 Hello. Hello. Can you all hear me okay? Good. Good evening and welcome to the Brooklyn Museum and thank you for joining us tonight for our tribute to the great Virgil Abloh. I'm Anne Pasternak and I always say I'm the lucky gal that gets to be the director of the Brooklyn Museum. Thank you. Thank you. Before we dive into this evening's conversation let us come together and take a collective moment to acknowledge that we are currently located on land that is part of the unceded ancestral homeland of the Lenape Delaware Nations. At the Brooklyn Museum we recognize and honor the Lenape Delaware Nations, their elders and all future generations. We are committed toward addressing erasures of indigenous people and confronting ongoing legacies of settler colonialism in our work. Thank you. Now I am joined on stage by American Sign Language interpreters Alberto Madero and also Johnny, are you Johnny? Hi Johnny. Where's Johnny? Are you Johnny and you're Alberto? I should have asked beforehand. Welcome. There are seats reserved in the front rows on the left side of the audience for those who are viewing virtually through Zoom, one of our interpreters will be visible throughout the program and there's also an option to turn on closed captioning and please please direct messages to us if we can support with navigating captioning in any way whatsoever. Now let me say that tonight's program and Virgil's exhibit would not have been possible without the grace of the Abloh family and I want to thank Shannon Abloh. The hard work and integrity of his team, especially the very brilliant Mephuz, Francesco, Athe, everyone at Alaska Alaska, as well as the originating curatorial vision of Michael Darling who organized the original show Figures of Speech at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Did any of you see that show? A few of you? Okay. And our own curator extraordinaire Antoine Sargent. So on behalf of the entire Brooklyn Museum family, we thank all of you for your significant role in this exhibition and we also want to thank our presenting sponsor Nordstrom. And before I introduce our speakers, allow me to say a few words about dear Virgil. Virgil is a visionary who saw his practice as a conceptual art practice that would leave a mark on just about every artistic discipline imaginable, from fashion and architecture, film and design and music to poetry and painting. For Virgil, being an artist, represented freedom. And as our show demonstrates, he refused to let his practice be put in a proverbial box. His creativity was just too big to contain, just like his energy. And when you look at the scope of his work and his all too short life, it's really astonishing. I can't think of another artist who worked so brilliantly with so many creative industries. And every time he played with conventions and he flipped them on their head, he brought new light and spirit to things that were really familiar. And he imbued all that he did with an insistent celebration of black culture and black excellence. And he never quit on his standards of excellence. Nor did he ever waste a moment. He was driven to be a force of good, especially in kicking open the gates of powerful brands to reach as many people, but in particular as many BIPOC youth as he could, so that they too would know that they would have far greater opportunities to create culture, to own their own work and to shape our society, which we really need. Of the many themes in figures of speech, Virgil's passion for collaboration and community stand out. He worked with famous people and he worked with youth who were completely unknown alike. And he did so with the same passion and joy and integrity. And tonight we are really honored to bring together two of his favorite creative partners, Tawanda Chouichet and Tremaine Emery, in conversation with Antoine Sargent. So let me tell you just a little bit about each of them. Tawanda is the creative director of Alaska, Alaska. And he has worked on a broad range of Virgil's projects since the firm's inception, informing the creative and design development. His cross-disciplinary interests are emblematic of his studio's output within the disciplines of graphic design, product design, architecture, art, and of course their intersections. Tawanda has led and assisted notable projects that include collaborators such as Nike, Vitra, Mercedes-Benz, Baccarat, Off-White, Evian, Alessi, and a whole lot more. We also have the great Tremaine Emery, founder of Denim Tears, who has forged a fast-growing reputation as an agent provocateur and counter-cultural catalyst. Amplified through his creative playground called No Vacancy In, where does he come up with these ideas? His ability to widen the cultural lexicon through collaborations centered on contemporary art have become cultural touchstones of our times. And it should be no surprise that Supreme urged him to be their creative director. Like Tawanda, Tremaine has also worked with enviable list of collaborators including, of course, Virgil, Yay, the Astor Gates, Hank Willis-Thomas, go Brooklyn, Frank Ocean, Andre 3000, and many others. And then, of course, we have Antoine Sargent, independent curator, art critic, a writer who has contributed to the New York Times, The New Yorker, Weiss, and more. He has recently contributed essays and interviews to museum and gallery books for artist Ed Clark, Nicolene Thomas, Arthur Jaffa, Yenku Shadambari, and his own first book, I'm sure you've all seen it, and if you haven't, you must get it, The New Black Vanguard Photography Between Art and Fashion. It's great. So without further ado, please join me in giving a Brooklyn welcome to Tawanda, Tremaine, and Antoine. And again, thank you for being here. Good evening. Thank you guys for joining us for a conversation about Virgil and collaboration in art. I wanted to sort of just get right into it and sort of start with a question that I've been asked a lot over the last few days. And that's how did you guys come to know Virgil? If I could start. So I was able to just guess Virgil's email address at a time in which, you know, in hindsight, that was the craziest thing could have done because, yeah, email and Virgil do not necessarily go hand in hand. So Virgil replied two days later. Yeah, he just replied two days later. I remember sort of waking up in a tiny bit of shock, tried to schedule some, it was Skype, back then, not Zoom. And then before you know it, he threw me in a group chat. And then we just sort of a dialogue started. And then, yeah, at some point he said, I've got us a real project, our first real project. And then that's when he gave the IKEA brief. And the studio sort of been rolling since. So yeah, that's how I mean it. Quite a first project. Yes. I first met Virgil, I think. I met him, I was going to be hard to believe. I was modeling, walking in a fashion show for Pigalle. And he was at the show. He had on a Baby Blue Pyrex, Pyrex City. And we kind of did like the black guy had nodded to each other. And then there's an after party at this club that used to exist that was run by a guy named Sharaf called Pom Pom. And yeah, he came up to me and was like, you're from Brooklyn, right? And I was like, nah, Queens. And he bought me a drink. That's how we met. And for the both of you, when you sort of after those initial interactions or there's initial meetings, how did you become collaborators with the dialogue? Just dialogue. I think he's especially given how much of a sort of traveling nomad he is, you know, it's, it was just a constant communication. He's always had that capacity to be present and speak to multiple people. So at least in reference to my engagement with him, it was just dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, exchanging ideas, thinking through problems or finding solutions, dialogue. Yeah. What made you want, you said you reached out, you got his email. What sort of drove you to sort of make that gesture or to want to reach out to a creative like that? Exactly. At least for me, it was just observing his approach. So I'd always been aware of his work, even when he was sort of working with Ye at the time. And for me, it was just his capacity to contextualize or collaborate artists. So for example, I think even seeing some of those early, you know, watch the throne with the implication of Ricardo Tese's involvement or working with Vanessa B Croft and various, you know, just seeing Virgil actualize his eye. And then obviously as he evolves into contextualizing his own projects, I remember specifically, even before I sent that email, what triggered it was the work he had done at Art Basel, his first furniture display. And there was just things that I was seeing that sort of didn't make sense. So for example, all the other booths, the lighting source would always come from the top, just these various gestures. And his light source was coming from the side. He had a parquet floor, things that just didn't make sense. So then I could see he was trying to do something in a very specific space and was thinking through design decisions in a in a way that just completely attracted me. So then, yeah, at least for me, that was that spark. And Jermaine, how did you sort of go from sort of dialogue or meeting to collaborating? We collaborated from our first, you know, that that meeting at the Pagal show and at the party was that made us associates, you know, friendly associates, we were friends. And but we had mutual friends and good mutual friends. And there's a guy named there's a there was a restaurant bar called La Bodega Negro that I worked for my mentor at the friend and mentor Serge Becker. And I was the social director, put on parties, hire DJs, whatever stuff there. So it was a new new hotspot in London. And a guy named Cal Demers, who at the time was working for Supreme. He's currently the CEO of Supreme now. But this was about 12 years ago. And 10 years ago. And Kyle hit me up and said, hey, you know, Virgil, like, yeah, I know, we got some mutual friends. We're both in town, we're looking to have a drink. Can you get us into that that surges spot? I said, yeah, I'll call down. And then I get and then cause like, why don't you come down and have a drink? So I come down there with a side, because a side of Virgil had known each other a while through Virgil's cousin, Tony Togo. And then also the work that a side did with Nike, Kanye and Virgil and Don and those guys on the easy ones. Anyway, me and a side go down there. Meet Vee and Kyle and we're kicking it talking, talking, talking, talking. And that night, you know, Vee is such a romantic in a way, because he was like, I told the story of when I was 20 years old, and I was trying to book Kanye to do a Kanye did a party in Queens, like a show, and no one showed up. So I was like, I know everyone. I do want everyone to show up. This is before college dropout came out. So my man Ferris gave me Don C's number called Don. Don's like, yeah, who's this? I'm like, yo, it's Tremaine, blah, blah, blah. He's like, oh, we can't, we can't work out. So I told Virgil this whole story. And Virgil just said to me, well, I guess you're gonna finally get your party this week. And I didn't know what he meant. It was super kind of cryptic. And then few days later, Vee was like, let's do a party together. Me, you and a side, let's do it at bodega. So this is our first collaboration. And he's like, we'll do it after the show. I can't go to the show. I had a dinner, Mark Jacobs dinner. Aside had to work at bodega and DJ. And Vee sent another cryptic message. He said, bring an aux chord. Know why you need it, whatever. And then, yeah, we proceeded to do a party. And, you know, it was incredible. And I remember yay played demos of Jesus. And yeah, Virgil just winked at me. You know, there was a moment where he looked at me and he just like kind of winked like, I got you. You know what I mean? So that was our first collaboration. And then from then on, as you can see, there's artwork where he's digitized all the party flyers, me and a side are on some of them. So our first way of Virgil was music, DJing parties, creating parties to socialize the idea of who we were, what our culture is, what our scene, our tribe is. And we did these parties all around the world. And for a while we did them for no money. We just did it because we loved it. You know, I remember times I'd be consulting for a hotel and book Virgil a economy ticket from Chicago. He'd fly in for one day, get paid 500 bucks. You know what I mean? And that's how we first started collaborating was music parties, me, a side Virgil, Benjy B, Guillen Berg, a few other people on our little rogue squadron. So that's the first collaboration was doing parties. And the first one was 2012, 2013 at La Bodega Negra. Music was such an important sort of inspiration, but also sort of something that helped to sort of aesthetically sort of order his universe. Can you talk a little bit about the significance of music on his practice as an artist? Yeah. I mean, that's how that night, that's how we first connected, because he started talking about, do you know Benjy B? I've been listening to his radio show every week for 10 years. And that's what I knew. I said, this guy's deep. If you're, you know what I mean? Like this is pre-gram, pre anything you're going on, BBC, iPlayer, and listening weekly to Benjy B's show. I never met no one that was American that listened to the show religiously. I was the only person that listened to it sometimes that I knew, because we used to listen to it at Mark Jacobs sometimes. So again, that's how we all bonded. He's utterly obsessed with music. You know, and all the things around music, because music has all the things. It has performance art, static art. It has history. It has future in it. It has the moment in it. It has rebellion in it. It has loving it, sex, everything's in music. The whole entire human condition is in three minutes and 20 seconds. Or an 18 minute symphony is in music. And people who understand that become obsessed with it. And Virgil is one of those people. So probably one of the most important parts of his art practice was his love, understanding and quest for music. We worked together on the exhibition, increasingly so, or it became increasingly sort of visible that you guys would work on the show, right? After the past. For you, it was also very clear that we were having certain conversations, and you guys were having certain conversations. For you, what was sort of the brief, if you will, for Alaska, Alaska in relationship to helping organize figures of speech on the exhibition? Well, at least the dialogue we were having with Virgil regarding the exhibition started ages towards even 2019, even pre-pandemic. And the tone of the show was always supposed to be sort of the way it materialized. It was always supposed to be more austere, the introduction of tables and sort of the sculptural house that is within the central space. You know, all of those things had always been in the intention. And Virgil was additionally working on additional names or sub-names. Black minimalism was on the cutting room floor. Six works. The Sunroof of the Trojan Horse. Various gestures because he wanted something different for Brooklyn, knowing that the lineage of how the show has always been. So in reference to that, yeah, for us it was just more so knowing where we were within the process, taking those blueprints and running forward, trying to maintain those aspects that had been extremely consistent within the ideation process and the state in which he left the project. So for us it was doing more but doing the same work we've been doing in dialogue. Do you have a favorite collaboration that you guys worked on as Alaska Alaska? No. And I don't mean no in a bad way. Because for, you know, Virgil was prolific. Whenever my colleagues or whenever people would ask me, my colleagues, what are you working on, we would almost just look at each other and just not know what to say. And I think sort of like, you know, at some point, you know, we save all of our work. We've, you know, we've got everything within the files and there's too many things to count. And it almost feels more appropriate to summarize the whole, you know. You know, we would enter projects and then enter another project. And when I'm tired of another project, I'm running away to another project. And it's mostly about maintaining and surfing different types of design objectives. So at least for me, there isn't necessarily a favorite project, but it's about the format. You know, Virgil would always talk about, you know, things in, you know, he coined this term contemporary landscapes, which he would sort of use to contextualize what it means to sort of surf between different contexts, you know, from, let's say, our Basel to Mekonos and all of these various things. So then for us in terms of projects, it's that capacity surf between corporate to small scale to pro bono, etc, etc. So yeah, for me, it's, it's very difficult to say. One of the, one of the things that I found interesting and sort of working on the show for the last two years or two and a half years was that it was always about the idea, right? It wasn't necessarily about like a product or a finished product, right? It was always about like, I have this idea, right? And when I say to get the idea out. Yeah, go ahead. No. Yeah, go ahead. Someone told me a story. I think it was Ben Trill. Oh, Justin Saunders told me this story. And it was Ben Trill days and someone there in New York mobbing around and someone said, yo, we never got our shirt. And Virgil said, we sell ideas. It was the idea we sold you. Don't worry about the shirt. But that, I mean, that, that's amazing. I got stories. And that, you know, that, like, there was a book, The Black Ken in book, right? And the story that Mephuz told about that book was like, they were just throwing images, right? In WhatsApp. And like, we need to make this a book. They made a book. There are three copies that exist. Mephuz has one, Virgil has one, Arthur Jaffa has one, right? And for me, like what that symbolized, right, was, was really about like the, when you talked about sort of creative exchanges or dialogues, it was sort of like, he was having a, when he had dialogue with friends or crelo artists, that was about their dialogue, right? And the objects that came out of those dialogues didn't have to be commercial, right? They didn't have to live in the world at a, you know, a shop or, you know, a museum, but it could have lived just among those, those people in dialogue. Exactly. Like, you know, to the capacity where, you know, I don't remember who I was talking about just, but almost just coming to terms in reference to just the way he navigated life. The degrees in which, you know, the separation between either work or leisure or all of these boundaries or, or things that categorize in terms of, yeah, how you navigate lives. And I think that's part and parcel of why all dialogue or all friendships had output. And the output didn't have to mean anything, or it didn't have to be commercial to your point, it didn't have to, because it was just a point of entry into dialogue with people. You know, it's, it's fascinating, like. No, he was, he was a genius of so many things, but he was a genius of that because just, you know, how the Black Canyon book was made, you know, I remember I was just posting on Instagram, particularly men, most some women who were older with great style, and who hadn't given up their gumption on life. They're still artists. They didn't let life beat them down. And I called it Art Dad, meaning they saw it. So I was just posting, and then, and Virgil started up a group chat and said, yo, this is genius. We're going to do a collection. Six months later, Art Dad, though they could see in collab with all whites walking down a runway in Paris off of a group text. That's genius. And he was the first person since my father to tell me that everything was art. When I was a kid, my dad always said to me, Tremaine, I'll be brushing my teeth. There's art to brushing your teeth. I'll be cutting along. There's art to cutting along. You know what I mean? It's like, I'd be like, shut up. And then, you know, 15 years later, I met a guy who was saying the same thing to me. I'll never forget another off of Instagram. And that's the thing. What people saw as trite or meaningless, Virgil saw value in. I was posting all this, like, I guess my current archive of clothing and then objects, ephemera, all this stuff, just wasting time on Instagram. And then he sent me an email. He goes, I'd like you to contribute your practice to this auction that I'm doing for Paddle, which was an auction site. And the way he spoke to me in an email changed my life. He didn't say, oh, that cool stuff. He said, your practice. He made me see myself in a way I never seen myself with words, with conviction, with intention, in a way that no one in the vicinity of fashion, designer art would address me. That's V. Yeah, you know, like to, I think to that point, you know, like some of the, I think we planned this show maybe eight times. And if we had more time, we'd have probably planned it eight more times, you know, because he was one of those people that you just could not, you'd be like, so this is the show, right? And he's like, a week later, well, what about this, right? And to your point about, you know, what he would say was like, yeah. It took me a while to figure out what that meant. The number of E's, A's and H's, you use like a gradation of what that, yeah, yeah. You got the short, yeah? It was a wrap. It did take me a while to figure out to sort of decode that. But he wanted, I mean, he wanted to significantly reduce this show. I mean, it is sort of one third of the objects that had been traveling. And I, that's the most funny because you were having that, you guys were having that, you know, dialogue. I remember at one point there was a conversation about like 15 objects in the museum, just like 15 of them. And I was like, Anne's going to have a heart attack. And this is a survey. I don't know if we're going to, you know, but it's, it's, what was sort of like interesting and what struck me about that was that he was always trying to just even push himself, right? Like beyond what, you know, an expectation was, right? People had, you know, their views on him, right? He was a, you know, a lot of people were, he's a fashion designer. Why don't you have more clothes? Why aren't you, you know, and what was sort of super interesting to me was that like, as much output that he was, you know, clearly making, is that he was still an artist on a journey, right? And in the show I wanted to sort of show that, right? And show the, the way that like, you know, in some ways, you know, at 41 or 39, I think when we started this show, is that he was still sort of asking questions and sort of seeking answers, right? And that sort of organized every what's that message or exchange that we had was just rooted in that. And so even when Tremange shared, like, I was doing this thing on Instagram, then he made a what's that group, you know? Like, even our conversation started about an exhibition and then I'm being like, oh, you did that photo book. I'm looking for a photographer this age, this, you know, like, and so it was like all of these sort of, like there was just like, you know, it was like a deep fluidity that sort of happened. No, that's why I sort of like, you know, I reduced the conversation to the way he approached life, you know? And I think for for me, that's where the practice is. You know, there was never a rock left unturned, you know, you mentioned the DJ flyer works, you know, for me, that's, that's practice. That's all of those flyers, the iterative, you know, approach to something like that for me was just conducive to an approach of always seeing. One thing that would realize within a creative process is, you know, let's just say we're in dialogue, we do something, and then he just wants to change it by a centimeter. And it's almost like, but that's so insignificant to be like, do you want to change it? And it's like, no, just a centimeter over there. And for me, that was sort of like the implication of his touch, always inserting himself into the equation, because that was his artistry, you know, he touched everything that he did. And yeah, for me, that's the approach, the approach is really that innovation to me. You know, it's sort of interesting, because you talk about that, and we have, I mean, you have this conversation, we're doing this walkthrough, and it's about the, his sort of language around tourists versus purists, right? And so however he's trying to sort of, and it's not a high low, right? It's not sort of a hierarchical thing. I don't think he even believed in hierarchy in that way. But it was sort of this idea that like the touch could be for the purists, or the touch could be for the tourists, right? And can you talk about sort of how that helped to sort of organize his practice as an artist, and like the way, like the gestures, right? Because I think a lot of people sort of confused a lot of the gestures that he made artistically. Exactly. No, it really is, you know, it's about points of entry, you know, the capacity to speak to multiple people at once. And for that specific, you know, the innovation of the tourist and purists just sort of enabled that. It's such a almost reductive, but almost spectral turn of phrase in terms of how much it encompasses within the range of the tourists and the purists, you know, the people who are there to just sort of understand, find out, inquire, and sort of like the implications of the opposite, which is a purist who is more sort of focused, disciplined, and precise. And so just to occupy space with that medium and that range enables multiple dialogues to transpire at once. And this is sort of, for me, this was a genius of a hack, you know, just to be able to sort of consume and consolidate more through his practice with those different mechanisms, you know, even when people reference the 3%, it was more so in reference to, you know, he spoke the idea of advertisement a lot. And even stuff like that, just, you know, it's why you would always try and work with brands that are the best in class. We're talking, it's the idea of communication. It's not the idea that it's popular or this is communication. It's the billboard. So, yeah, a lot of these terminologies, a lot of these approaches within his practice were for very specific intentions, basically. One other thing that was also sort of a key component of who he was as an artist was how much he could get away with, right? What was sort of, for both of you, one of the best things you guys sort of like got away with in terms of like pushing sort of, you know, the sort of space to where you wanted to be and you just sort of said, I can't believe he did that shit. Meaning like, you know, there's a work in the exhibition on the DJ Flyers, the Flat White Flyers, where he just took the UN logo, right, and just started using it as his DJ logo, right? And then the UN wrote him a cease and desist letter. And then every country had to sign the cease and desist letter, right? And then he framed it and in turn a work of art, right? It was about sort of getting away with that. There was also the story, the great story that he told me about cotton ink, right? Like the cotton side, right? Which he didn't turns into a painting and then it sort of sits at high enough so it becomes almost like an act, right? It sort of functions like an act. So what is something that you guys sort of collaborate with him on that you sort of like, I can't believe we actually pulled that off. Useful for beauty. So like for me, I probably can't verbalize in public space some of the stuff I go the way with. Fair, fair, fair. So the stuff I really want to say I won't, but you know, for me, it was always funny the specific considerations he would make about specific things. So for example, in dialogue with the graphic designer studio, Virgil would always ask the team to sort of image trace logos instead of requesting the actual files for just image traces. So it just almost messes up that logo a tiny bit. And I'm pretty sure on some of the t-shirts you're wearing with the Brooklyn Museum logo. I'll tell you that one. That was image traced. So in reference to that, these slight gestures or I don't know if they're sort of personal jokes or I don't know what it is, but it's intentional. So in terms of that there's a million things to say. I think the greatest thing he got away with was becoming the artistic director of Louis Vuitton and the industry that is historically and right now systematically racist. So for him to be able to achieve that with poise and without anger and all the pushback he got from the fashion industry, the magazines, people on Twitter, Instagram. And to achieve that, it's the greatest magic chart. That's why he's the goat. No one else had the will or intention or love to achieve that. Now it's possible for everyone. I would not be creative director of supreme if it wasn't for Virgil. I put that on my mama's grave. So that's the that's probably the greatest thing he got away with because if you do the odds, you do the odds that you becoming the first African-American of Ghanaian descent, Black man, becoming artistic director of Louis Vuitton. What are the odds? It is funny and to Echo's tea's point, Virgil left several titles for the show and for us when we started co-opting aspects of the sunroof of the Trojan horse as a tagline, I think we even made personal decision to start trying to push that title and put it into the equation. So it's on some of the merchandises on some of the stuff. And for us, the reason why we wanted to do that was largely in reference to the light or the way that we also saw him and his achievements and like the consequences of his achievements. And what it does, you know, the sunroof of the Trojan horse implicates hope. You know, it's the skylight. You can see this, you know, you can see the sky, you know, there's hope. And for us, he occupied space in a way that provided that. So yeah, that's an echo to Tremaine's point. All right. I'm going to ask two more questions and we're going to open it up for questions from the audience. And so if you have questions, there'll be microphones on each end. The first question is, why do you think he sort of, you know, orders sort of operate in all of these different ways and make, you know, choices, right, in their practices that sort of order or orders his practices, right, one for him with collaboration, right? Why do you think that he was so drawn to collaboration? I would say for me, it goes back to sort of like not drawing the line somewhere, which is why sort of when I was implicating work, play, and sort of even making no distinctions there, I think collaboration is an opportunity to sort of get somewhere you wouldn't get on your own. And the implication of exchanging or literally going further than one can on their own. So for me, it has a lot of credence in that. It's sort of like a tool to sort of navigate, build. It's actually just humanity, truth be told, yeah. Yeah. Took the words over my mouth. Yeah, I think he was obsessed, I think, to speak about him specifically, but any truly great artists or just great human beings mimic or neither mimic follow the rules of nature, which is collaboration, you know, how we get here, how things get built, how we were in tribal times, to how we are now. When are things destructive when people are narcissists, when they focused on their self, when a nation is first and then the self and forget everything else? When are things great, when are things blissful, when are they beautiful, when people are kind? What's one of the pinnacles of kindness, collaboration, giving to someone, someone giving to you? So I think Virgil understood that on a deeper level than just, you know, let's do this thing with Braun. He understood on esoteric level collaboration, and I think that's why he was obsessed with it knew what came out of it. My other question is another question I've been getting sort of a lot with, which is, what do you think his legacy is or will be? His family, his kids and his channel and his family, that's to me, you know, that's the most important thing. All the art stuff and that's cool, but what makes it really dope is, yeah, how he was with his friends and family. Last time I saw him, he flew, he flew in to DJ, a young black female art show, Candace Williams, and he DJed her opening, and it was really important to do that. And I said, why are you here? And he's like, oh, this is just a pit stop to go take my kids to chicken treating. That's one of the last things he said to me, he said, take the kids to chicken treating, because I saw him on the eve of Halloween, you know, and most, you know, I've been around the world with him. He always take time, call Shannon, you know, always in contact and just, yeah, I learned him, yeah, just, I know so many, I know so many people, powerful, famous people, and his friends and his family, you know, big concern to him, you know, even like on my birthday, he sent me like these cotton flowers. I was like, how does he even find time to do that? Or even think to, you know? So that's his great, that's his like, compassion, thoughtfulness in his family, for me. Yeah, for me, it sort of goes back to that sort of tagline, the sunroof of the Trojan horse, just the idea of hope. He showed capacities to sort of do and mobilize and made it look easy. So for it to look easy, I think it's a point of entry to people in terms of seeing what's possible and what can happen. And so for me, that's the legacy perhaps. Perfect. I think we can leave it there. I wanted to thank you both for sharing. I wanted to thank everyone for coming and to the conversation. And if you have a few minutes, I would love for you to go to the exhibition. And are you going to turn over the hand? So I just want to tell you a lesson that I've learned working on this show. And it's a lesson I've learned again and again, and I'll be always blessed for that lesson. Always listen to great artists. And you know what I'm talking about. I learned a lot in this process. So all of you who love artists, all of you who work with artists, always listen to the great artists and follow them. I want to, we're all a little emotional, right? I want to thank Antoine, Jermaine, DeWanda for sharing with us their stories and their experiences and the inspiration of Virgil. And I want us all to give a big heartfelt Brooklyn love for Shannon and Virgil's parents and siblings and friends who are all here. Can we stand up and give them some love? Thank you for being here. What I'm talking about, that's Brooklyn love.