Re-Discovering New York's Wrapper Francis Hines
April 12, 2022 9:02 AM   Subscribe

In 1980, Francis Hines wrapped New York City's Washington Square Monument with 8,000 yards of synthetic white fabric, creating "a giant bandage for a wounded monument." It was his best known work though he continued to create and exhibit his work well into his 90s. However, he made no plans for his smaller artworks after his death, resulting in a Connecticut barn clean-out contractor discovering hundreds of pieces of art potentially worth millions and creating a new interest in Hines' paintings.
posted by jessamyn (7 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
I ran across this last night. It's like a fairy tale ending to an unpublished horror story. Jared Whipple did us all a favor.
posted by y2karl at 9:20 AM on April 12, 2022


Yeah I do have a lot of questions about what happened exactly, but as near as I can figure he was renting the barn space, the barn was being sold, the last few years of his life were not really spent managing his legacy (understandably) and then his kids didn't step up to salvage the paintings. As I read the longer article about Hines (the link under his name) I really started appreciating a lot of his work and I agree with you y2karl, I'm glad there was a more-or-less happy ending.
posted by jessamyn at 9:24 AM on April 12, 2022


...and then his kids didn't step up to salvage the paintings.

Now there's the head scratcher: What weren't they thinking?
posted by y2karl at 10:41 AM on April 12, 2022


Is it Lewis or Francis? Lewis Hines was a photographer, no?
posted by Lawn Beaver at 11:10 AM on April 12, 2022


Whoops, typo on my part. fixing. They've both been on my mind lately.
posted by jessamyn at 11:23 AM on April 12, 2022 [2 favorites]


Brief ARTnews article, illustrated with a work from the Hoboken Autobody series of 1983-84. It's astonishing, how Hines (who biked to work, for decades, prior to his 2014 stroke) was still producing art in that barn up until a few weeks before his death in 2016.

I'm not sure how much leeway (meaning, access, time, and resources) his sons (one lives in in New York, the other in Florida) had in recovering and securing their father's work, when it was stored in a rented space and that space was soon sold? Sonra Ross was her husband's organizational genius and de facto business manager, and she had a stroke in 2010. One of the sons, Jonathan, also an artist, was the full-time caregiver for his mom until her death in 2013. Then Francis Hines had a stroke the following year. Per the first link, "Hines was so focused upon creating art in the studio that he avoided dealing with mundane matters such as the entreaties of the barn owner in Watertown who kept reminding him that the property was being readied for sale [...] After he passed away in 2016 at age 96, the estate had to comply with a tight deadline that was imposed for cleaning out the barn’s contents. When no immediate solution could be found the contents were deemed abandoned and [Jared Whipple's] friend in trash removal was contracted for the task."

In that article, a friend recounts that Hines was known for avoiding discussions about the fate of his work. It seems that the landlord spoke with Hines about the upcoming sale, but not with the family or a legal representative for the artist. Long-term illnesses are exhausting, and expensive, and some of these artworks are huge. Store-in-a-barn huge.

Last year's Hines retrospective was at Waterbury's Mattatuck Museum of Art, and "Francis Hines: Unwrapping the Mystery of New York’s Wrapper will be on view at Hollis Taggart Southport located at 330 Pequot Avenue in Southport, Connecticut from May 5 to June 11, 2022, with some pieces also shown at Hollis Taggart Chelsea located at 521 West 26th Street, NYC." (GothamToGo, April 8, 2022)
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:33 PM on April 12, 2022 [2 favorites]


When Art is Garbage
posted by bonefish at 12:37 PM on April 12, 2022 [3 favorites]


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