Michael Namer on Finding the “Holy Grail of Graffiti”

NEW YORK—This May, a giant mural, thought to contain work completed by Jean Michel Basquiat, Fab 5 Freddy, Futura 2000, and other street art icons before they were famous, saw the light of day after almost 30 years hidden behind Sheetrock in a kitchen and bathroom in an eight-story SoHo building. The huge piece is rendered in spray paint, glitter, marker, and whatever else the artists had on hand at the time and features a large red airplane bearing Fab 5 Freddy's tag in the center, as well as other tags, a yellow birthday cake, notes, and the names of the artists who contributed to the mural.

Rumors of a mysterious graffiti wall somewhere in the building at 151 Wooster Street had been circulating for years, but most people dismissed the stories as local lore, until Alfa Development started gutting lofts for a luxury condo conversion and accidentally stumbled upon the artwork, which has been called the “Holy Grail of Graffiti."

Now, conservators are carefully removing the mural from the eighth-floor loft and installing it, piece by piece, next to other works by artists such as Basquiat, Fab 5 Freddy, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf, loaned from private collections, in a special exhibition, “The Wild Style Exhibit,” which opened at the new Gallery 151, located in the same building, last week and runs through February 15. The wall has attracted the attention of everyone from the former Guggenheim director Lisa Dennison, who is now Sotheby’s executive vice president, to the fashion designer Mark Ecko.

ARTINFO visited Alfa Development principal Michael Namer at the gallery this week to find out more about the discovery.

I’ve heard a few different versions of how the “Wooster Wild Style Wall” was discovered. What really happened?

When we bought the building in 2004, the landlord said there was a Basquiat behind a wall that he had covered up. Edit deAk [editor of the 1970s art magazine Art Rite], who was a tenant in the apartment from the early ’70s to ’84, also said the artwork was there, but it was somewhere you wouldn’t think to look. We thought this stuff was urban legend, so we didn’t pay any attention to it.

Then, in early 2007, we had gotten our permits and were getting ready to do the demolition. My son, Matt, who had lived in that loft for a couple of years, went up to the apartment to get his stuff. He and his friend got on top of the kitchen cabinet and poked a hole in the wall. When he popped it, he saw a Futura 2000 tag. He sent me a picture, and I said, “Oh my god. This is the piece.”

What was the first thing you did after Matt found the artwork?

I had the demolition crew isolate the room and we started removing the walls. It was sort of like an archaeological dig. The scale was incredible; it’s huge.

Did you call in experts right away?

We asked photographer Bob Weingarten to be the official cataloger, and since he has connections in the art world, he started calling some friends at museums. My parents also know Rachel Rudin, who sits on the board of trustees at the Guggenheim. She called Lisa Dennison [then the Guggenheim’s director], who saw the mural and was excited. I said we would give it to the Guggenheim, and Lisa sent conservators to test it. I was picturing cranes and construction work, maybe even helicopters, to pull the wall out, but they said, “No, we put glue and gauze over the thing and pull it right off the wall.”

So you’re donating the work to the Guggenheim?

No, the Guggenheim wasn’t going to be able to move the mural on time. Fortuitously, I met Hal Meltzer, an art dealer and historian, who found a company that could move it. They started the process in October. As things progressed, I converted one of the lofts in the building into Gallery 151, and Hal offered to curate “The Wild Style Exhibit.”

Part of the show is actually watching the conservators put the mural together, restore it, and finally unveil the full mural. It will eventually be one piece; it’ll be mobile and much easier to offer to a museum, at no cost to them except moving it.

Where will it go?

We still want to donate it eventually, but someone suggested that maybe the Guggenheim and Whitney were too “uptown,” and it should remain downtown as a monument to the artists in lower Manhattan in the ’70s and ’80s. A contemporary museum in Philadelphia is interested in looking at it, too. We have until July to make a decision.

How much would the work be worth if you decided to sell it?

I have no idea; it’s not about dollars and cents. We wouldn’t do this if we were counting the beans. If we donate it, the only benefit for us would be the tax write-off.

So why are you doing this?

Most wild-style graffiti murals are gone. This shouldn’t end up in the bottom of a Dumpster and forgotten. It’s an important part of history and we want to preserve it.

You’re also making a video documentary of the whole process that includes interviews with Fab 5 Freddy and some of the other artists?

Yes. People are coming out of the woodwork talking about it. I think it’s important that we catalog the story about what we did, where we found it, who the people are, and, if they are still alive, what they have to say about it. At the end you have this very cohesive story—that in itself is a piece of art.