One Man's Mission to Assemble a Portrait of Brooklyn

Want to talk quintessential Brooklyn? Then let’s start with Dexter Wimberly.

Born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Wimberly not only was witness to some of the biggest, most tumultuous moments in Brooklyn’s history through the 80s, 90s and 2000s, but he was also an active player.

In the late 80s, while a student at Brooklyn Tech High School, Wimberly formed the rap group “System X,” was a part of the group Black Watch, was featured on the cover of the X-Clan Album, and chatted it up with P. Diddy when P. Diddy was still Sean Combs; he was a part of the rallies and petitions that changed Reid Avenue to Malcolm X Blvd; he was a involved in the Sonny Carson movement and a witness to the Crown Heights riots; he was party to Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” video in Fulton Park, and was there almost every day to witness Spike Lee filming “Do The Right Thing” on Stuyvesant Avenue.  

“It was kind of like Forrest Gump in a way,” he says laughing, “in that I was in all of these places with all of these people, just because I just was.”

He experienced all of this before the age of 20. And just like in the running scene in Forrest Gump, one day, after running for what seemed like forever, he looked around and decided… he didn’t want to do it anymore.

“I had to decide, Well, do I want to keep rapping forever or do I want to do something else? And so the ‘something else’ was what I decided to pursue."

His academic ambitions at Brooklyn College were law and political science. But, he said, deep down in his heart, "I wasn’t really that interested in it." He knew one thing was certain, and that was that he loved music, art and culture. 

So although he no longer desired to be behind a microphone or at the center of the limelight, he wanted to be on the business side of helping others achieve their creative pursuits.

Wimberly met clothing designer Maurice Malone in 1993, and at age 20, convinced Malone to hire him as his marketing director. But he eventually lost that job two years later after the company bankrolling Malone went bankrupt.

Then, in 1995, six minutes after midnight on New Year’s Eve, Wimberly was hit by a car:

“That was like a turning point for me,” said Wimberly. “Because as I laid there in the streets, my girlfriend screaming and my buddy thinking I’m dead, I was like, ‘Man, I’m broke and I just got hit by a car. I need to figure something out!'”

So he got serious and decided to start his own marketing and public relations agency, doing what he did for Maurice for other creative companies. His company, August Bishop, quickly grew, and over the next 12 years was successful enough to open an office in midtown Manhattan.

During the course of working with various graphic designers that he contracted for his clients at August Bishop, Wimberly discovered that they were actual artists with enormous talent and were only doing graphic design to pay the bills.

“And that fascinated me,” said Wimberly. “They get these degrees and then they’re just like ships floating around, bobbing in the ocean, hoping someone will buy their painting or help them get a show. And a lot of them do. But most of them have no desire to deal with the business side of their career. And because there isn’t a lot of money involved, no one is rushing to help them.

“So I started creating relationships with artists and helping them wherever I could, because creating invoices is creating invoices; following up on receivables is following up on receivables; a marketing plan or a press release structurally is generally the same even though the content is different.”

In 2008, Wimberly closed August Bishop and left the world of marketing and advertising to focus more squarely on serving as an artist agent.

“When someone makes a decision they want to become an artist, to me, they’re making one of the hardest professional decisions anyone could ever make. Because so few artists actually make it to the point where they can live purely off of their work,” said Wimberly. “It’s more rare than a platinum record.”

“So my mission has become to help artist reach that seemingly unreachable goal. Because I think that somebody should be doing this.”

Wimberly now works with new and established artists, helping them identify buyers, find exhibition opportunities in other cities and other countries and curating artists shows of his own.

His first big project as a curator, “Gentrification of Brooklyn,” exhibited at MoCADA in 2010. He also was lead curator for “Crown Heights Gold,” at the Skylight Gallery in July 2011, “The Box that Rocks,” at MoCADA in March 2012, and most recently, “March On,” at Brooklyn Academy of music in January of this year.

Next month, Wimberly is curating a show in Chelsea called “Round Zero;” then a third show at MoCADA in July entitled, “Pattern Recognition;” another show in July, “Crossing the Line” at Mixed Greens Gallery in Chelsea, and another in September, “Doin' It In The Park,” in Chelsea.

But his most recent and greatest undertaking, he said, is a campaign entitled, “The Brooklyn Portrait Gallery,” an exhibit that will showcase the works of 100 Brooklyn artists in one space at various stages of their careers.

Wimberly has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the project, which is slated to open in fall 2014 and will include a “visually stunning” website where people can read about the artists and view their work, as well as a printed catalogue of the artists’ featured work. It will be the first time anything of this magnitude has ever been produce, an historical record of the artists of this era—certainly a special time in Brooklyn.

“This is my homage to Brooklyn! I want this to be something that Brooklynites can be proud of,” said Wimberly. “If I get the money from a corporation or an institution, they’re going to control how they want it to be, which may not be the best it can be."

The Brooklyn Portrait Gallery will feature artists as young as 20 and as old as 80, the most talented artists in this community doing amazing work that hasn’t been seen.

“And I don’t think there’s anybody out there that’s better suited to do that than me.”