Join us on Thursday, October 6th at 6:00 PM CDT for the Exhibit Opening of Universal Heart Chords: Music Paintings of Frederick J. Brown at the New Orleans Jazz Museum with a musical performance by Caleb Tokarska presented by the Berry Campbell Gallery
Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser and The New Orleans Jazz Museum announce a new exhibit, Universal Heart Chords: Music Paintings of Frederick J. Brown.
Entertainment for the night will include a musical performance by Caleb Tokarska.
Frederick J. Brown
Frederick J. Brown (1945 – 2012) was a New York City and Arizona-based American artist. He was born in Georgia and raised on Chicago’s South Side. In the New York art and music renaissance of the 1970s and 1980s, his Soho loft was a gathering spot, salon, and studio for musicians, painters, writers, dancers, and performance artists. He collaborated with everyone from jazz musicians Ornette Coleman and Anthony Braxton to abstract expressionist painter Willem De Kooning. He settled in Arizona eventually and was based there and in New York before his death in 2012. His work has been exhibited in the Smithsonian, the Kemper Museum, The White House, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Xavier University. Brown is also the first Western artist to have a solo show at the National Museum of China in 1988. Brown’s work to be exhibited draws from his extensive series of over 350 musician portraits. These paintings mix the abstract and the figurative while also giving insight into the lives of musicians in general and his subjects too. The subjects here include Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Billie Holiday, Wynton Marsalis, Bix Beiderbeicke, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Patton, and Ray Charles
“We are excited to see the city of New Orleans recovering and beginning to thrive,” said Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser. “Preserving and documenting the city’s culture is vital to its survival. We are proud to see the New Orleans Jazz Museum working to educate a new generation of musicians about the city’s rich artistic legacy.” Says Frederick’s wife, Megan Brown: “Frederick’s Jazz and Blues portraits represent an important part of his repertoire. They reflect his close relationship with musicians, many of whom came out of Chicago where he was from. I remember Ornette Coleman’s cousin James Jordan coming by the loft one day, looking at one of Frederick’s paintings and saying, “I can hear that!” One of the reasons Frederick wanted to concentrate on painting the Jazz and Blues portraits was to honor the musicians and more importantly make sure they were remembered in history.”
Caleb Tokarska
Caleb Tokarska is a New Orleans-based Singer/Songwriter/Guitarist born in Augusta, GA.
Berry Campbell Gallery
Christine Berry and Martha Campbell first launched Berry Campbell in 2013 with a collaborative vision to emphasize the contributions of the many postwar and contemporary artists who had been left behind due to race, gender, and/or geography. Berry Campbell maintains a well-curated roster of thirty-four represented artists and estates with a rich secondary market program. Over the years, Berry Campbell has held over eighty exhibitions and countless focus shows as well as collaborated with museums and curators both domestically and internationally. Further, Berry Campbell has successfully placed works in private, corporate, and museum collections, and has fostered relationships with collectors, curators, educators, institutions, press, other galleries, and the general public.
Berry Campbell has been recognized and reviewed in many respected publications such as Architectural Digest, Art & Antiques, Art in America, Artforum, ArtNews, Artnet News, The Brooklyn Rail, The Hopkins Review, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, East Hampton Star, Luxe Magazine, The New Criterion, The New York Times, Vogue, Wall Street Journal, and Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art. Berry Campbell is pleased to announce that it will inaugurate its new space at 524 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001 with a retrospective exhibition of paintings by Elizabeth Osborne, opening on Thursday, September 8, 2022, and on view through Saturday, October 15, 2022. Berry Campbell is located at 524 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m, or by appointment. For further information please call at 212.924.2178, visit our website at www.berrycampbell.com, or email at info@berrycampbell.com.
