Frank Bentley (NBN Associate Member) returns

after Success in New York.

Until last month Frank had never flown before.  He’d been invited over to the USA, and was not looking forward to the landing part of the trip.  (Not alone there).

Before he departed, we chatted about his planned visit to the new Museum of Naïve Art in New York, and he promised to bring back whatever he could about its history and development, so we could feed the experience into the equation of our own national Project.

When he got back, Frank was enthralled with the way the Museum had been conceived as an exhibition venue, built as it is, almost in a crack in the side of the Museum of Modern Art itself.  And the fact that the MOMA has recognized the cultural importance of Naïve Art is reflected in their protective co-existence on the sidewalk.

Frank brought back some useful material on private collections of Naïve art in the USA, together with the following true story:

He went to pay an impromptu visit to an art gallery in upstate New York.  The gallery had displayed several of his paintings there since January this year, and nothing had sold. 

As he walked into the gallery, unannounced, the owner was in the middle of negotiating the sale of one of his paintings to a lady client.  Frank was introduced, and the client thought it was all part of a clever sales tactic, and became very wary.

Once Frank assured her that he really was the artist from England, she bought the painting immediately, plus another one for good luck.  The gallery would like to take more of his work, and Frank left a happy man.  Not bad for a first trip!