 the director of the museum. I always say I'm the new director of the museum but I'm not sure if 11 months constitutes new anyway. Welcome, so glad you're all here. You know some days a gal just feels blessed and today is one of those days. I feel blessed that I get to work in this noble institution that's nearly 200 years old with nearly 6,000 years of human creativity from around the globe. I feel blessed to work with such a great team and I want to thank my team for putting together tonight's event. I am blessed to have a phenomenal corporate sponsorship relationship, a partnership with Squarespace. They have been the best. If it weren't for Squarespace we would be not open to the public free on Thursday night. They have been amazing partners, so thank you Squarespace. You know some people just thank their corporate sponsors and they don't really mean it. I really mean it. They are the best partners and I am also blessed because I get to work with visionary artists and today I'm standing here with soon to be with three visionary artists who are also very dear friends, people who have taught me so much with whom I've collaborated quite a number of times over many years and with whom I've had some very profound experiences and they have been true inspirations in my life and tonight's event is also part of a new series of artist dialogues conceived by one of our friends, the great poet Tom Healy. Were any of you here a few weeks ago for the Quest Love Tom Sacks conversation? A few of you, yeah. So those of you who were here, not including staff or my husband, know that you're in for a great treat. This is not your normal sort of dull museum artist dialogue. It's going to be really fresh, very unexpected, and I think very memorable. So let me tell you just briefly a little bit about our three gentlemen who are joining us on stage soon. Tom Healy. Tom grew up milking cows and shoveling manure. He also spent a lot of time spying on the lives of his neighbors. After all, six farm families all shared one telephone line and Tom would stay up all night long secretly listening in. He's still an insomniac and because of that, he has been a very prolific writer. Tom has written three books of poetry. As his mother and I will tell you, they're quite sad and we say, Tom, really? Seriously, this happened? At any rate, one is a collaboration with an artist friend, Duke Riley. I hope you all got to see Duke's project over at the Brooklyn Navy Yards not long ago. And his newest book coming out just after Labor Day is called Velvet and it's a collaboration with the artist and filmmaker Van Nijstette. Tom is also finishing a book of essays called The Rest of the World. It's essentially about Tom as a kind of global farm boy traveling around the world as chairman of the Fulbright Scholars. He was appointed chairman by President Obama. And speaking of which, both Tom and the president are 55 years old, I think today. So happy birthday to Tom and President Obama. Yeah. David Byrne. Where do you begin with David? He did not start on a farm, at least not that I'm aware of. But I think he started in the suburbs of Baltimore. Let me just say that his genius musical background is globally renowned. And we can all say he has given us some of the most special, powerful moments of joy and contemplation that only a truly great artist can. From the talking heads to his own solo recordings, he's blown us away again and again. But David is really an Uber artist. He's brilliant at more than just music. I've worked with him on his sculptures, his art installations, his photography. He's done films and opera literature and even musical theater. He just can't stop. And along the way, he's collaborated with so many brilliant artists. And I want to thank David for introducing us to so many great artists from around the world. His last concert, I think, was my introduction to St. Vincent. The guy knows talent when he sees her. And then there's Steven Powers. Steve's story begins in Philadelphia as a working class kid on the wrong side of the subway tracks. His work has been shown since then all over Venice, Biennale, and the Louverpool biennials and to Coney Island, where we work together. I'm not sure if Tom is aware of this, but he probably is, which is that Steve was a Fulbright scholar in 2007. And he used the grant to paint streets in Dublin and Belfast that later became an ongoing mural project that he did in Philadelphia and beyond called A Love Letter for You. It's really a love letter to cities. It has its own book as well. And I'm pretty sure we'll have to ask Steve this later that I wrote his letter of recommendation for the Fulbright scholarship program. Now with that said, do not ask me. I'm not writing any more letters of recommendation. I got a museum to run. He is the owner of IC Signs, a traveling sign shop that was first conceived in 2003 on our project in Coney Island. Well, I was still director of Creative Time. And I could go on and on about the many special experiences I've had working with Steve, but I'll let the panel do their thing. Instead, I just want to tell you that when I joined the museum and I learned that we were going to have an exhibition on Coney Island, I called Steve immediately. Mike, you were with me in the car when we had that conversation. I said, Steve, I need your help. We have a show on Coney Island, and it's about the Coney Island in the past. But Coney is not just a nostalgic thing of the past. It's something about the hearing now, and it's about our shared future. Please come and do something at the museum. And this is typical of Steve. He dropped everything. He came to the museum immediately, despite his incredibly busy life. He brought in his team, and he just didn't create set up shop for a day or a week. He gave us his entire year. He and his pals have been painting in the museum for the public almost every single day that we're open for the entire year. He's that kind of guy. And for those of you who have not met him, you'll soon see for yourself. So without further delay, let me thank you again for all being here. And I want to welcome Tom and David and Steve for allowing us the privilege, thank them for the privilege of allowing us to eavesdrop on our conversation. Hey, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. Hey, Steve. We were back with Anne and she was telling us dirty jokes, which were not allowed to tell to you guys. But welcome. I'm so thrilled that David and Steve are are here. Just a quick thing about the title. David, as you know, has written a number of extraordinary books, as has Steve, including one amazing graphic novel. But David is talking about Weird America, which was the great writer of music grill, Marcus uses a title of his book about Bob Dylan's basement tapes, the old Weird America. And that came to him from something that the great guitarist, Robbie Robertson was telling about what happened when those tapes are uncovered. And and Dylan would be playing and they weren't sure was this his music or something he'd heard somewhere. And it had really come from the American Folklies Project. And but the whole idea of the America that disappears or that gets sucked into pop culture and things is something that both David and Steve, they both listen to I feel like it's in all five senses of the work that they've done and their obsessions and their interests and Steve, it's something you've talked about about the center and the periphery a lot. Can you say something about that? Even just start? You're referring to a line I say about, you know, I wrote graffiti for years. And in the graffiti that I was writing, I was really interested in kind of not writing graffiti, but but making fun, having fun with the tools of graffiti. Um, and when I stopped writing graffiti, and I went to sign painting, I said, Well, you know, graffiti is like a signal that broadcasts from the periphery of community to the center of community. And sign painting works in reverse where it starts at the center of the community with the blessing of business owners and, you know, people that are trying to bring commerce into a community and it broadcasts to the periphery where the graffiti writers are. And I learned this when I painted signs in Coney Island. The first people to notice what I was doing down there were the graffiti writers. They picked up on what I was doing. They identified they identified it as my work like right away. And it was a powerful lesson to learn all it all I really did was cross the street. You know, I just changed my tactic from being in the shadow world to like just, you know, being a community guy. So what about coming into the belly of the beast and doing a show here in the museum where you were working to during that? Well, did you sleep here? I did. The marble is kind of cold. We, you know, and and we worked together in Coney Island. You know, it was creative time, wanted to get out of Manhattan, and they wanted to go other places. And I just was working in Coney Island, just picking up on things I saw happening in San Francisco that Margaret Kilgallon and the luggage store did. Laurie Lazar had an idea to get Margaret to paint the tenderloin. And I thought that was a really great thing. But the tenderloins like is crazy. And, you know, wasn't it didn't look like the right place for what Margaret was doing. But Coney Island. Now that that had the pallet and that had, you know, signs of advertised pleasure and was like a perfect fit. So I went to Coney and then creative time picked up on what we were doing. And, you know, we turned into a project where we had 40 artists painting signs and painting rides. And it was a thing where we thought, well, it's like 12 years and running to me. I mean, it was really just two years down there. But other people have picked up the baton. Yeah. And it's kind of like set in motion, like, you know, a few people have taken their turn at painting the cyclone. And Coney Island is great because they're like, Oh, we got all this free labor that comes down like every spring, the artists come they paint stuff. It's such a great scam. And it really was it was, you know, we had the best interest in mine for Coney. We wanted to keep Coney weird and keep it wonderful and dirty. And, you know, when Anne first approached us, when she wanted to do the project, Peter Ili, who's, you know, Peter's at PS1 now, he's a curator there. Hi, Peter. And Peter called me up and said, Oh, let's do this project. And Coney will make it an art project. And I said, artists are just going to ruin Coney Island. Let's not do that. And he got tough. And he said, No, man, you better do this. This is a really good opportunity. You have to do this. So we did. And it turned out to be a really great opportunity. And, you know, Coney's going to be Coney. Regardless of what crappy mall they make it into, it's always going to be Coney. So if you want to see a really cool slice of weird America, look at a little fugitive, the movie from, you know, 1949, I think it's everything you'd want Coney to be, it's still there. And Coney's still there. Come down Saturday, we'll show you. We should do a weird America film festival here. Absolutely. One thing at a time. Let's finish this first. So David, when I when I asked you to do this, he said, you jumped on it. You loved Steve's work. So yeah, tell me about what it is like that kindred thing with him. I saw Steve's work. It was so early, really awesome. Maybe you had, it was a group show at Deich. It was called like the Street Market. Street Market. Yeah, the Street Market. And I loved it. It was signs and things that looked like products. They were made up products or with the things. Yeah. And you got to understand that, you know, not to step all over David's line here, but like I grew up looking at David Byrne and seeing David was on the cover of Time Magazine. He designed the cover of Time Magazine. And it was like the magazine that came to our house. So it was like, wow, okay, this is what artists do. This is great. So yeah, so I love the show. At some point I was I was doing a CD and thought, I wish I I wish a CD could look like some of the stuff I saw on that show. So we all got in got in touch one way or another. And that didn't really happen. But that but it put us on contact. And I managed to kind of kind of stay in contact and see the things that Steve was doing since then, things that stuff in Philadelphia, stuff in Coney Island, the books, art shows, etc, etc. I gave David I gave David a raincoat. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I got a raincoat out of it. You got a raincoat. Yeah, a real raincoat. A real raincoat. A real raincoat. Yeah. See, pay back, pay forward. Yes. Thank you for a naive melody. I'm an empty CD. Jewel box. So when you guys when yeah, when you asked about, let's talk I started, I thought, oh, we're going to pull some slides. And I thought, yes, okay, we can pull some slides. And I realized that without Steve and I talking, we probably have a lot of similar interests that we take pictures of typo, you know, type stuff that we love or signs that we love. And we both it turns out, yes, we both have a lot of them. And other stuff that we see out and about. And that if we go, that's pretty great. I don't know who did that. But that's pretty great right there. Yeah, should I just Yeah, let's jump in. This is from this is not taken in where would normally occur. This is a museum show at the Folk Art Museum of odd fellows and Masonic stuff. And that was one of their signs that they would proudly proclaim. And it's it's not a command. Although it's kind of read that way. It immediately gets you thinking about as opposed to as opposed to yes, what else would I be doing with that? Burn that you forget bulldoze. It's it's a service that they offer because when these organizations came to prominence, people would have lots of deaths in their families, children would die and family members would die. And often, not always, but often, the family didn't have the funds to pay for a few funeral. And the in these local community groups, the odd fellows and the masons and the various other ones, one of the services that they would provide would be they would go to a family that couldn't afford a funeral and they would bury the dead. As opposed to the other things that might be done with them. I'll just zip through some more here. There's another one. Welcome. Welcome to greet you. The grammar is a little funny, but that kind of is nice. This is from this is upstate shop, right? Yeah, it's upstate. It's in the Catskills. It was a whole month. Yes, it's a whole month. It was a it was a long month. I talked to the guy that made this. And I thought I was just he was you know, he was just working there, you know, stacking the stuff on the racks and whatever. And I said, that's amazing. It's really beautiful. Who came up with this? Did you come up this year? I said, Yeah, yeah, it was easy. We did it, you know, we took us a few hours though. Get it off. But that was one of the seminal moments in civilization though to figure out the art. Yes. Yeah. At first, it first happened upstate at a shop, right? This is a Brazilian artist, Elio Otecia. Yeah, so he did banners and things that people were where he's part of the Trabacalha movement. Yeah, be be marginal be a hero. That's cool. And this is awesome. This is one I found online. I just love it. I really want it now. It's a really it's such a good sales pitch. See, now if this married the Catskill supermarket thing, you'd have the to put that guy with this guy, and they're gonna come up with something. I love the JG Ballard. I mean, you saw it right? It's like really great. What else is on the shelf? Yes. Like I don't want to crash anymore. Crash is right next to this. Yeah. It's really cool. Yeah, that's a good shelf. There's a book I found. I was so true. Not in Brooklyn. I'm not sort of figure out what to wear just tonight. Yes, it is a problem. I was fascinated with books that had no author. Well, there's so many of the books that large portions of the world live by don't have the author's name on the cover. And this is one of them. What is that little triangle that probably tells you what organization? It's the Girl Scouts might be the Boy Scouts. Maybe both. I didn't stay here, but but I would have. You can't beat that price. Yes, the prices are good. And you can only think that the rooms are like clown cars. Endless numbers of people coming out of the rooms. This one's kind of sad, but it's also kind of surreal. This is a dementia test. How this works. How it works. I'm not sure. I thought you was that dementia or did you just smell the test? Did I pass? Wow. No, it's oh man. This is from the local elementary school where I go to vote. In the room where you vote, this is what's on the wall. There's a lot going on. There's another odd fellows and thing which is odd fellows or Masonic one, which I thought, oh God, I'm surprised Steve hasn't done this phrase. I'm doing it tomorrow. This is from the elementary school, too. This is the wall of prior knowledge. There's no room. There's no room to add anything. So stop learning. Yeah, prior knowledge in front and in back. Yes. I think it's on Eighth Avenue. There used to be a shoe repair store around the corner from Maine. This is from New Orleans. It's from the St. Rock Church or Cemetery. This is kind of a beautiful thing where people give thanks for healing or having survived things and they give a brick that goes on the floor. My favorite thing from that cemetery is a guy who was a hypochondriac. He's buried there and his two sons says, I told you I was sick. This is a Mennonite. That's perfect. I could use a little touch up. This one is from New Orleans. Same sentiment. You probably can't read it. It says there Jesus loves you. God love you. I love you. Door number one. Door number three. I mean, it's incredibly beautiful when you when you get to the third one. Yeah. This one is from a it's it is from Utah. It's from a public bathroom in Utah. It's a signal. It's a signal broadcast from the periphery. And someone may have misspelled ass, I think. I'm going to say he went back and you know, he I'm going to assume it was a man wrote it and then went back and said no, I said, yes, I really can't take that away from me. This is also in New Orleans. Yes, this house is. Yeah, there's some. And this is also in New Orleans. This is heavily heavily car wash. This is that's on the west side of the park that runs up the Hudson Caves. If you're jogging, watch out for this. It's good kerning. If you can read it, it's a good sign. Doing its job. This is Oakland, Oakland, California right after that. And these these were all over Oakland. That is well, that's right by Penn Station. That's that big giant painted billboard by Penn Station. And I was biking by one day and all they had finished that day was the thumb. Three guys working on the thumb. And it could have been the middle finger. Yes, it could have been better. Well, they did the nail too big, they had to trim it back. So that's that took an hour. Yeah, it was a beautiful moment. I think, you know, later in that day, when I went by again, they finished a lot more. And I thought, okay, that moment, that moment when it was just the thumb is gone. This is there's a thumb. Yes. This is in Montreal. Yes. Those are modern people. This is Wow. Should I ask people they can guess what that with this? I'm besides guessing that it's a dog. I mean, can guess is Pompeii. Okay, there we go. You got it. It was horrifying, like on a small screen. And now it's just yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I love this stuff. These little installations that get put up or well, there's something that kind of beautiful. It's really beautiful. This was yes. Some people find it incredibly sad, which it is some bit in a way, but it's also kind of a beautiful thing that a tree kind of deconstructed in that way, and left on somebody's lawn, but arranged. And as it would be a tree. This was that's bronze, right? This is the Upper East Side, I think. I think it's by the what was it called the the Met Museum at the up there. There's a Henry Mure Moore. We're off the signs now. It's a Henry Mure Moore covered up for the cold weather. You can buy that on Amazon. Henry Moore cozy. This is a guy. Oh, God, I don't remember his name. I don't either. But he's around. Yeah, there's a there's a kind of green spot where you get off the Manhattan Bridge. And then if I if it's me, I'm biking down towards the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And there's a kind of green spot in this right by the projects. And this guy goes out and does these kind of installations. And at first time I saw them, I thought I thought it was one of those memorials for somebody who had been injured or killed in a traffic accident. That actually controls the truck. Yes. But he does this. I have a friend who talked to him wanted to kind of videotape him and get hear more about his story. But he said this guy seemed to be troubled in some kind of way. And so he didn't pursue that. But the stuff he does is beautiful. The stuff he does is beautiful. Of course, the city comes and cleans it up. I almost want to like get in touch with the city and go now leave it, leave it. It's really but he just comes in. It's a there's a New York Times article on this guy. Yeah. And he Yeah, he lost his son. And he he's been making these sculptures. It is a kind of a memorial. Yeah. No, really, yeah, they're really beautiful. He just keeps doing it. I think and given him and you're gonna give him a show next year. No pressure. This is on Fifth Avenue, like the in the 30s. This guy, it's obviously holiday times. And he's kind of making a throne for himself. Which is, yeah, he worked on for a few hours. There's another kind of throne. This is a an artist from Milwaukee, who would take pictures of his wife, but he also made thrones out of chicken bones. And this is getting to the end of my stuff, I think this is a scientific demonstration thing like you would show in schools that shows how their eye works. I love that it's completely kind of weirdly rough, mechanical. This is an ugly face on the sidewalk and angry, angry, angry sidewalk. And this is Yes. To Yes. Yes. More little installations. This was a beautiful thing. There's a place near the Brooklyn neighborhoods. This is where they make shopping carts. And it's just a beautiful thing. And Oh, my God. Yes. That's kind of a weird trampoloy thing there. So Oh, this is New Orleans to Little Romeo Rapsnacks. Yes. BBQ honey. This is these are really my these are my favorite signs or you just you just paint the inventory of the store. Paint everything. And you can see like the Miller can it's obviously from a, you know, a certain point in time. And Little Romeo is not that little anymore. So there's some deflated Santas. Oh, holidays are over here. Oh, okay. Okay, this was I went to the Creation Museum and I was doing I was doing a concert in whatever and across the river in Kentucky was the Creation Museum. And I said, Okay, who's coming with me? We got to see this Jesus. Yes. And this is so this is Adam. It was everything was nice. What's he doing to that sheep? Yeah, what kind of group scene is he trying to get going on? Let me go back. He's yes. Hey, me and you are here. We're wondering if you guys are interested in this definitely before the fall. This is definitely before the fall but it's coming because here comes Eve and you want to what? So I didn't do dinosaurs did go on the Ark. Two by two. Oh, Steve, you probably know this guy mingering Mike. Yeah, mingering Mike. He's got in DC that he created a whole kind of history of his recording career and kind of hand painted all the record covers, including, you know, what the various hits on and who we collaborated with, etc, etc. and then somebody discovered it when they're great great diving and just they go wait a minute. There's no records in here. But all the covers are hand painted and then they you know, eventually track the guy down. Yeah, there's there's nothing wrong with Bobby. There's nothing wrong with you baby part one and two. Yes, I think very James Brown. Oh, this is just this the graphic company that the graphic group and how to use it in pixel. Yeah, yeah, those guys are I love what they do. Pen and pixel was really there was there was super genius are still there. I think they're in a strip mall. Really? That's what they work out of a strip mall. They were in a strip mall for a large part of the 90s. And there was a story that, you know, they were doing like all the local rap acts. And, you know, they ran into trouble because like one rap act would come in and say, okay, we want like a Jeep blowing up on the front cover like exploding. And then the other rival rap group was like, that's my Jeep. Like, why did you you designed the record with my Jeep exploding? So they got themselves into, you know, rap rivalries. But they're really genius. And I think they've influenced everything like visually ever since. And Snoop hasn't aged a bit. Snoop, Snoop looks and the Rottweilers, they're looking a little long in a tooth. And mingering Mike, well, there's this back to mingering Mike. So there's an Ohio band called guided by voices in a weird parallel where the lead singer was designing record covers in high school. For his friends? No, for himself. He was just making up all these bands. Imaginary record covers, yes. Imaginary record covers, imaginary bands, imaginary names. And he actually grew up and fulfilled like many of the song titles, like he kept the song titles and he made songs, guided by voices. They've done great work. So he caught up. He caught up with him. He caught up with his teenage self. It took him 30 years. Did you do that at all? Did you, when you were kids? I remember him with talking heads, yes. I remember we're trying to figure out what the band name would be. And I would make a little art project where I would make some kind of graphic drum head for the bass drum and in rehearsal, we were rehearsing in a loft on Christie Street and we'd go, okay, this week we're going to have this, this is going to be the drum head and it's going to say the dots. And we try that out and kind of live with it. Look at it and go, does that feel right? And he did not. He did not. Oh, that's Christmas again. Okay. Where was that from? Oh, well, we're, we're, yeah, your slides now. I'm going to pass. Where's this from? That is, oh, it's, I think it's Austin, Texas. That's Austin, Texas holidays in Austin. Shopping cards and Christmas are big themes in here. Um, yes, what is that? He won't be analyzed. He's not going to help me out here. Help me out here, doctor. What am I pointing at here? I'm new here. The big one, the big green. Okay, so this is American photographer Weegee. This is probably my fire escape. I can only imagine. And this is just a gentleman just, you know, pre air conditioning. Um, Weegee's an American institution and apparently, I can only imagine the flash that it took to like make this picture happen. And this poor guy is just, he probably woke up. Yeah, there's six kids inside the apartment. He's, you know, big enough so he gets the fire escape. I don't know. When I first moved to New York, I slept on my fire escape. I thought it was the most awesome thing to be able to do. I think so. This guy doesn't look like he's having a great time, but I think cause Weegee's dropping cigar ash on him. Ow. Uh, this is upstate New York. Um, this is in white planes. Sushi taco really cover all all arguments are settled with sushi taco. Um, this is from, I had to look this up. This is actually North Carolina. Um, my grandfather worked for Buick. He got a new Buick every, every year. Um, because he built Buick's down in New Castle, Delaware. And he loved to drive all across the country. And my mom used to laugh and say like, all of his pictures are from like the window of the car. Like he never got out anywhere. He's just like shocked. And I asked my grandfather about it and he said, no, I just like to drive. You know, I'd like to get in the car and go as far as I could in a day. And like, that was it. Like, I didn't want to stop, but he has an amazing, there's a couple of these. He has an amazing collection of postcards. And, you know, from a technical standpoint, this is lithography. This is like, you can't even get printing like this anymore. It's like really state of the art. The racism is brand new. I mean, but it's, it's a really hopefully a disappearing artifact. Speaking of disappearing artifacts, this is on Fulton Mall. This is one of my favorite hand-painted signs in New York. It's weaponized coffee. The hottest coffee around, you can barely see it, but it says the hottest coffee around. From a time when New York was dangerous enough that you wanted to make sure you had the hottest coffee. Just in case. It was for Dunkin' Donuts, which they now make pretty good coffee. Congratulations. And not as hot as it used to be. Not hot enough. This is a laundromat in a Weston Supermar. I went, I look, David, do you wash your clothes on the road? Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. So not always. Like traveling people, we like to wash our clothes on the road. So imagine, imagine my surprise when I open up the, at the local laundromat, West, Weston Supermar is like an hour past Bristol in the west of England. So I, you know, what I love about this picture is besides the garbage in the laundromat washing machine, is there's a surveillance camera. You can, can't see it, but there's a gray object there. That's a surveillance camera. So it was obviously a nihilistic person just ripped off the camera and just like threw it in the washroom. It's not weird America, but it's close. This is at PS3 at Hudson and Christopher Street. That is beautiful. It's in my pocket right now. I only saw this ad once and, you know, I happen to know the Maisel's family and they were as mystified as anybody. But this is a really amazing Manhattan Mini Storage has really great ads. This is a great example of their ads. Manhattan Mini Storage, I will pay that overdue rent. Please, just a few more days. Thank you. That was a thing. Remember that? A couple years back. Is that because the Downey's ad-ed? They were, Downey, there was like a black market for a detergent for a little while. And I think, like, like Sudapent? Yeah, no, no, no. They were stealing tide and they were selling, because they were selling it back to Bodegas. They would take it from the chains like Dwayne Reed. Sorry, Dwayne Reed. And then they would sell it at Corner Bodegas to finance drugs, the purchase and the consumption of drugs. And, you know, then they put these ridiculous alarms. The alarms have to cost like seven, ten, twenty dollars. So they double the value of the tide. And it makes it more desirable to me. Like, I accept the challenge. I don't even like tide. Judas Tadeo is one of the stranger saints in the Christian religion. I left people's, when I steal stuff from people's internet or, you know, social media accounts, I wanted to leave it there. Hi, Brett. Brett Webb. Judas Tadeo is a saint. I think he's a technically an authorized saint, but he's the patron saint of drug dealers. Any criminal enterprise, this is the saint you pray to. You pray to Saint Judas Tadeo. There is he, there is a statue of Judas Tadeo. Allegedly, he was one of the apostles, allegedly, the 13th or 14th apostle. And he, there is a, there is one Sunday, Saturday of the month in Mexico City, they have a service for him. And like anybody who's involved in a criminal enterprise, like, makes their way to this church to make sure their entreaties are heard. Ooh. Oh, Altoona. Train tracks. Yes. Known for his train tracks. And that's the spiral jetty inside. Yeah, that's a forerunner of the Robert Smithson piece. Wow. Altoona is cool. Visit Altoona, Pennsylvania. Have you ever been to Altoona? Never have. Yeah, me neither. One of the most American, nihilistic, even as a little kid, I knew there was something really dramatically wrong. And that's lead paint. Yeah, that's oil based lead paint. Thanks. You missed a spot? You know, I had that as a tattoo. It's a, it's on my back. This was on West 12th Street. I love this. This is a little chamber of commerce sticker. You should, if you can, you should live in trade in Greenwich Village. I love the cog and the wheel of industry and artistry. Like, you know, I want a pallet with a cog on it, just teeth, the cog teeth on the pallet, just so we can work together. Yeah, which one's going to win that, you know, they work together to grind scissors, paper, rock. No, they're going to grind up the the, what is that arch in Washington Square Park. They're going to grind up the Washington arch chop, chop. And you know, there's very little industry in the West Village right now, unless you count shoes, the wearing of shoes, not the making of shoes. And there are a few artists, very successful ones or aspiring ones. Is that a coaster? What is that? That is a, that is a sticker on a window. It's like, you know, the Chamber of Commerce sticker. And I patiently watched, you know, I was waiting for the moment where I could like get it off the building. They renovated the building. They turned it into some $20 million house. It was a $10 million house before they started. Did you steal this the same day as the doorknob? No, no, I just have a photograph, unfortunately. Yeah, the doorknob is mine. I got that fair and square. But that was efficiently taken. I got a photo. We'll make it again. We have all the information. We can remake this. The doorknob is going to be hard. This was a protest at Penn Station a few years ago. I think we were all horrified when this happened. That polar bear made bail eventually. But what about the girl with the green hair? Yeah, she's, she may still be locked up. This is from Simon Seaman. I see you. This is from his social media account. And yeah, I mean, war is serious, people. So don't clown on the job. World War II, obviously. The most serious war of all. Okay, this is a, this is Liverpool. And there's two parts to this. First of all, it's the American side of the equation, which is, you've seen that. No, that's not it. Well, that's a, we'll get back. We'll kill, then you just have to trust me. So this was in a school at, in Liverpool. We were there for a Liverpool biennial. And this was in this abandoned school where obviously the kids were allowed to just do what they, write what they wanted. And what's interesting that you can't really see is it's very anti-mancunian, anti-Manchester graffiti. The bank. The bank. This is in Liverpool. Manchester's an hour away. And if you got nobody to argue with, it's, you know, you argue with your next-door neighbor. So there's jokes at the bottom that say things like, what do you call a scouser in a suit? The accused. Now scousers are what Liverpoolians call themselves. So they're, I guess, calling themselves, you know, they were, they were criticizing themselves for some reason. But there's, but at the top left-hand corner says, all Manx must be shot on sight, please. So vicious. So my first proposal was to paint all of this really big on the front of the school. You do these love letters to cities. Yeah, this is right in lockstep. But I think, I think Sid, who is kind of a Pai Ars, you know, guy said, no, no. You can't do that. I just turned this off. Great. Pai Ars. This is one of the most American headlines. This is one of the most American headlines I've ever read. A teen riding a hoverboard lost his balance and accidentally shot and killed his cousin. It's not funny. But it's hilarious. The minivan is funny. So this is, I thought this is, I thought this is David Bowie. Rest in peace. I, I thought, wow, David is still coming up with these great looks. Is, is that the village chamber of commerce? Sticker? Maybe, yeah. He's from a village. He has a very special place in his village. Um, this is a real advertisement. Ironically, I'm, I see on the playlist the David Byrne produced B-52's Mesopotamia is up next. Um, but this is an apartment downtown where they equate acquiring real estate as like a collectible, like it's sneakers or something. So how weird is that? It's not even Ralph Loren. It's Ralph Walker. It reminds me of seeing something in a, in a shelter rag, like this, you know, the design magazines and it had this very Trumpian kind of gold looking interior. And I don't remember the designer whose services were being advertised, but the ad says it begins with a sit-down meeting and it ends with a standing ovation. Dark. Uh, yeah, this is a really good deal. Um, we painted this in Baltimore. Um, and, you know, you can't argue with that. Shop around. That is a little bit of cognitive dissonance. The green. Yeah. White t-shirts. But it's fluorescent green. So you can really. Six times extra large. Yeah, six X. A big suit, if you will. A big suit requires a big shirt. I got a suit to go with that. Yeah. You saw where that was going. Sorry. Uh, the St. Ide's calling card. And it didn't, we didn't have the card, but we had the package and, you know, really amazing. A slice of, uh, you know, late nineties marketing. And apparently when you called, they had it built into the card that you heard. St. Ide's made a bunch of genius rap commercials with rappers, like extolling the virtues of this fine beverage. And, you know, if you had the card, you got to hear the commercials. So, and that says to be framed. Like, uh, this is headed to the framer, obviously. Oh, at home drug test for cocaine. But the best is a point system. It's like fine two for 25. I got this one points was savings. I got more money for cocaine now. At first I thought, Oh, you can test your cocaine. This is really smart. Know what you're getting. And for 22 bucks, I'll just take my chances, you know, I mean, come on. Oh, when, when, and, and past the neck called me and we were, we were trying to talk about something for the museum and I said, hold on a second. There's a really great sign here that says quick a Vic. Look at that landlord. He's really, yes, landlord's getting all that. We, we, this is to get rid of your tennis. Yeah, you got problems. This is for the landlord. This is for the landlord to get rid of those pesky tenants. Man, this could be you. Should we dial that number right now? That's all dial that number right now. That's on Atlantic Avenue. In case you're wondering, um, you know, social media, sorry, but that's Alan Iverson court side at the 76ers arena, getting his hair braided by his mom. That is loyalty and royalty. It's a beautiful thing. Alan Iverson, treat yourself, go home and watch his legendary, uh, he gave press conference where he talks about practice. And I think he says the word practice 32 times in three minutes. They want me to practice. It's really outrageous. Practice like I don't practice enough on the court. They want me to practice. Did your mom cut your hair? My mom braids my hair. That's why it's not braided. Um, this is seaside heights and that roller coaster was a real bummer that day. Thank you. Stephen Wilkes and Nat Geo. Um, they almost got the roller coaster back running again. Almost. Michelle, Michelle go there is a fashion. He's a DJ for, you know, and he's a, he's a bomb vivant on in fashion and he has one of the best Instagram feeds. And, uh, yeah, this is Stevie's forecast tonight. Thunder only happens when it's raining tomorrow. Players only love you when they're playing. I won't get that out of my head. That's great, right? So yeah, memes rule the world. It's on the post. Geez, you know, every time I think the post has found the floor, they like hack, they find like a sub basement. Uh, really unbelievable. Uh, me in the studio, we should really take a minute to appreciate what a great artistic genius this man was and he wasn't much of a watercolor artist, but they tell me that's beside the point. I want to definitely mention one thing that I just saw. So Prince has been passed away now for for a little while and the internet has been flooded with all the stuff that they said was in his vaults. Um, YouTube is now overrun with like really awesome, um, Prince demos and, and stuff that he wasn't going to release in his lifetime. And there's a really great Bob Dylan song. It's not even a song. It's a spoken word piece called Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie that he only, he only did it once and it's worth a look and a listen. And I think Prince in his really competitive Minnesota way did his version of it. In 2009 he did a song that I just heard called One Song and he fully compelling six minute spoken word Prince where it's right on the edge of insanity, but it makes total beautiful, perfect sense. So it's as weird as America gets, as weird as he gets, and it's really worth a listen, and it's great that I think for another 80 years, we're going to be listening to brand new Prince material. So buckle up. I believe not to rat anybody out, but this might be, I'm not a snitch. But somebody told, somebody told them themselves. That looks like it's added on. I'm not sure. Or did you discard this? That's a likely, that's a likely story. It looks added on. You could be living in a David Byrne original collectible. This is Miss Beloved. Thank you Curvizoid. This is at Houston. And this is now the Adidas store. And I'm really only talking about that wood panel station wagon. The very strange brushless car wash, the heart car on the dock, like everything, this is where I got it all from, if you're wondering. There's a car wash right down to the white sneakers that went through the water. There is a car wash uptown in Harlem that is pet wash and car wash. You can wash your pet. It's the same place with the top down or sign. It's, you know, it's the way the West Village was. Whales were jaunty, hadded whales. It's very strange to live in a New York that doesn't have gas stations, doesn't have car washes. Hey, so you've done a number of billboards. Have you ever done one, like with the thumb, where you didn't have it all schematically done in advance and you look at it, oh, no. You step back and you have to redo. What's funny about looking at that, the picture that David showed of the thumb is the way they paint those things, I'm giving way trade secrets here, is it's all patterned out like the way they made murals since the Renaissance. So you can see a little bit of the charcoal that's on the wall. So they're only painting the thumb because it's the hard, they want to do the hardest, most technical thing first. Then as they're painting the beer cans, they can start drinking and you know, loosen up a little bit. But there are no mistakes. No, you can't see them. What's great is like there's probably a ton of mistakes, but you really can't see it. They call it a far read. Like, you know, some guys are only good at far reads. That's like, you're reading it from far away. It's a far read. So it's a real trick to be able to paint good up close and be able to paint good far away. I can do it. I really can't do it. So the ATM doesn't really work anymore, but we want to keep it functional somehow. So that works really good. And that's really, if you need anything else, then, you know, they can't help you, but they got cocaine is missing. They need a cocaine test for sure. Oh, let me show you. Well, I'll show you this. This is at the Cosmopolitan. As you're walking from the back to the front, they remind you to hey, take a look because you're wrong. Because glamour is a world problem. Yeah, glamour is a world problem, especially at the Cosmopolitan. No, the Cosmopolitan is great. Thank you, Cosmopolitan. This is a really famous old sign. My friend Tim saw this sign somewhere when he was a misspent youth and he gave it to me in 17 pieces because it was so glued to the substrate that it was on. But it really is, you know, it's true in life. You know, credit makes enemies. So let's be friends, right? And that E is so weird. What is that? That G E, like, nenemies? Like, what is that? But it works. It works really good. Val, Val Shivey, Val Shivey runs a really probably the best record store in America. It's in 69th Street. It's in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. This is on his website. And, you know, Val Shivey has a stop sign on his door. He has a close sign on his door. He has rules on his door that say you have five minutes. Don't ask any stupid questions. If you don't know what you want, leave. And you're only welcome if you have money. So he's our hero. Um, credit makes enemies. Credit makes enemies. Yeah. Oh, sure, you didn't cry the dead dog, but the mystery machine up in flames. Here, I'll cheer you up. Louisa is a DJ. She travels the world and she brings home the bacon and the bears stuffed in calves. So cool. So cool. Oh, and Anthony Bourdain, Tony. Tony found this again in New Orleans, I think. Um, on the right hand side, it says, not like this with a do rag under your hat and not like that with the pants, past your butt. DJ Dr. Tissue, man. I'm interested. Um, SkyMall. SkyMall. You know, it died. Anybody, anybody down with SkyMall? It is no more. SkyMall's best. Yeah. So this is a relic of a $95,000 relic of old America. The handcrafted hippopotamon sofa. This is a sofa handcrafted to create a life-sized majestic hippopotamus. The sofa requires over 400 hours to make do in the intricate design of the artist's painstaking attention to detail, including the barrel-shaped body formed by a steel frame, massive snout, and short legs. The sofa seat and backrests are formed. You practiced that, didn't you see? No, I'm catching up to it. But you'd have to be on the runway really. There must be studies to show how long you're on the runway before you start spending this kind of money. Yes. Unlike the aggressive, unpredictable nature of the hippopotamus. And the last, unlike the aggressive, sorry, this sofa provides a reliable place to read or entertain guests while paying tribute to the ancient, animal, ancient cultures revered for its intrepid tenacity, bravery, and expense account. Special conditions guaranteed limitations apply. Please call for details. They killed every, that's where the hippos are. Awful. Intrepid? Intrepid. Oh yeah, you know, hippos, the first thing I think of is, yeah, they're intrepid. That is one intrepid animal, man. Let's make a couch out of it. Yeah, that might even be a lovesick. My thing with couches, if you can't sleep on it, it's not a couch, right? $95,000 and I can't sleep on it? Come on. Okay, so this is, we saw the very English version of this, the very well-mannered English children version of this. This is full-grown adults in Philadelphia and it's awful. Our education system, our graffiti stinks, the jokes are terrible, and, you know, I'm just disgusted. David, if you're going to show this, I think you can tell the New Jersey joke. This was going to be the first slide and it's, you know, it could be the last slide for all I care, but it's a great one. The weirdest thing about this slide is, this really happened. Michelle Gobert says so, so it must have happened, but these guys are all still alive. As of right this moment, don't let me jinx it. Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Fats Domino, that font is dead, but they're still alive. But wait, wait, wait, who got cut off? Somebody's on top. It's hopefully like, oh, I don't know, a monkey? Just like, on a real small piano? Who'd be a small, good small, Elton John maybe? Good small? Sorry, I'm sorry. He's actually a quite lovely man. Sorry, Elton. I didn't know I was going to need a neck brace after tonight. This is not really Yeah, Little Richard. And, um, yeah, it's just really, really cool and really amazing. That even happened. I can't even imagine the negotiations backstage. This is a great sign from Plato's retreat. There was like, you know, a woman half dressed in front of it. And I said, wow, that sign is really crazy. Let me just crop that sign out. Um, you know, the rules are pretty straightforward. And number five, it says, when the female leaves the mats, her mate will be asked to leave. And they crossed out, it said two minutes later. And somebody must have really violated that somehow. And they're like, all right, Johnny ruined it for everybody. So I have some friends who surreptitiously took pictures in some of these places. And the story they told, one of them had a salad bar and had a sign on the salad bar that said, please cover your genitals when you have the salad bar. Where is that sign, David? I'm going to make that sign for you. But what if I want my salad tossed? So where did I really meet David Byrne? That's where I go. Yeah. Sorry. Uh, crying Jordan. This is like, this is the currency of the realm right now is, uh, you know, pictures of Michael Jordan from his hall of fame induction speech. Emotions got the better of him and he cried. It was a really touching moment. That's just it gets trashed like every 12 hours. There's a reason for some emotion. This is a perfect example where, you know, Adele singing her lovely song and here's Jordan just crying his eyes out. So weird. Signed DB. We're on to you. I'm going to leave it, I'm going to leave it there. I think that's, that's, oh, I wanted to show you this. Hold on. Bear with me for a second. Let me skip ahead a couple. Oh, this is, this is crazy. So oh wait, that's, do you have those in a 12? This is, this is awful. This is a real sign. Um, we were all horrified to find out that there's a town in, in White's borough. They voted, I think barely to keep, they might have voted this out. Hopefully. That's not real. That's real. That's totally real. And I think they were having a debate about whether they were going to keep this crazy damaged sign. And the debate involves strangling people too? I mean, you know, it's like the, it's like the Jebediah Springfield, but it's real life like this horrible and I was on the train and I saw this and I'm going to just bear with me as I scroll back to this. Got a lot of sequence here. Remember these? These are great. This is my version of it. So it's, that's DJ King Britt in Philadelphia, choking out an Eagles fan and smelling his beer. And you know, I picture him in like an elegant three quarter leather jacket and some nice, you know, nice, nice Gucci shoes, just choking this fan. Nice eyebrows. Just, you know, the interest of being, all things being fair. And then this would be real last one, an honor of the birthday boy. This is a real billboard from American genius, American genius Eric Brunetti brought this to my attention. This says more or less in Russia, you know, don't be like Obama, don't smoke. Paid for by Donald Trump. Yeah. I mean, basically his boy, right? So again, it's not America, but hey, America's the world. So, well, why, why ended on that note? Let's say I'm something positive. Do we have any more bears and taxis? Oh yeah, we have this, a brutalist Easter Bunny. But that's in England. So, or that's, I'm sorry, that's in Finland. Sorry. But this is as weird and as wonderful as America gets courtesy of a sergeant's daughters, another great Instagram feed. These are that's obviously Jim Henson and Frank Oz and the two guys up top are, forget who they are. Burton, Burton Ernie, Burton Ernie. Thank you. And, you know, you were never meant to see this, but this is how the magic's made. And it's a beautiful, wonderful thing. And you should remind us that, you know, there's magic in the everyday. And thanks to the people that make magic every day. You know, all of this feels, I feel like we're in doing a drive-by in your grandfather's Buick. Yeah, we are. It was speed and it was, you know, just the blur. I think we should open up questions so people can ask. Tom, could you repeat the question because we're live streaming? Sure. I can repeat the question. Okay. I can't get my voice to go back deeply. The question was if David had also seen a sign that it influenced his work. Absolutely. I can't, now I can't, of course, can't think of an example, but there's probably some that we've seen tonight that are going to stick in my head. At some point, it's going to come back out. And I love it when the syntax or the grammar is just slightly not what you would normally see. It's, it's, there's a little, somebody put a little imagination into the way the words are put together and you go, that takes me into another place. I could use that. Yeah. One of the, the, you showed that I won't forget is the three Jesus love you, God love you, and it's love, not loves, but that's why it's so memorable. Yes. And because it ends with I'm in this house. It's not, yes, not just deities. It's me, a human being. I love you too. Oh, that was a sobering thought, I guess. Along the lines of what you guys are presenting up there have either of you had the opportunity to experience the wonderful new world of digital billboards and some of the things that flash by and are gone just as soon as they come about and have there been any that have piqued your interest and that you'd like to share or anyway. They've gone by too fast. It's true. I mean, these, yeah, there's new, I guess to maximize the dollar amount, you can get out of billboards. They're now having digital billboards. Um, you know, on 95, if I'm on 95, I'll see billboards that just, you catch like half the message and you're hoping it comes back. You know, um, there's some really good like fire and brimstone ones, which really, it's really messed up because if you only get half of it, you might only get the fire. Don't even get the brimstone. Are these cheaper than to buy? So you, because you're only going for a fraction a second, so you get kind of people coming out of the woodwork and small churches or whatever kind of thing. Okay. It's my estimation that it's like, it's always, it's just cheaper for the advertising company. They charge you the same amount, but they'll sell you on like, oh, but it's much brighter and you can read it at night. And yeah, but it's only for three seconds. Yeah. And they're just, they're just maximizing, you know, it's all about the, they're just maximizing their return. But it's a good question of what, you know, you talked about that, uh, periphery and the center. And so it, the jitteriness of that, the speed of it, which is different from a sign that lasts a long time. Um, it's partly a question of what the purpose is and the attention span of, of people. I mean, maybe you're going to pass that sign. So you'll catch fire one time, brimstone, another. I think it's speeding up. Hopefully, hopefully. I think it's just speeding up the whole context that, you know, like David said earlier, like we're, everything we saw tonight is removed from its context. And the internet is now provided a space where everything's out of context. Everything's available to you and everything's flat. And I think the digital billboards, the banner ads, the ephemeral, the more ephemeral nature is just speeding up the ripping out of context. Like it's going from what you would have been years, you know, for like, um, you know, the, uh, uh, what were the ads with the, uh, God, I'm spacing on it. Um, Burma Shave. Like the Burma Shave campaign was like a 20-year campaign. It was like generations of people grew up with Burma Shave. And now nobody knows the Burma Shave is, but, um, I think that's being sped up. Like there's no, we need a unified national campaign and we need to keep it that way for, maybe selling peace for a while. I have a question for you about this, uh, this, uh, permanence or, um, or, or, or, thank you. So when you, when you design signs for a business, it's kind of an intimate thing. Does it ever, people feel like, damn, that was, we got it wrong. It was the- With me? Never. Never. Oh, yeah. No, it just reminds me of that. There's that scene in, uh, of Roger and me, you know, that, um, the film, and this woman is, who lost her job at General Motors is, she gets her colors done and she's blue. And so now she can go out and interview and get a new job. And late in the film, uh, he cuts back to her and she's crying. She hasn't gotten a job. And she said, well, it's because I found out I was an autumn, not a spring, you know, so. Right. So, but, I mean, the, the, the sign business for us is, you know, we, we only take on clients that we know we can, like people come in all the time with, you know, a logo and a marketing plan, but we're really interested in helping out, like, we can't help them. We can help out the laundromat. You know, we need, we, you know, we may be cherry picking our clients, but we tend to pick the lowest, least demanding, no, no idea of what they want. And then we can really work with those, those people, you know. So if you're that type of client, come on in, come see us. You know, and signs are for us, they're just like, it's a vehicle for, you know, it's a way of like making those strange signs and talking about things that you can't buy and sell, like emotions, feelings, everything that we're painting up, I'm painting upstairs and Tim is painting upstairs and the rest of us are painting. They're, they're, they're all signs that don't sell anything. They're, they're meant to communicate, you know, it's like a, it's instead of like the music that David makes, it's more of a painting, painting the lyrics instead of singing them. So they're all misheard, they're reworked, misheard, mis, you know, we're jealous of musicians. I'm jealous of musicians. If I could sing in tune, I'd give the whole thing up in a second. I don't know if I'd believe that. I would. So Tom, I have a last question. And glasses. Yeah, yeah, got my glasses on. Those, I can't see you. So the theme tonight was Weird America. This is a really weird moment in America. You guys care to talk about our larger political, cultural insanity that's going on in this country? David Wilson. Oh, I'm sorry. I just got serious. We need to start making sense. Sorry. Really sorry. It's not, you know, it's not just here. I mean, Brexit. Yeah, Brexit. All that in other places where similar kinds of things are happening. I, it's kind of a larger, although we, you know, it seems to be happening with a big clown face happening all around us right now, but it does seem to be kind of a sort of global, maybe not every country, but there seems to be this global thing that something, something that shall remain unnamed has made a lot of people feel very alienated, very angry as if over a number of decades, I'm going to put it at starting at 1979 at least, things, there was a parting of the ways. And there was like, it was like, I don't know, I think there's a feeling that Gordon Gekko got an anointed or something, and like, yes, you're the, yes, we're going with him. We're going with him. He's right. And yeah, it just seems like really that's, we're going to, we're going to follow that path. Okay. This is where it took us. I also think that, you know, with the internet, we're now, you know, tribes are able to reform again. You know, all these fringe elements that had no chance of connecting with each other now have a place that they can like, you know, get in chat rooms and be crazy with each other. And, you know, they can support each other and feel like, oh, I'm being heard. Like, you know, my bad review of Ghostbusters is being validated. So we have this like real, weird tribal mentality. People, you know, are just rallying around. They're forming these high school clicks with each other, and they're being really caddy and mean to each other. But I also feel like, you know, like high school is that really awful, awkward, mean period. I think in the next 10 years, we're going to have like exponential growth. I feel like in the next 10 years, when we get past this, we're going to have a huge leap forward and it's going to be really, you know, I know we're awkward and we're, we're really full of bad feelings and it's really crazy right now. But I really feel like on the other end of this, when we get past this awkward phase, just past puberty, we're going to, we're going to really, we're going to really grow and we're going to go someplace really great. Right? What do you think? How about you, Tom? Thank you so much, everybody, for coming. Thank you so much for our wonderful, wonderful speakers. David Burns, Tom Geely, and Stephen Powers. Stephen's exhibition is going to be open and on view until August 21st, so make sure to go upstairs to the fifth floor and check it out. Like Ann said earlier, they're in the gallery's painting, quite regularly. Him and his colleague Tim and a lot of their other friends and collaborators. So we're so grateful that you guys came out to spend time with us this evening and we hope that you'll continue to support our public programs here at the Brooklyn Museum. As you know, we have Target for Saturday this weekend, so please come out. It's fresh, it's on fire. We're celebrating the Caribbean in honor of a lot of C's work and the Caribbean communities that are in and around Brooklyn. So we hope to see you again. Please pick up a flyer on your way out. We have lots of exhibitions on view and new exhibitions up, so look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.