Frederick J. Brown

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANNA PETROW.

Have you dreamed of sipping rosé with Matisse or dining with Duchamp? It’s all possible at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art’s Cafe Sebastienne. The cafe itself is a piece of art, and the dining hall and its patrons are an integral part of the art installation. 

The Cafe Sebastienne dining room is lined from floor to ceiling with paintings by the late American artist Frederick J. Brown, who died in 2012. The installation, called The History of Art, features 110 oil paintings, each representing an important movement or figure in art throughout the ages. The works cover the cafe’s seven irregular walls, and they can cleverly be identified via a “map” found on the back of the menu. Dining in the cafe is an immersive experience.

“The series reflects the words of my mentor Willem de Kooning, who once told me, ‘Remember that art is a very old profession—it began with a shaman in a cave,’” Brown said at the time of the permanent installation in 1999.

The installation begins with Brown’s renditions of those cavemen’s drawings and chronicles the history of art through the 20th century, including Brown’s interpretations of many great masterpieces of both Western and non-Western art. Featuring references to artistic styles and genres based on famous paintings by Titian, Goya, Manet, Matisse, Picasso and de Kooning, among many others, Brown, who was born in Georgia and grew up on Chicago’s South Side, pays tribute to important artists throughout history within the scope of the installation.

“The experience of being able to speak the language of all these artists from the time of the cavemen and to go back into the thought process that they went through was a very exciting and a very humbling experience,” Brown said. “I wanted these works to serve as a reminder to both the museum’s visitors and the [Kansas City] Art Institute’s students of the importance of history and the development through the ages of creative expression.” 

Brown’s pieces are included in the collections of major museums around the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in D.C., as well as the White House.

What makes this work dynamic is that it doesn’t “just hang on museum walls,” said curator Dana Self in an essay she wrote about the installation. “It is the museum walls. In many ways, The History of Art is the genuine heart of the Kemper Museum precisely because it is extremely personal, was stitched together with love and devotion, reflects not only the museum itself but also the patron who built it, and ultimately forms the physical nucleus from which the rest of the museum radiates.”

The History of Art was commissioned by R. Crosby Kemper and Bebe Kemper, who were friends of the artist.

The cafe serves a seasonal menu and is open for brunch and lunch during museum hours. 

LINK TO ARTICLE