A sneak peek at ‘Spike Lee: Creative Sources,’ opening Friday at Brooklyn Museum

The exhibit showcases more than 450 artworks, film props and cultural memorabilia from Lee's personal collection

Spike Lee is a collector. A family man. A political firebrand. A music head. A diehard Knicks fan.

From “She’s Gotta Have It” in 1986 to “Da 5 Bloods” in 2020, Lee’s movies have earned him countless awards and accolades, a devoted fan base around the world, cemented his place in popular culture and made him extremely wealthy. (His Nike commercials with Michael Jordan back in the day were pretty great too.) Lee is also a writer and an artist. And a Brooklynite, of course, raised in Crown Heights and Cobble Hill.

But as the Brooklyn Museum’s spectacular new “Spike Lee: Creative Sources” exhibition makes clear, Lee also loves collecting stuff, from sports, music and movie memorabilia to art works, photographs, and historic objects relating to the Black experience in America. There are some 450 items on display here, sprawled throughout the galleries on the museum’s fifth floor, but as the show’s curator Kimberli Gant tells us, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Lee’s Oscars, in the case at upper left (Scott Lynch)

“It was kind of a wonderland experience going through it all,” Gant says. “It was really hard to narrow it down to what you see here. There are so many amazing objects in his collection, and so many things that are so important to him and that really tell a story. The majority came from his studio here in Brooklyn, but Spike was also gracious in letting us borrow from his homes as well.”

Opening this Saturday to the general public (there are member previews on Thursday and Friday) and running through February of next year, “Spike Lee: Creative Sources” is filled with righteous anger and unbridled joy, quiet respect and straight-up fandom, humor, provocations and history. It’s serious, and thoughtful, and inspiring, but it’s also just fun. And if you’re a New Yorker of a certain age, the levels of nostalgia are through the roof.

A dose of nostalgia (Scott Lynch)

Even just watching Rosie Perez dance to “Fight the Power” through the opening credits of “Do The Right Thing” — one of several snippets of Lee’s movies on loop in the galleries — slams home just how exhilarating it felt to be in the theater back in 1989 on the film’s opening weekend. The Knicks memorabilia from the early 1990s, too, when Jordan and Reggie Miller and the Rockets broke our hearts again and again in the playoffs, with Lee a constant courtside presence, is almost too painful to revisit.

Knicks or no one (Scott Lynch)

The exhibit continues a string of hits for the museum, some of which — like the recently wrapped “It’s Pablo-matic” — were not completely devoid of controversy. Visitors who took in the “David Bowie Is” exhibit in 2018 will find this kind of not-necessarily-art hagiography familiar here. Other recent popular shows include “Thierry Mugler: Couturissime,” which explored the life and impact of the designer; “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams” and “Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech.” The museum’s fabulous look at African fashion through the decades is ongoing through October 22.

The African National Congress flag , inscribed with a message from the Mandelas (Scott Lynch)

You could spend a couple of hours taking in the Spike Lee displays. There’s Prince’s “Love Symbol” guitar. Lee’s two Oscars. Tabloid front pages from 1977, aka the Summer of Sam. Kehinde Wiley’s portraiture salute to the legacy of Jackie Robinson. A whole gallery devoted to Lee’s love affair with Brooklyn. An Angela Davis FBI wanted poster, which hangs near a video of Denzel Washington as Malcolm X giving a fiery speech in Harlem. A 1960s-era racist shooting target that was used as a prop in BlacKkKlansman. Pizza boxes from Sal’s. Dozens of cool classic movie posters. Photos of Lee’s kids. An African National Congress flag signed and inscribed by Nelson and Winnie Mandela: “To Spike Lee, Yours in struggle.”

Right: Wiley’s painting of a man wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers jersey with Jackie Robinson’s number on it (Scott Lynch)

“There’s so much here for people to connect with,” says Gant. “And though a lot of the material has a lot of heavy content, there’s also a joyousness, and a celebration of creativity and culture, that I hope people see as woven through this whole project.”

Even all the Brooklyn stuff — and there’s a ton of it, including a fake stoop — is mixed in with reminders that, as Gant puts it, “Brooklyn is a global city, and Spike is a global figure. Black people are around the world. We are a diaspora.”