reintroduced to a new generation in the late ’90s as the inspiration for the cover of Camp Lo’s Uptown Saturday Night.
Barnes, who was a Hillside High School graduate and standout athlete growing up in Durham, attended the all-Black North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University) before playing five seasons in the NFL with the Baltimore Colts, New York Titans, San Diego Chargers, and Denver Broncos. Barnes was also briefly a teammate of late Panthers owner Jerry Richardson during his time with the Baltimore Colts. In 1995, Richardson commissioned Barnes to create a large painting for his owner’s suite at Ericsson Stadium (now Bank of America Stadium) which portrayed a Panthers game against the 49ers in Charlotte.
Barnes became a full-time artist in the mid-60s, and was renowned for his pieces depicting Black American life utilizing elongated figures often with closed eyes. Self-described as “neo-mannerist,” Barnes’ work blends elements of realism and abstraction to evoke deep emotional connections in the Black community.
The Sugar Shack recalled a childhood memory of when Barnes slipped into the segregated Durham Armory in 1952, where artists like Bo Diddley, Chubby Checker, and Duke Ellington once played.
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“The experience that placed this image in my mind occurred when I was around 13 or 14. I snuck into a rhythm and blues concert (at the Durham Armory) and saw people moving on the dance floor with raw passion,” a quote reads from his official website. “In later years, when I became a man, music and dancing were an integral part of my identity. As a professional athlete, I was able to move about the country and explore every dive I could find and there was always a Sugar Shack.”
Barnes would go on to create classic album art for Donald Byrd’s 125th St., N.Y.C. (1979), Curtis Mayfield’s Something to Believe In (1980), The Crusaders’ Ghetto Blaster (1984), and B.B. King’s Makin’ Love Is Good for You (2000).
The original Sugar Shack painting, which was kept by Marvin Gaye after it was used for the I Want You album cover, was purchased by actor and comedian Eddie Murphy from his estate after Gaye passed in 1984. The second version of the painting which was created in 1976 for Good Times, auctioned for $15.2 million at Christie’s in 2022. The painting at the Mint Museum Uptown is on loan from the owners Bill and Lara Perkins, and can be viewed through June 30, 2025. The last time the painting was displayed in the state was in 2019 at the North Carolina Museum of History for the exhibit, The North Carolina Roots of Artist Ernie Barnes, which took place from June 29, 2018 to March 3, 2019.
Viewing of The Sugar Shack (1976) along with two other paintings, The Marble Shooter (1969) and New Shoes (1970) by Ernie Barnes, is included with general admission at the Mint Museum Uptown located at 500 S. Tryon St.
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