When the janitor-turned-artist Henry Darger died in Chicago at 81 in 1973, leaving a single room crammed with his colorful illustrations, a 15,000-page book and no immediate surviving relatives, Darger’s landlord began showing, sharing and selling his work.
For decades, the landlords, Nathan and Kiyoko Lerner, have been credited with rescuing Darger’s creations from the scrap heap and promoting them in a way that gained Darger an international reputation as an outsider artist.
“Most landlords would have been, ‘Let’s rent the room, get out the dumpster,’” said Andrew Edlin, a leading Darger dealer. “Nathan Lerner spent 25 years protecting his legacy. If not for him, we would never know about Darger.”
But now distant relatives of Darger — tracked down by a collector of vintage photography — are making a legal claim to that legacy, asserting the landlord did not have the right to pluck and profit from Darger’s art. They filed a “petition for determination of heirship” in an Illinois probate court last month; a hearing in Cook County is scheduled for Feb. 23.
“We’re asserting the rights of the family — taking any and all action to restore his legacy,” said Christen Sadowski, a Darger relative. “To understand that someone took what was his life’s work and has capitalized on it — it’s about righting a wrong.”
The dispute focuses attention on how legacies and copyrights are handled after the death of artists who lived largely solitary lives. In this case, a 2019 article in a Northwestern University law journal questioned whether, under Illinois and federal law, the landlords were correct in assuming the rights.
But the landlords, Lerner, a photographer who died in 1997, and his wife, Kiyoko, a classical pianist, have long said that Darger made it clear that he didn’t care whether they kept his work or discarded it.
Kiyoko Lerner did not respond to messages. Her attorney, Eric E. Kalnins, said in an email that he and his client are reviewing the probate documentation and “have no comment at this time.”
Darger, completely unknown in his lifetime, drew attention after his death because of the reach of his imagination, which created, through pictures and words, fantasy worlds far removed from the wearisome routines of his daily life.
Prized for the ambitions of his outsider, or self-taught, art, his work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the American Folk Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Smithsonian. One of …….
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/07/arts/design/henry-darger-estate.html
