Art dealer reopens in Earnest.

Earnest Bonner is back in the art business--and maybe back in the big time.

Bonner is a stock broker-turned art dealer who had one of the most interesting galleries of African and African-American art ever collected in Denver, all housed in an old Victorian house on York Street just

He moved the gallery from there to Park Hill in the late '90s, and then closed the Park Hill gallery after it became financially clear that location, location, location was indeed a true business mantra. He couldn't generate the traffic necessary to sustain the business in the new quarters.

So Bonner went back to financial consulting until he could develop a new business model to peddle the art he collects and loves. He thinks he's found that model in new quarters for a gallery at Tamarac Square, in a vacated Gap store that provides a beautifully lit and spacious display space for the art he sells, which includes but is not limited to local artists like Ernie Barnes, Ed Dwight, Hermon Futrell and Yi Ping Zhang.

Zhang's name among those artists, all of whom have developed national and some international reputations, suggests part of Bonner's new business plan.

He now considers his gallery a market for global art, and pieces on display range from Asian and African to Caribbean and Latin American fine art, from folk art and antiques to modern painting and even jewelry.

But the big time is still a negotiating session or two away from Bonner.

When he had his old gallery, he used his reputation as an investment manager for big-money clients to broker Robert L. Johnson's purchase of the Barnett-Aden Collection, a $7 million collection of African-American art that dated to the old days of Harlem in New York City.

Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television and one of the richest African-American businessmen, has asked Bonner to organize a national--and perhaps international--tour of the collection, which since its purchase in 1998 has remained in storage in Washington D.C., where Johnson lived at the time of the purchase. He now lives in Charlotte, N.C., where he is the first African-American majority owner of a National Basketball Association franchise, the Charlotte Bobcats.

Bonner said discussions are underway to take about half of the 275 pieces from the Barnett-Aden Collection on the road to as many as 46 cities across the country starting sometime in 2007. None of the tour is set yet, however; nor is a second goal of Bonner's in cutting the deal: to get Johnson to rename the collection The Robert L. Johnson/Barnett-Aden Collection.

That doesn't mean, though, that the collection won't eventually go on tour with a new name. Leave it to Earnest Bonner.