Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 3: Hello, Today we're going to revisit an episode that I reported.
Speaker 3: It's called Frederick J.
Speaker 4: Brown.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: It's about art. It's about a painting.
Speaker 2: Amazing. I love art, you know that, right?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're always talking about how much you love art?
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't you want to become one of those
Speaker 2: art bores. Where are we talking about like fine art?
Speaker 5: Because I thought we were talking about fine art.
Speaker 2: There's all kinds of different art.
Speaker 5: Well, sure, this is art in a way. This conversation
Speaker 5: we're having right now.
Speaker 2: Well, let's not get crazy.
Speaker 3: I feel like our real dilettante around art. But I
Speaker 3: do like it.
Speaker 1: You like it?
Speaker 2: You wouldn't say you love it.
Speaker 5: I just don't know that I'm knowledgeable enough.
Speaker 2: You don't have to be.
Speaker 5: Okay, then I guess I love it.
Speaker 2: Who do you think loves it more?
Speaker 7: Me?
Speaker 2: Or you?
Speaker 5: Probably?
Speaker 7: You?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 5: Maybe?
Speaker 3: Just because of this is going to sound werud, but
Speaker 3: you're added years of experience.
Speaker 2: Sure, I've had a lot of time of aggling art.
Speaker 2: You know, you might be a surprised to learn that
Speaker 2: a person like myself, I'm not much of an art
Speaker 2: snob in the sense that I believe that everybody possesses
Speaker 2: artistic and creative ability.
Speaker 5: Well that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: Now I'm off my high horse. I'm going to get
Speaker 2: on my low horse, my show pony, and away we go.
Speaker 5: Away we go.
Speaker 2: Do you know whose catchphrase that was? No a pilot,
Speaker 2: Jackie Gleeson?
Speaker 5: Oh? All right, well, away we go?
Speaker 1: Indeed?
Speaker 2: Oh but first a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: Every Friday night during the pandemic, I'd get on a
Speaker 3: Google hangout with a group of my boyfriend's friends and
Speaker 3: we'd all play Mario Kart.
Speaker 7: Can remind you had a sixteen spread?
Speaker 8: Again?
Speaker 7: There was no pam six races.
Speaker 3: These Mario Kart sessions started back in the days when
Speaker 3: we could barely leave the house due to COVID restrictions,
Speaker 3: so it felt like an escape to log on to
Speaker 3: carelessly karine in a small car or kart if you will,
Speaker 3: through a gold mine or off a waterfall. In those
Speaker 3: dark days, a few minutes on Mount Warrio was the
Speaker 3: closest thing I could get.
Speaker 1: To a vacation.
Speaker 9: Right, let's be bad.
Speaker 3: That being said, I also found these Mario Kart hangouts
Speaker 3: deeply intimidating, because I'm not.
Speaker 1: Good at Mario Kart.
Speaker 3: My gameplay mostly sounds like this, no, no, or this.
Speaker 3: Along with the Mario karting, there was also non Mario chatting.
Speaker 6: On Instagram.
Speaker 3: Believe birthday and chatting of any kind is another thing
Speaker 3: I'm not good at. Every so often, I'd weigh in
Speaker 3: with something like pretty crazy. This was essentially the extent
Speaker 3: of my engagement until the night Maya told us about
Speaker 3: the painting. Maya found the painting sitting in a pile
Speaker 3: of trash on the sidewalk, and it grabbed her instantly.
Speaker 3: It was only later, when she took it home that
Speaker 3: she saw the artist's signature, Frederick J.
Speaker 1: Brown.
Speaker 3: Although Maya works in art, the name was unfamiliar to her,
Speaker 3: so she googled him, and what popped up was a
Speaker 3: lengthy New York Times obituary from twenty twelve, praising Brown's
Speaker 3: work and citing Willem du Kooning as an early mentor. Brown,
Speaker 3: it turned out, was an acclaimed black artist known for
Speaker 3: his portraits of jazz and blues musicians. He had work
Speaker 3: in the Smithsonian. As Maya made her way through his biogic,
Speaker 3: she slowly realized that the painting she'd been so instinctively
Speaker 3: drawn to was actually the work of an important artist,
Speaker 3: and so Maya was left wondering, how did Brown's painting
Speaker 3: end up in the trash?
Speaker 5: Oh very regal building.
Speaker 3: On a cold Friday afternoon, I pay Maya visit her
Speaker 3: Brooklyn apartment building to follow up and learn more. And
Speaker 3: who knows, maybe my boyfriend's friend can simply become a friend. Oh,
Speaker 3: very like regal building.
Speaker 1: I feel like.
Speaker 3: My irl chatting is truly no better than my Mario
Speaker 3: Kart chatting, same as it is. Yeah, what I couldn't
Speaker 3: see on the small square of our Mario Kart calls
Speaker 3: was that every surface of Maya's apartment is covered art.
Speaker 3: Not only has Maya worked in the art world for
Speaker 3: many years at galleries art publishers, her husband, Wes, is
Speaker 3: also an artist himself. He even proposed to Maya on
Speaker 3: the steps of the met There's really only one spot
Speaker 3: in their apartment that's empty, a blank wall above the couch.
Speaker 3: They'd been waiting year after year for the perfect work
Speaker 3: of art to hang there, and now with the discovery
Speaker 3: of the Frederick J. Brown painting, they knew they'd found it.
Speaker 3: Maya says she spotted the painting while heading home from
Speaker 3: a COVID test. It was gigantic, and she still had
Speaker 3: a mile to walk. She knew it didn't really make
Speaker 3: sense to take it with her, but she couldn't walk
Speaker 3: away from it either.
Speaker 10: I just kept going back to it. It just was
Speaker 10: different from all of the other paintings I've seen. It
Speaker 10: just really kind of grabbed me, and I started trying
Speaker 10: to get it out of the.
Speaker 3: Trash, clutching the huge painting to her body. Maya awkwardly
Speaker 3: walk the mile home.
Speaker 10: There's like a little garbage juice at the bottom and
Speaker 10: a little dust at the top, and I was walking.
Speaker 10: I wouldn't let it sit on the ground. I know
Speaker 10: I had probably been on the street all day, but
Speaker 10: I didn't want it to be on the street anymore.
Speaker 10: It is nearly as long as I am tall, and
Speaker 10: I'm by four, lots of color and patterns.
Speaker 3: Despite my fondness for the audio medium, it fails to
Speaker 3: translate the force of Brown's painting. It's not as easily
Speaker 3: encapsulated as say the Mona Lisa Smiling Woman or American
Speaker 3: Gothic unsmiling woman and man. It's mostly abstract, but then
Speaker 3: there are these tiny spots with recognizable figures you.
Speaker 10: Can see faces, and there's these horizontal bands that sort
Speaker 10: of organize the composition.
Speaker 3: Admiring the painting with Maya, it makes me feel like
Speaker 3: I'm at a fancy party in drawing or jerves, but
Speaker 3: also panicked that I have nothing intelligent to say.
Speaker 5: That kind of looks like a seven.
Speaker 3: The painting feels like a stained glass cabinet full of curios.
Speaker 3: It feels like a quilt if a quilt weren't made
Speaker 3: of fabric, but a fields and buildings and people rushing
Speaker 3: to work. It feels like a packed room where everybody's dancing.
Speaker 3: I asked Maya to show me where she first found
Speaker 3: the painting, and so we hit the streets to return
Speaker 3: to the scene of the trash.
Speaker 5: So we walk, Yeah, let's walk.
Speaker 3: We take a walk, as friends often do. Maya tells
Speaker 3: me the painting was in the trash with a bunch
Speaker 3: of other miscellaneous stuff, a TJ Max planter, a stained
Speaker 3: toy chest. Whoever disposed of it was probably moving. Maybe
Speaker 3: a neighbor can tell us who might have moved in
Speaker 3: the last couple months. But whereas I was picturing a
Speaker 3: small building with just a few buzzers to ring, it
Speaker 3: turns out. The trash heap was actually in front of
Speaker 3: a public housing complex, fourteen stories high, taking up a
Speaker 3: whole block. We loiter by the building's entrance and I
Speaker 3: try to catch people as they're going in or out.
Speaker 3: Can I ask you something weird and ask you a
Speaker 3: weird question?
Speaker 1: Anyone who moved out?
Speaker 3: Like in It's just about a painting that was left
Speaker 3: outside of painting. Some of my friend found a painting
Speaker 3: and she's trying to figure out, like what the deal is.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows anything.
Speaker 3: No, all right, thank you, no, thank you?
Speaker 5: No, all right, thank you.
Speaker 3: There's a lot I don't understand about art, like why
Speaker 3: are frames so expensive? But I can tell you this.
Speaker 3: Paintings they have two sides. There's a side with all
Speaker 3: the paint on it that people are always tripping over
Speaker 3: each other to talk about. But then there's the other side,
Speaker 3: the second or backside.
Speaker 1: If you will, do.
Speaker 10: You want to water, tear or anything?
Speaker 1: Or water would be great.
Speaker 3: And back in Maya's apartment, she explains that on this
Speaker 3: backside or dari are side, there's another clue. She and
Speaker 3: West were cleaning the painting off, getting it ready to
Speaker 3: hang on the wall when they saw it lightly Scrawled
Speaker 3: on the back of the canvas was an inscription.
Speaker 10: Painted nineteen seventy nine December title Genesis two Love, Happy
Speaker 10: Birthday from Frederick to Lowry Simms, and then he signed
Speaker 10: it and dated it in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3: Maya may not have known the name Frederick Brown, but
Speaker 3: she knew the name Lowry Simms quite well. Larry was
Speaker 3: the president of the Studio Museum in Harlem, and before
Speaker 3: that she'd been the first black curator at the Metropolitan
Speaker 3: Museum of Art. She's now in her seventies and has
Speaker 3: had decades of him packed on the art world.
Speaker 1: She's reached living legends status.
Speaker 10: You can't help but be like, oh, okay, yeah, should
Speaker 10: I have not used a paper towel to clean this?
Speaker 3: The way Maya sees it, if you find something with
Speaker 3: someone else's name on it, whether that's a wallet, a cat,
Speaker 3: or a painting, you try to give it back to them.
Speaker 3: And so she wants to return the painting to its
Speaker 3: rightful owner, Lowry Simms. And once we find her, maybe
Speaker 3: Lowry can help piece together how the painting ended up
Speaker 3: in the garbage. I would like love to help try
Speaker 3: and get in touch.
Speaker 1: With this person.
Speaker 9: Yes, please.
Speaker 3: Okay, my garbage hunting an abject failure, but my people
Speaker 3: hunting that's going to be an abject success. I can't
Speaker 3: find an email address for Lowry, so I do what
Speaker 3: we all do when we want to pester someone more
Speaker 3: important than we are.
Speaker 1: I send a message on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3: I explain that I have a painting I think belongs
Speaker 3: to her, but perhaps fearing I'm running some sort of
Speaker 3: con where I trade paintings for Social Security numbers, Lowry doesn't.
Speaker 1: Respond, Hi, how are you?
Speaker 5: I need some.
Speaker 1: Sort of inroad.
Speaker 3: So I contact an artist named Chloe Bass, who's worked
Speaker 3: with Lowry.
Speaker 10: I don't know why she would even need LinkedIn, it's
Speaker 10: like her career is very well stablished.
Speaker 3: Chloe is also confused by how the painting ended up
Speaker 3: in the trash. She says Lowry can't have been the
Speaker 3: one to throw it away because Lowry doesn't live in
Speaker 3: Brooklyn and never has. Chloe agrees to reach out to
Speaker 3: her on my behalf and now that the request isn't
Speaker 3: coming from Rando on LinkedIn, but Aranda, who knows Chloe Bass,
Speaker 3: Lowry responds, we have a few back and forths over email.
Speaker 3: I'm hoping to schedule a time for us to talk
Speaker 3: on the phone, but Lowry is reluctant. She tells me
Speaker 3: she doesn't want to talk unless she can see a
Speaker 3: photo of the painting first. So I send her a photo,
Speaker 3: saying I'd be curious if she recognizes Genesis Too, and
Speaker 3: equally curious if she doesn't. Who knows. Maybe Brown's gift
Speaker 3: of the painting never even reached her. The next morning,
Speaker 3: Lowry writes back quote intriguing period That is the extent
Speaker 3: of her email, and after that her correspondence comes to
Speaker 3: a halt. Intriguing period. What did Lowry Simms's email mean.
Speaker 3: It's not the response you'd expect of someone recognizing a beloved,
Speaker 3: long lost painting. I start to wonder if maybe the
Speaker 3: painting is a fake. Genesis Too doesn't look like any
Speaker 3: of the other Frederick Brown paintings I've seen online. Maybe
Speaker 3: Lowry's intriguing means an intriguing forgery. So I contact Frederick
Speaker 3: Brown's trust. I figure they'll know best if the painting's
Speaker 3: really his, and five days later I get confirmation that
Speaker 3: the painting is legit. I receive a call from a
Speaker 3: man named Bentley, who teaches at Fordham and is a
Speaker 3: PhD candidate at the NYU Institute of Fine Arts. Bentley
Speaker 3: is also it turns out, Frederick J. Brown's son.
Speaker 6: So here's the backstory. Yeah, the painting is part of
Speaker 6: a larger painting called Genesis. Okay, that's in the collection
Speaker 6: of the MET.
Speaker 7: Oh.
Speaker 5: WHOA, I didn't know that.
Speaker 6: So my dad became the youngest artist to be in
Speaker 6: the collection of the Met at that time.
Speaker 7: So I get thirty three.
Speaker 6: Geez, let's say think that actually thirty.
Speaker 5: Four okay, and like on that right as a black artist.
Speaker 6: So Part one is at the MET.
Speaker 3: Part one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Part two
Speaker 3: in a trash heap on a Brooklyn sidewalk. Bentley can't
Speaker 3: wait to see his father's painting in person, so he
Speaker 3: makes the drive from the Bronx to Maya's apartment in Brooklyn.
Speaker 6: Hi.
Speaker 3: And I'm hoping maybe Bentley will have insight into how
Speaker 3: his dad's painting ended up in the trash. Should we
Speaker 3: look at this painting and then maybe we can talk?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love to.
Speaker 3: We all file into the living room, where Maya and
Speaker 3: her husband West have propped the painting up against a
Speaker 3: wall for Bentley to look at Bentley takes it in.
Speaker 6: This is amazing. It's just like, this makes me so happy.
Speaker 1: This is your first time.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I've never seen this.
Speaker 3: Bentley's dedicated years of his life to his father's work,
Speaker 3: but he can't tell me how the painting ended up
Speaker 3: in the trash. Before I reached out, he hadn't even
Speaker 3: known Genesis Too existed. He bends down to get a
Speaker 3: closer look.
Speaker 6: He didn't just stumble upon any piece within his catalog.
Speaker 6: He stumbled upon a extremely important piece.
Speaker 3: It turns out the Genesis two was painted at the
Speaker 3: moment when Brown was making a transition. That's why it
Speaker 3: looks so different than anything else I'd seen online. Brown
Speaker 3: was moving away from abstraction and towards more figurative work.
Speaker 3: So among the shapes and lines, you see faces, an
Speaker 3: airplane and.
Speaker 1: The fox figure, and it's like a self portrait.
Speaker 10: Do you know why your dad chose fox as a
Speaker 10: symbol of representation.
Speaker 5: That's a good question.
Speaker 6: You have to be a fox to survive in the
Speaker 6: art world as a black man, have to be. Everybody
Speaker 6: looks at the fox as like like a nefarious sort
Speaker 6: of character, right, But my dad kind of looked at
Speaker 6: it as like, nah, that's just like, that's just a
Speaker 6: cad that has to do whatever has to do to survive.
Speaker 3: Bentley tells us about his dad's life, about Frederick Brown's
Speaker 3: childhood on the South Side of Chicago, how Brown's dad
Speaker 3: managed to juke joint, hanging around blues musicians like Muddy Waters.
Speaker 3: Early on, color made a strong impression on Brown. He
Speaker 3: grew up mixing paint for the luxury cars his uncle
Speaker 3: worked on. Later, Brown found work in the steel mills,
Speaker 3: the colors of the hot metal burning their way into
Speaker 3: his mind.
Speaker 6: Because he'd always talked about how like bright orange the
Speaker 6: ingots were. You can see the bright orange in there.
Speaker 3: Brown attended college in Illinois and eventually moved to New York,
Speaker 3: where he set up shop in a huge loft on
Speaker 3: Worcester Street and soho other artists and musicians are always
Speaker 3: stopping by for Mayor Bearden, BB King, John Lennon, and
Speaker 3: Yoko Ono. The Western Street loft is where Brown painted Genesis.
Speaker 6: So then after that he signed with Marlboro Gallery, and
Speaker 6: so that was a big deal because Marlboro Gallery was
Speaker 6: the hottest gallery at that time. We talk about like
Speaker 6: Basque Yacht being the first black artist to sort of
Speaker 6: make that break. It was really my dad, like, I'm
Speaker 6: not even gonna hold you like I'm I'm not going
Speaker 6: to I'm not going to sugarcoat it, you know.
Speaker 3: But while Bosquia went on to become a household name
Speaker 3: selling paintings for millions of dollars, Frederick J. Brown did not.
Speaker 3: So what happened. It turns out that even after signing
Speaker 3: with Marlborough, Brown wasn't being shown and the way he
Speaker 3: thought he should be.
Speaker 6: My dad kept trying to get like a retrospective and
Speaker 6: couldn't get a retrospective anywhere.
Speaker 3: So Brown took matters into his own hands when a
Speaker 3: Taiwanese artist named C. J. Yao invited him to come
Speaker 3: to China. It was nineteen eighty eight and communist China
Speaker 3: was just starting to culturally open up. Only one other
Speaker 3: American artist, Robert Rauschenberg, had shown work in the country.
Speaker 3: But together Brown and Yao decided, let's do a Frederick J.
Speaker 3: Brown retrospective in China.
Speaker 6: And they decided to do it in the National Museum
Speaker 6: of China, which like is on Tienamen Square and it's
Speaker 6: like an insanely huge building.
Speaker 3: The museum had been filled with relative Chairman Mao and
Speaker 3: the Communist Revolution. But all that was cleared out to
Speaker 3: make room for one hundred Frederick J. Brown paintings.
Speaker 1: And he had a lot.
Speaker 6: I mean, he had sixty thousand people a day for
Speaker 6: like thirty days.
Speaker 10: Wow.
Speaker 6: He had to go to China to have a red.
Speaker 6: He had to go to China to be seen as
Speaker 6: an American.
Speaker 3: Artist because in America, Brown was seen as a black artist.
Speaker 3: And despite what he accomplished in China, when he returned
Speaker 3: to the States, he hadn't earned any additional prestige.
Speaker 6: Instead, Marlborough was pissed that he did the show because
Speaker 6: they did it without his without their consent. He took
Speaker 6: out a loan to do it himself of half a
Speaker 6: million dollars. He had no way of paying it back.
Speaker 6: So that was like the beginning of I don't want
Speaker 6: to say the end, but it was the beginning of
Speaker 6: like a real hardship.
Speaker 3: Marlborough dropped him. The bank was trying to take all
Speaker 3: his work, which he'd put up as collateral. He was
Speaker 3: only able to save some paintings by erasing his name
Speaker 3: entirely so the bank would think they weren't his. Other
Speaker 3: paintings he hid in the walls of his Worcester Street loft.
Speaker 3: Brown continued to paint for the rest of his life,
Speaker 3: but he never regained that blue trip cachet from his
Speaker 3: early career. He didn't become a name that a non
Speaker 3: art person like me, or even an art person like
Speaker 3: Maya would immediately recognize. Brown died of cancer in twenty twelve,
Speaker 3: and ten years later, Bentley's frustrated that his father still
Speaker 3: doesn't have his rightful place in the cannon.
Speaker 6: You go up to these people that are gatekeepers and
Speaker 6: you plead your case. Most people are just like, eh, whatever,
Speaker 6: there's not a market for it right now, right and
Speaker 6: it's it's like, man, fuck you.
Speaker 3: It's the same story for a lot of black artists. Sure,
Speaker 3: these gatekeepers want black art, Bentley says that they want
Speaker 3: a particular kind of black art. They want art they
Speaker 3: can look at and go, ah, yes, I get it.
Speaker 3: This is about the politics of being black in America.
Speaker 6: When we think about black art or black artists, right,
Speaker 6: we are very quick to add like a political tag
Speaker 6: to the thing. I mean, I guess you could argue
Speaker 6: that blackness in and of itself is a political thing.
Speaker 6: But my dad was kind of much more of the
Speaker 6: camp of like just like make art for art's sake.
Speaker 3: But purely aesthetic work by a black art. That's what
Speaker 3: ends up in the garbage.
Speaker 6: It's such a painful feeling. It's such a yeah, painful
Speaker 6: is the word. And such a painful feeling when you
Speaker 6: know that, like you have such a special world and
Speaker 6: people don't give a shit.
Speaker 5: What is I mean?
Speaker 3: Like if you have to describe, like what what that
Speaker 3: special world was?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 1: What how would you explain it?
Speaker 3: Bentley points at the painting still leaning against the wall?
Speaker 9: Is that right?
Speaker 2: There?
Speaker 6: So much color, so much emotion, so much beauty. You
Speaker 6: you two recognized it. The beanting definitely called to me. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean you rescued it right like, and it's like
Speaker 6: a piece of my dad. It's like his energy, his
Speaker 6: spirit is him. You know. That was my dad calling
Speaker 6: out to you. That's what that was.
Speaker 7: Like.
Speaker 6: Yeah, don't let me go in the trash. Yeah, my
Speaker 6: son lives not too far away. Don't let me go
Speaker 6: in the trash.
Speaker 3: Well, Bentley was able to trace the path that led
Speaker 3: Frederick Brown's work to the metaphorical trash heap. I'm still
Speaker 3: wondering about the literal trash heap, the one on a
Speaker 3: Brooklyn sidewalk, And so, of course I'm still wondering about
Speaker 3: Larry Simms. It turns out Bentley knows Lowry well. The
Speaker 3: two are even writing a book together. When I ask
Speaker 3: Bentley about Lowry's aversion to speaking with me, he alludes
Speaker 3: to some bad experiences she's had with journalists, but he
Speaker 3: reassures me that he'll put in a good word. And
Speaker 3: the next morning, Bentley calls to tell me that Lowry
Speaker 3: is willing to talk. There's just one caveat. She doesn't
Speaker 3: want to discuss how the painting wound up in the garbage.
Speaker 3: It's hard for me to figure out why. And I
Speaker 3: don't really know how to do an interview about a
Speaker 3: painting that ended up in the trash without asking how
Speaker 3: the painting ended up in the trash. So I crossed
Speaker 3: my fingers that something might shift. Once we're on the phone,
Speaker 3: Larry takes my call from her condo in Baltimore. She
Speaker 3: tells me that she met Frederick Brown when she was
Speaker 3: around thirty, a newly minted curator at the Met. As
Speaker 3: a curator, Lowry's mission was to champion the work of
Speaker 3: overlooked artists. Larry herself knew what it was like to
Speaker 3: be overlooked.
Speaker 8: I mean I was in, you know, as this black
Speaker 8: girl from Queens. I had a career nobody would have
Speaker 8: expected at that time. I was in places where nobody
Speaker 8: expected at the time. I mean I used to tell people.
Speaker 8: One of the most amusing things for me was to
Speaker 8: go to a collector on Park Avenue in the seventies
Speaker 8: and get to the front door and Dorman would try
Speaker 8: to sort of scoop me around to the service entrance
Speaker 8: because they assumed it was a housekeeper or something, you know,
Speaker 8: and new I'm you know, sends from the Metropolitan Museum.
Speaker 8: You want to see the face change, you know, they go, oh,
Speaker 8: you know. It was a struggle to get past the
Speaker 8: ignorance about black artists.
Speaker 3: Like once in the seventies Larry organized because a bit
Speaker 3: of black art from the METS collection.
Speaker 8: And when we got the exhibition up, I was approached
Speaker 8: by a journalist who said, I didn't even know they
Speaker 8: were black artists. Now this is like nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 8: Come on, jeez, yeah, yeah, yeah, So I say, where
Speaker 8: we've been around since the late eighteen.
Speaker 3: Hundred, hearing this story, it starts to make sense why
Speaker 3: Lowry might have been reluctant to speak with me, a
Speaker 3: white like journalists she's never met. In fact, when I
Speaker 3: spoke with Bentley, he said Lowry had wanted him to
Speaker 3: suss me out, to make sure that I was okay,
Speaker 3: before she agreed to talk to me. Like his dad,
Speaker 3: Bentley said, Lowry too has had to be a fox.
Speaker 3: Larry and Brown's friendship endured for decades, starting in that
Speaker 3: Worcester Street loft and lasting until Brown's death, And even
Speaker 3: after he died, Lowry continued to engage with Brown's work.
Speaker 3: Just last summer, she helped put together a big posthumous
Speaker 3: show of his art at the Barry Campbell Gallery in Manhattan.
Speaker 3: Like Bentley, she wants Brown to finally get his due.
Speaker 8: It's a regional work, you know, it's strong work. I'm
Speaker 8: just hopeful that, you know, Frederick gets written into the
Speaker 8: you know, the art lexicon in the way that he
Speaker 8: needs to be.
Speaker 3: When I ask Lowry why this hasn't happened yet Bentley,
Speaker 3: she cites the aftermath of the China trip, but she
Speaker 3: also offers this.
Speaker 8: He sort of left New York at a crucial period
Speaker 8: in his career, and he put the concerns of his
Speaker 8: family first.
Speaker 3: And it's true. In the nineties, Brown left New York
Speaker 3: for a town called Carefree, Arizona. A big factor in
Speaker 3: that decision was his daughter's asthma. Brown knew the dry
Speaker 3: desert heat would be good for her, and although money
Speaker 3: was still tight, the family was happy out in Arizona.
Speaker 3: Bentley recalls his dad attending his flag football games in
Speaker 3: his signature White Brooks Brothers suit, sweating in the Arizona
Speaker 3: son and dabbing his forehead with napkins. Well, some children
Speaker 3: of famous artists remember locked studio doors. Bentley remembers his
Speaker 3: dad's welcoming studio couch, where he'd flopped down after school
Speaker 3: and talk about his day while his father painted. All
Speaker 3: of which is to say Bentley remembers Brown as a
Speaker 3: good dad. As Lowry and I talk, I do my
Speaker 3: best to avoid the whole painting and the trash thing.
Speaker 3: So we discussed her time at the met Brown's jazz portraits,
Speaker 3: the similarities between Genesis one and two. But then, without prompting,
Speaker 3: Lowry volunteers this, I.
Speaker 8: Mean, I sort of, like, you know, kind of figured
Speaker 8: out that I probably gazed the painting to someone who
Speaker 8: admired it. You know, I can't remember who because it
Speaker 8: you know, because it was certainly too big for my
Speaker 8: low apartment.
Speaker 3: As it turns out, Brown had painted Lowry Genesis two
Speaker 3: as a thank you gift because she had been the
Speaker 3: curator who bought Genesis one for the Mets collection. But
Speaker 3: the painting was huge, and Lowry ran into the problem
Speaker 3: that so many New Yorkers do. Living in a cramped
Speaker 3: apartment on the Upper east Side, she just hadn't had
Speaker 3: space for it. For Lowry, there was no blank wall
Speaker 3: above the couch, just waiting for something to be hung.
Speaker 3: She found Genesis to a good home with a friend
Speaker 3: who loved it.
Speaker 8: And I think I told Fred, you know, like about it. Yeah,
Speaker 8: how it ended up with Amya fined it? I don't know.
Speaker 8: I just can't remember who I might have given it to.
Speaker 3: I suspect that Lowry might be trying to protect a friend.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's why she had been reluctant to talk about
Speaker 3: the painting's loss. Maybe Larry gave the painting to someone
Speaker 3: who moved to a smaller apartment themselves, or maybe they
Speaker 3: died or fell on hard times and decided to sell it.
Speaker 3: Maybe it was regifted to someone else, or sold in
Speaker 3: a state sale, or just lost in the general shuffle
Speaker 3: of life. No matter what, the end result is the same. Ultimately,
Speaker 3: someone looked at it thought this isn't worth keeping and
Speaker 3: threw it away. All of that, it seems, was wrapped
Speaker 3: up and Lowry's intriguing. Does it make you sad at
Speaker 3: all to think of art just in the trash like that?
Speaker 8: Well, you know, there's a saying that ninety eight percent
Speaker 8: of all the art created in the world since the
Speaker 8: beginning is gone.
Speaker 3: Do you think like the best stuff somehow makes it through?
Speaker 5: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 8: I think it's totally random. I mean, I guess that's
Speaker 8: why we have museums, you know, because they can be
Speaker 8: seen as places where these things can be safe. But
Speaker 8: I mean this book that was happening now in the Ukraine,
Speaker 8: you know, the palming museums and cultural sites. So I
Speaker 8: think a lot of times it's just the luck of
Speaker 8: the draw.
Speaker 3: Time is the most capricious of curators. A few weeks earlier,
Speaker 3: when Bentley came by Maya's apartment, we all sat around
Speaker 3: and talked for hours about art and family, and finally,
Speaker 3: when it was time to go, Maya turned to Bentley
Speaker 3: and said, I don't think the painting belongs with me.
Speaker 3: I think it belongs somewhere else. Bentley's taller than Maya
Speaker 3: and had no problem lifting up the canvas. He thanked
Speaker 3: Maya warmly and carried Genesis two out the door to
Speaker 3: his car. He'd serve as the paintings caretaker until Lowry
Speaker 3: decided what she wanted to do. Can you tell me
Speaker 3: sort of like, what's happening to it now? Do you
Speaker 3: know where it's going?
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's been accepted by the Studio Museum as a donation.
Speaker 4: Oh that's great, and the donation will be from me,
Speaker 4: from the estate of the artists, and from Maya.
Speaker 3: On a warm Friday afternoon, I pay Maya visit her
Speaker 3: Regal apartment building.
Speaker 7: Hello.
Speaker 3: She and Wes are signing the paperwork to officially donate
Speaker 3: the painting to the Studio Museum, and I'm here to
Speaker 3: serve as a witness. Lowry and Bentley have both already signed.
Speaker 3: Knowing how much Maya loves the painting, I thought giving
Speaker 3: it up would be bittersweet, but she's in high spirits.
Speaker 3: She likes the idea of Genesis too hanging in a museum.
Speaker 3: That way, thousands of people will get to enjoy it.
Speaker 3: We'll lean towards the plaque and read the name Frederick J. Brown.
Speaker 3: Who knows what that name might mean to people in
Speaker 3: the future, if time will strengthen Brown's legacy or wash
Speaker 3: it away. But for now, we finish up the paperwork
Speaker 3: and all cheers a shot at tequila to celebrate, as
Speaker 3: friends often do.
Speaker 1: Cheers thank you.
Speaker 3: On my way out, I noticed that the big wall
Speaker 3: above Maya's couch is still blank.
Speaker 9: Now that the fernitures returning to its goodwill home, now
Speaker 9: that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage
Speaker 9: with pos take this moment to des.
Speaker 1: If we mentain, if we.
Speaker 9: Talk felt around from far to.
Speaker 1: From things that accidentally.
Speaker 2: Hello Jonathan Khalila, Yeah, Hi, Hi, what's going on?
Speaker 7: I'm in the studio museum at the moment.
Speaker 2: Oh thank god. When I heard you whispering like that,
Speaker 2: I figured immediate that you were incarcerated somehow.
Speaker 7: Why would I need to whisper?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 7: It would be more likely that I'd been kidnapped and
Speaker 7: was secretly using a phone, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Like from the trunk of a car. Yeah, okay, few,
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you're in a museum instead. Why are
Speaker 2: you in a museum.
Speaker 7: I'm in a museum because the studio museum is where
Speaker 7: Frederick J. Brown's painting Genesis. To end it up, the
Speaker 7: painting is not up at the moment, but there are
Speaker 7: a couple galleries dedicated to like cycling things out that
Speaker 7: are in the permanent collection. Uh huh, so I imagine it
Speaker 7: will hang in one of those galleries soon.
Speaker 2: Ah. So you think it's in a storage room.
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 7: I don't really know how museums work, but yeah, they
Speaker 7: must have some kind of art storage. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, here's your chance to find out. I'm going to
Speaker 2: put you on assignment here. Okay, do you see any
Speaker 2: any doors that say staff only or do not enter?
Speaker 7: I'm standing by one right now.
Speaker 2: Do you want to try the doorknob?
Speaker 7: Let me just see.
Speaker 2: Is it locked?
Speaker 7: Yeah? It's locked.
Speaker 2: Well, so much for our big art heist. Well how
Speaker 2: does it feel? I guess to know that it's it's
Speaker 2: in its rightful place, and you had you had a
Speaker 2: hand in that.
Speaker 7: That's cool, actually, I mean, even though it's not up
Speaker 7: right now, just to be like, oh, this is its
Speaker 7: home and it's among all this other art, and like
Speaker 7: there's a lot of people at the museum. Oh really,
Speaker 7: I feel like people are going to be able to
Speaker 7: come and appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say,
Speaker 7: not to presume, but are you in front of a computer?
Speaker 2: I am?
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Would you like to go to the Studio Museum website
Speaker 7: and look up Frederick J. Brown in the.
Speaker 2: Coluction Studio Museum Frederick. There we go. Let's see. Oh
Speaker 2: he there's three of his works here.
Speaker 7: Oh nice?
Speaker 2: And here we are, yeah, Genesis two. And you know
Speaker 2: what what it is? Vertical?
Speaker 7: I know I noticed that too. I was like, maybe
Speaker 7: we were looking at it the wrong way.
Speaker 2: I think we were. Yeah, And honestly, looking at it
Speaker 2: like this, it's like looking at a whole different painting.
Speaker 2: It does the way you see it, I know, and
Speaker 2: you know, in a way it kind of makes more sense.
Speaker 10: Wow.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 7: I am so serious how they even determined that, because
Speaker 7: I feel like when I was looking at it with Bentley,
Speaker 7: he also thought it went horizontally.
Speaker 2: He did.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And I did speak with Bentley recently too, and
Speaker 7: he gave me some updates about what's going on with
Speaker 7: his father's work.
Speaker 6: Of the updates and the major update though, is that
Speaker 6: we do have a retrospective of his work.
Speaker 5: Oh you do.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's going to be opening in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 6: Okay at the Phoenix our museum. Great and yeah again,
Speaker 6: I just can't thank you enough for taking on the
Speaker 6: story like it brought us so much publicity and then
Speaker 6: you know, we had several major exhibitions after that.
Speaker 5: Oh that's great. Well, thank you Bentley for talking. It's
Speaker 5: really nice to talk to you again.
Speaker 6: Thanks so much.
Speaker 5: Talk to you later, talk to you sad.
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