2026 Update: Frederick J. Brown

Pushkin Hi. Hello. Today we're going to revisit an episode that I reported. It's called Frederick J. Brown. Oh, yeah. Okay. It's about art. It's about a painting. Amazing. I love art. You know that, right? Yeah, you're always talking about how much you love art. Is that true? No. Oh, I don't want to become one of those art bores. Are we talking about fine art? I thought we were talking about fine art, yeah. There's all kinds of different art. Well, sure, this is art in a way. This conversation we're having right now. Well, let's not get crazy. I feel like a real dilettante around art, but I do like it. You like it. You wouldn't say you love it. I just don't know that I'm knowledgeable enough. You don't have to be. Okay. Then I guess I love it. Who do you think loves it more, me or you? Probably you. Really? Maybe just because this is going to sound rude, but you're added years of experience. Sure. I've had a lot of time in the game of ogling art. You know, you might be surprised to learn that a person like myself, I'm not much of an art snob in the sense that I believe that everybody possesses artistic and creative ability. Wow, that's beautiful. I'm going to give you a little hint. Now I'm off my high horse. I'm going to get on my low horse, my show pony. Okay. And away we go. Away we go. Do you know whose catchphrase that was? No. A pilot. Jackie Gleason. Oh, all right. Well, away we go indeed. Oh, but first, a word from our sponsors. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. This is Jacob Goldstein from Business History. When the internet arrived, most people used it to look things up. Others saw what it could really do. The same is true with ChatGPT. ChatGPT work goes beyond answering questions. Give it a goal, plus things like notes, files, feedback, data, or project plans, and it can help create a brief, analysis, deck outline, tracker, or workflow. You stay in control, reviewing the work and choosing the final result. Put ChatGPT to work. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans. If you love music and great artist interviews, check out Before the Moment, hosted by Niall Rogers. This new series follows Niall as he travels across the country talking with some of today's most fascinating artists about the moments that shaped their lives and careers. From hitmakers like Miguel to rising stars like. Like Alex Warren, Niall explores the stories behind the careers, the songs, and the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the point where everything changed, and this podcast tells the stories that came before it. Listen to Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. We spend hours deciding what to buy, but there's a split-second decision that can make or break a sale. Do you have the trust? To hit Buy Now. Agentic Commerce is testing that moment more than ever. And that's where PayPal comes in. With 25 years of checkouts, 400 million consumer accounts globally, and the benefit of purchase and seller protection, all of which make sure wherever a purchase starts, it ends with trust. Built for payments, growth, and agentic. PayPal Open, built for all business. Visit paypalopen.com. Purchase. Purchase and seller protections on eligible transactions only. Terms apply. See paypal.com slash risk dash management for details. Every Friday night during the pandemic, I'd get on a Google Hangout with a group of my boyfriend's friends, and we'd all play Mario Kart. I'll do 150 CCs, breaking items, no comms, six races. These Mario Kart sessions started back in the days when we could barely leave the house due to COVID restrictions. So it felt like an escape to log on, to carelessly careen in a small car, or kart, if you will, through a gold mine or off a waterfall. In those dark days, a few minutes on Mount Wario was the closest thing I could get to a vacation. Ready? Let's be bad. That being said, I also found these Mario Kart hangouts. I found these Mario Kart hangouts deeply intimidating, because I'm not good at Mario Kart. My gameplay mostly sounds like this. Oh, no. Or this. Oh, no. Along with the Mario karting, there was also non-Mario chatting. Oh. And chatting of any kind is another thing I'm not good at. Every so often, I'd weigh in with something like. Pretty crazy. This was essentially the extent of my experience. This was essentially the extent of my engagement. Until the night, Maya told us about the painting. Maya found the painting sitting in a pile of trash on the sidewalk, and it grabbed her instantly. It was only later, when she took it home, that she saw the artist's signature, Frederick J. Brown. Although Maya works in art, the name was unfamiliar to her, so she Googled him. And what popped up was a lengthy New York Times obituary from 2012, praising Brown's work and citing Willem de Kooning as an early mentor. Brown, it turned out, was an acclaimed Black artist, known for his portraits of jazz and blues musicians. He had work in the Smithsonian. As Maya made her way through his biography, she slowly realized that the painting she'd been so instinctively drawn to was actually the work of an important artist. And so, Maya was left wondering, how did Brown's painting end up in the trash? ♪ Wow, a very regal building. On a cold Friday afternoon, I pay Maya a visit at her Brooklyn apartment building to follow up and learn more. And who knows? Maybe my boyfriend's friend can simply become a friend. Hello! Come on in. It's a very, like, regal building, I feel like. Um. My IRL chatting is truly no better than my Mario Kart chatting. This is your first time here, also. It is, yeah. What I couldn't see on the small square of our Mario Kart calls was that every surface of Maya's apartment is covered in art. Not only has Maya worked in the art world for many years, at galleries, art publishers, her husband, Wes, is also an artist himself. He even proposed to Maya on the steps of the Met. There's really only one spot in their apartment, this empty, a blank wall above the couch. They'd been waiting, year after year, for the perfect work of art to hang there. And now, with the discovery of the Frederick J. Brown painting, they knew they'd found it. Maya says she spotted the painting while heading home from a COVID test. It was gigantic, and she still had a mile to walk. She knew it didn't really make sense to take it with her. But she couldn't walk away from it, either. I just kept going back to it. I just. was different from all of the other paintings I've seen. It just really kind of grabbed me. And I started trying to get it out of the trash. Clutching the huge painting to her body, Maya awkwardly waddled the mile home. There was, like, a little garbage juice at the bottom and a little dust at the top. When I was walking, I wouldn't let it sit on the ground. I know I had probably been on the street all day, but I didn't want it to be on the street anymore. It is nearly as long as I am tall, and I'm 5'4". Lots of color and patterns. Despite my fondness for the audio medium, it fails to translate the force of Brown's painting. It's not as easily encapsulated as, say, the Mona Lisa, Smiling Woman, or American Gothic, Unsmiling Woman, and Man. It's mostly abstract. But then, there are these tiny spots with recognizable figures. Admiring the painting with Maya makes me feel like I'm at a fancy party, enjoying hors d'oeuvres, but also panicked that I have nothing intelligent to say. That kind of looks like a seven. The painting feels like a stained glass cabinet full of curiosity, full of curios. It feels like a quilt, if a quilt weren't made of fabric, but of fields and buildings and people rushing to work. It feels like a packed room where everybody's dancing. I ask Maya to show me where she first found the painting, and so we hit the streets to return to the scene of the trash. Should we walk? Yeah, let's walk. We take a walk, as friends often do. Maya tells me the painting was in the trash, trashed with a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff. A TJ Maxx planter, a stained toy chest. Whoever disposed of it was probably moving. Maybe a neighbor can tell us who might have moved in the last couple months. But whereas I was picturing a small building with just a few buzzers to ring, it turns out the trash heap was actually in front of a public housing complex, 14 stories high, taking up a whole block. We loiter by the building's entrance, and I try to catch people as they're going in or out. Can I ask you something weird? Can I ask you a weird question? You know anyone who moved out like in December? It's just about a painting that was left outside. A painting? My friend found a painting, and she's trying to figure out like what the deal is. Nobody knows anything. No. All right, thank you. No, thank you. No. There's a lot I don't understand about art. Like, why are frames so expensive? But I can tell you this. Paintings, they have two sides. There's the side with all the paint on it that people are always tripping over each other to talk about. But then there's the other side, the second or back side, if you will. And back at Maya's apartment, she explains that on this back side, or derriere, there's another clue. She and Wes were cleaning the painting off, getting it ready to hang on the wall when they saw it. Lightly scrawled on the back of the canvas was an inscription. Painted 1979, December. Title, Genesis 2, Love, Happy Birthday. From Frederick to Lowry Sims, and then he signed it and dated it 1979. Maya may not have known the name Frederick Brown, but she knew the name Lowry Sims quite well. Lowry was the president of the Studio Museum in Harlem. And before that, she'd been the first Black curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She's now in her 70s and has had decades of impact on the art world. She's reached living legend status. You can't help but be like, oh, okay, yeah. Should I have not used a paper towel? The way Maya sees it, if you find something with someone else's name on it, whether that's a wallet, a cat, or a painting, you try to give it back to them. And so, she wants to return the painting to its rightful owner, Lowry Sims. And once we find her, maybe Lowry can help piece together how the painting ended up in the garbage. I would, like, love to help try and get in touch with this person. Yes, please. Okay. My garbage hunting, an abject failure. But my people hunting, that's going to be an abject success. I can't find an email address for Lowry, so I do what we all do when we want to pester someone more important than we are. I send a message on LinkedIn. I explain that I have a painting I think belongs to her, but perhaps fearing I'm running some sort of con where I trade paintings for social security numbers. Lowry doesn't respond. Hi, how are you? I need some sort of inroad, so I contact an artist named Chloe Bass, who's worked with Lowry. I don't know why she would even need LinkedIn. Like, that's how, like, her career is very well established. Chloe's also confused by how the painting ended up in the trash. She says Lowry can't have been the one to throw it away, because Lowry doesn't live in Brooklyn and never has. Chloe agrees to return the painting, but she doesn't want to throw it away. Lowry doesn't want to throw it away, because Lowry doesn't live in Brooklyn and never has. And now that the request isn't coming from a rando on LinkedIn, but a rando who knows Chloe Bass, Lowry responds. We have a few back and forths over email. I'm hoping to schedule a time for us to talk on the phone, but Lowry is reluctant. She tells me she doesn't want to talk unless she can see a photo of the painting first. So I send her a photo, saying I'd be curious if she recognizes Genesis 2, and equally curious if she doesn't. Who knows, maybe Brown's gift of the painting never even reached her. The next morning, Lowry writes back, quote, intriguing, period. That is the extent of her email. And after that, our correspondence comes to a halt. If you're a music fan, here's a new podcast to check out. It's called Before the Moment, a new series hosted by the legendary Nile Rodgers. You know him as the producer, songwriter, guitarist, and co-founder of Chic. But in this series, he's hitting the road to sit down with some of today's most fascinating artists. From hitmakers like Miguel, to writers like Alex Warren, Nile explores the stories behind the careers, the songs, and the moments that changed everything. Because every artist can point to that turning point, that moment before the breakthrough, before the success, before everything changed. Through candid conversations and personal stories, you'll hear what happened before the moment that made them who they are today. Imagine Henry Ford trying to create the assembly line. He had factory plans, production schedules, supply information, research, and ideas coming from all directions. His team spent years studying how to make the process work. Now, imagine having ChatGPT work. ChatGPT work can help with big projects that have lots of steps. You give it the goal, along with real information like notes, files, reports, feedback, and projects. It can use approved apps, connected tools, and files to help turn all of that into something useful. A plan, an analysis, a tracker, a presentation outline, or a workflow you can keep improving. And you stay in control. You give direction, review the work, approve actions, and choose the final result. Would Henry Ford have built the assembly line faster with ChatGPT? We'll never know. Ford didn't have ChatGPT. You do. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans. Hi, everyone. I'm Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. In this special live episode brought to you by McCormick Signature Seasonings, I talked to my longtime friend and makeup artist, Daisy Torrey, to hear how she's adopted her family's love of cooking into her own busy life. We'll never know. We'll never know. We'll never know. We'll never know. We'll never know. Listen to the full episode of the Martha Stewart Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We'll never know. We'll never know. We'll never know. We'll never know. We'll never know. husband, Wes, have propped the painting up against a wall for Bentley to look at. Bentley takes it in. This is amazing. It's just like, this makes me so happy. Is this your first time seeing this painting? Yeah, I've never seen this. Bentley's dedicated years of his life to his father's work, but he can't tell me how the painting ended up in the trash. Before I reached out, he hadn't even known Genesis 2 existed. He bends down to get a closer look. You didn't just stumble upon any piece within his catalog. You stumbled upon an extremely important piece. It turns out that Genesis 2 was painted at the moment when Brown was making a transition. That's why it looks so different than anything else I'd seen online. Brown was moving away from abstraction and towards more figurative work. So among the shapes and lines, you see faces, an airplane, and the fox figure. And it's like a self-portrait. Do you know why your dad chose the fox as a symbol of representation? That's a good question. You have to be a fox to survive in the art world as a black man. Have to be. Everybody looks at the fox as like a nefarious sort of character, right? But my dad kind of looked at it as like, nah, that's just a cat who has to do whatever it has to do to survive. ♪ ♪ Bentley tells us about his dad's life, about Frederick Brown's childhood on the south side of Chicago, how Brown's dad managed a juke joint, hanging around blues musicians like Muddy Waters. Early on, color made a strong impression on Brown. He grew up mixing paint for the luxury cars his uncle worked on. Later, Brown found work in the steel mills, the colors of the hot metal burning their way into his mind. Because he'd always talk about how bright orange the ingots were. See the bright orange in there. Brown attended college in Illinois and eventually moved to New York, where he set up shop in a huge loft on Worcester Street in Soho. Other artists and musicians were always stopping by. Romare Bearden, B.B. King, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono. The Worcester Street loft is where Brown painted Genesis. So then after that, he signed with Marlboro Gallery. And so that was a big deal because Marlboro Gallery was the hottest gallery at that time. We talk about, like, Basquiat being the first Black artist to sort of make that break. It was really my dad. Like, I'm not even going to hold you. Like, I'm not going to sugarcoat it, you know? But while Basquiat went on to become a household name, selling paintings for millions of dollars, Frederick J. Brown did not. So what happened? It turns out that even after signing with Marlboro, Brown wasn't being shown in the way he thought he should be. My dad kept trying to get, like, a retrospective. He didn't get a retrospective anywhere. So Brown took matters into his own hands when a Taiwanese artist named C.J. Yao invited him to come to China. It was 1988, and communist China was just starting to culturally open up. Only one other American artist, Robert Rauschenberg, had shown work in the country. But together, Brown and Yao decided, let's do a Frederick J. Brown retrospective in China. And they decided to do it in the National Museum of China, which, like, is on Tiananmen Square. And it's, like, an insanely huge building. The museum had been filled with relics of Chairman Mao and the Communist Revolution. But all that was cleared out to make room for 100 Frederick J. Brown paintings. And he had a lot, I mean, he had 60,000 people a day. Wow. For, like, 30 days. Wow. He had to go to China, to have a red. He had to go to China to be seen as an American artist. Because in America, Brown was seen as a Black artist. And despite what he accomplished in China, when he returned to the States, he hadn't earned any additional prestige. Instead. Marlboro was pissed that he did the show because they did it without their consent. He took out a loan to do it himself of half a million dollars. He had no way of paying it back. So that was, like, the beginning of. I don't want to say the end, but it was the beginning of, like, a real hardship. Marlboro dropped him. The bank was trying to take all his work, which he'd put up as collateral. He was only able to save some paintings by erasing his name entirely so the bank would think they weren't his. Other paintings he hid in the walls of his Worcester Street loft. Brown, continued to paint for the rest of his life. But he never regained that blue-tripped cachet from his early career. He didn't become a name that a non-art person like me, or even an art person like Maya, would immediately recognize. Brown died of cancer in 2012. And ten years later, Bentley's frustrated that his father still doesn't have his rightful place in the canon. You go up to these people that are gatekeepers, and you plead your case. Most people are just like, eh, whatever. There's not a market for it right now. Right? And it's like, it's like, man, fuck you. It's the same story for a lot of Black artists. Sure, these gatekeepers want Black art, Bentley says. But they want a particular kind of Black art. They want art they can look at and go, ah, yes, I get it. This is about the politics of being Black in America. When we think about Black art or Black artists, right, we are very quick to add like a political tagline to the thing. I mean, I guess you could argue that Blackness in and of itself is a political thing. But my dad was kind of much more of the camp of like, just like make art for art's sake. But purely aesthetic work by a Black artist, that's what ends up in the garbage. It's such a painful feeling. It's such a, yeah, painful is the word. It's such a painful feeling when you know that like, you have such a special world and people, don't give a shit. What is, I mean, like if you have to describe like what, what that special world was, like what, how would you explain it? Bentley points at the painting, still leaning against the wall. It's that right there. So much color. So much emotion. So much beauty. You two recognize it. The painting definitely called to me. Yeah, I mean, you rescued it, right? Like, and it's like a piece of my dad. It's like his energy, his spirit. It's him, you know? That was just my dad calling out to you. That's what that was. Being like, yo, don't let me go in the trash, yo. My son lives not too far away. Don't let me go in the trash. From hitmakers like Miguel to rising stars like Alex Warren, Nile explores the stories behind the careers, the songs, and the moments that changed everything. You give it the goal, along with real information like notes, files, reports, feedback, and project plans. It can use approved apps, connected tools, and files to help turn all of that into, well, something useful. We'll never know. You do. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available online at chatgpt.com. Hi, everyone. Daisy's a very fine cook, by the way. Her mother and father are wonderful cooks, and they raised the girls vegetarian. Yeah. And the food is delicious. at their house and Daisy has, she just has a good Good palate. I think being a vegetarian and using, utilizing flavor in the right way by your palate. Yes. Definitely my parents' influence. Food was always around. Yeah. Important. My parents cooked dinner every single night and now I cook dinner every single morning. She really does. I cook dinner in the morning. So you never know, being a makeup artist, where you have to be and where you have to go in a day. While Bentley was able to trace the path that led Frederick Brown's work to the metaphorical trash heap, I'm still wondering about the literal trash heap, the one on a Brooklyn sidewalk. And so, of course, I'm still wondering about Lowry Sims. It turns out Bentley knows Lowry well. The two are even writing a book together. When I ask Bentley about Lowry's aversion to speaking with me, he alludes to some bad experiences she's had with journalists. But he reassures, And the next morning, Bentley calls to tell me that Lowry is willing to talk. There's just one caveat. She doesn't want to discuss how the painting wound up in the garbage. It's hard for me to figure out why. And I don't really know how to do an interview about a painting that ended up in the trash without asking how the painting ended up in the trash. So I cross my fingers that something might shift once we're on the phone. Lowry takes my call from her condo in Baltimore. She tells me that she met Frederick Brown when she was around 30, a newly minted curator at the Met. As a curator, Lowry's mission was to champion the work of overlooked artists. Lowry herself knew what it was like to be overlooked. I mean, I was in, you know, as a Black girl from Queens. I had a career nobody would have expected at that time. I was in places where nobody expected at the time. I mean, I used to tell people one of the most amusing things for me was to go to a collector on Park Avenue in the 70s and get to the front door, and the doorman would try to sort of scoop me around to the service entrance because they assumed I was a housekeeper or something. You know, it's new. I'm, you know, a citizen from the Metropolitan Museum. You sort of see the face change. You know, they go, oh, get off. It was a struggle to get past the ignorance about Black artists. Like once in the 70s, Lowry organized an exhibit of Black art from the Met's collection. And when we got the exhibition up, I was approached by a journalist who said, I didn't even know there were Black artists. Now, this is like 1979. Come on. Oh, geez. Yeah. Yeah. So I said, well, we've been around since the late 1800s. Hearing this story, it starts to make sense why Lowry might have been reluctant to speak with me, a white-looking journalist she's never met. In fact, when I spoke with Bentley, he said Lowry had wanted him to suss me out to make sure that I was okay before she agreed to talk to me. Like his dad, Bentley said, Lowry, too, has had to be a fox. Lowry and Brown's friendship endured for decades, starting in that Worcester street loft and lasting until Brown's death. And even after he died, Lowry continued to engage with Brown's work. Just last summer, she helped put together a big posthumous show of his art at the Barry Campbell Gallery in Manhattan. Like Bentley, she wants Brown to finally get his due. It's original work. You know, it's strong work. I'm just hopeful that, you know, Frederick gets written into the, you know, the art lexicon in the way that he needs to be. When I ask Lowry why this hasn't happened yet, like Bentley, she cites the aftermath of the China trip. But she also offers this. He sort of left New York at a crucial period in his career. And he put the concerns of his family first. And it's true. In the 90s, Brown left New York for a change. He moved to a town called Carefree, Arizona. A big factor in that decision was his daughter's asthma. Brown knew the dry desert heat would be good for her. And although money was still tight, the family was happy out in Arizona. Bentley recalls his dad attending his flag football games in his signature white Brooks Brothers suit, sweating in the Arizona sun and dabbing his forehead with napkins. While some children of famous artists remember locked studio doors, Bentley remembers his dad's welcoming studio couch. Where he'd flop down after school and talk about his day while his father painted. All of which is to say, Bentley remembers Brown as a good dad. As Lowry and I talk, I do my best to avoid the whole painting in the trash thing. So we discuss her time at the Met, Brown's jazz portraits, the similarities between Genesis 1 and 2. But then, without a doubt, I'm going to talk about my dad. I'm going to talk about my dad. Without prompting, Lowry volunteers this. I mean, I sort of like, you know, kind of figured out that I probably gave the painting to someone who admired it. You know, I can't remember who because, you know, because it was certainly too big for my little apartment. As it turns out, Brown had painted Lowry Genesis 2 as a thank you gift because she'd been the curator who bought Genesis 1 for the Met's collection. But the painting was huge, and Lowry ran into the problem that so many people didn't know about Genesis 1. So many New Yorkers do. Living in a cramped apartment on the Upper East Side, she just hadn't had space for it. For Lowry, there was no blank wall above the couch, just waiting for something to be hung. So instead, she found Genesis 2 a good home with a friend who loved it. And I think I told Fred, you know, like, about that. Yeah. How it ended up where Maya found it, I don't know. I just can't remember who I might have given it to. I suspect that Lowry might be, trying to protect a friend. Maybe that's why she'd been reluctant to talk about the painting's loss. Maybe Lowry gave the painting to someone who moved to a smaller apartment themselves. Or maybe they died or fell on hard times and decided to sell it. Maybe it was regifted to someone else or sold in an estate sale or just lost in the general shuffle of life. No matter what, the end result is the same. Ultimately, someone looked at it, thought, this isn't worth keeping, and threw it away. All of that, it seems, was wrapped up in Lowry's intriguing. Does it make you sad at all to think of art just in the trash like that? Well, you know, there's a saying that 98% of all the art created in the world since the beginning is gone. Do you think, like, the best stuff somehow makes it through? Do you know what I mean? I think it's totally random. I mean. I guess that's why we have museums, you know, because they can be seen as places where these things can be saved. But, I mean, just look at what's happening now in the Ukraine. You know, they're bombing museums and cultural sites. So I think a lot of times it's just the luck of the draw. Time is the most capricious of curators. Can you tell me sort of, like, what's happening to it now? Do you know where it's going? Yeah, it's been accepted by the Studio Museum as a donation. Oh, that's great. And the donation will be from me, from the Estate of the Artist, and from Maya. On a warm Friday afternoon, I pay Maya a visit at her regal apartment building. Hello. She and Wes are signing the paperwork to officially donate the painting to the Studio Museum. And I'm here to serve as a witness. Lowry and Bentley have both already signed. You're trying to get some of that pen sound. Knowing how much Maya loves the painting, I thought giving it up would be bittersweet. But she's in high spirits. She likes the idea of Genesis II hanging in a museum. That way, thousands of people will get to enjoy it. We'll lean towards the plaza, and read the name Frederick J. Brown. Who knows what that name might mean to people in the future, if time will strengthen Brown's legacy or wash it away. But for now, we finish up the paperwork and all cheers a shot of tequila to celebrate, as friends often do. Cheers. Thank you so much, Tequila. Thank you. On my way out, I notice that the big wall above Maya's couch is still blank. you Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage deposit Take this moment to decide If we meant it, if we tried Or felt around for far too much For things that accidentally tied Hello? Hello? Hello? Jonathan? Kalila? Yeah, hi. Hi. What's going on? Um, I'm in the studio museum at the moment. Oh, thank God. When I heard you whispering like that, I figured immediately that you were incarcerated somehow. Why would I need to whisper? Yeah, that's true. It would be more likely that I'd been kidnapped and was secretly using a phone, you know what I mean? Like from the trunk of a car? Yeah. Okay, phew. I'm so glad you're in a museum instead. Yeah. Why are you? I'm in a museum because, uh, the studio museum is where Frederick J. Brown's painting, Genesis II, ended up. Um, the painting is not up at the moment, but there are a couple galleries dedicated to, like, cycling things out that are in the permanent collection. Uh-huh. So I imagine it will hang in one of those galleries soon. Ah. Um, so you think it's in a storage room? I guess. I don't really know. I don't really know how museums work, but yeah, they must have some kind of art storage, right? Well, here's your chance to find out. I'm going to put you on assignment here. Okay. Do you see any, um, any doors that say staff only or do not enter? Yeah, I'm standing by one right now. Do you want to try the doorknob? Let me just see. Is it locked? Yeah, it's locked. Well, so much for our big art heist. Um, well, how does it feel, I guess, to, to know that it's, it's in its rightful place? And you had, you had a hand in that. That's cool, actually. I mean, even though it's not up right now, just to be like, oh, this is its home and it's among all this other art. And like, there's a lot of people at the museum. Oh, really? Because I feel like people are going to be able to come and appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say not to presume, but are you in front of a computer? I am. Yeah. Would you like to go to the Studio Museum website and look up Frederick J. Brown in the collection? Studio Museum. Yeah. Frederick. There we go. Let's see. Oh, he, there's three of his works here. Oh, nice. Um, and here we are. Yeah. Genesis 2. And you know what? What? Uh, it is vertical. I know. I noticed that too. I was like, maybe we were looking at it the wrong way. I think we were. Yeah. And honestly, looking at it like this. Mm-hmm. It's like looking at a whole different painting. It does really change the way you see it, I know. And it, you know, in a way, it kind of makes more sense. Uh-huh. Wow. Huh. I am sort of curious how they even determined that because I feel like when I was looking at it with Bentley, he also thought it went horizontally. He did. Yeah. And, um, I did speak with Bentley recently too. And he gave me some updates about what's going on. With his father's work. Some of the updates. And the major update, though, is that we do have a retrospective of his work. Oh, you do? Yeah. It's going to be opening in 2028. Okay. At the Phoenix Art Museum. Great. And yeah, again, I just can't thank you enough for taking on the story. Like, it brought us so much publicity. And then, you know, we had several major exhibitions after that. Oh, that's great. Cool. Thank you, Bentley, for talking. It's really nice to talk to you again. Thanks so much. Talk to you later. Talk to you soon. Thanks to everyone who helped put this episode together. If you haven't already heard, and I can't imagine how you haven't, we've started a free newsletter. Have you, Kalila Holt, heard about our free newsletter? Yes, in fact. I've written stuff in it. Oh, that's going to look great on your resume. That sounds like a threat. Am I fired? No, not at all. I'm just saying, you know, kudos to you. That's a publication right there. So, all of which to say, go to patreon.com slash heavyweight to sign up. And we'll be back once again with another exciting update in two weeks' time. We'll be right back. The American Way of Killing investigates America's gun violence crisis. Why is the richest country in the world plagued by such lethal violence? Through a series of stories, interviews, and archival tape, I confront one of today's most urgent moral dilemmas and examine why the U.S. has never quite understood its own problem and why you can't fix what you refuse to see clearly. Get The American Way of Killing at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or at Audible, Spotify, or wherever audiobooks are sold. Guaranteed human.