Abstract Beauty: Nigel Freeman on the Collection of Patricia Scipio-Brim

Patricia Scipio-Brim (1947 – 2023) was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, the first of six siblings. She immigrated to New York in the 1970s after she graduated from Bishop Anstey High School. Scipio-Brim went on to receive a Juris Doctor degree from New York University School of Law and a Master of Laws from New York University’s prestigious tax program. She began an impressive legal career in corporate law at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft., and she worked at law firms Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and Carter Ledyard & Milburn before moving to the public sector, where she would remain for the rest of her career. In the public sector, Scipio-Brim served as a Supervising Administrative Law Judge in the New York City Department of Finance and as a Real Estate Liaison for the Office of the Public Administrator for New York County, where she appeared in the US Federal Court’s Eastern District as an Appointed State Referee.  

Scipio-Brim’s journey as an art collector began in the early 1980s with an introduction to the art world by her neighbor, the daughter of a prominent artist. Visting many galleries, museums and artist studios, her interests grew across a wide range of figurative and abstract art. She also developed close relationships with dealers and galleries that featured African American artists, including Dorsey’s Gallery, Kenkeleba Gallery, Stella Jones, Peg Alston, Spiral Gallery and Swann Galleries. She was an avid supporter of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Studio Museum in Harlem. She had a special interest in dance—particularly the Alvin Ailey company in New York, International Ailey Partners, and Abraham in Motion—all of which she supported and whose performances she followed internationally. 

Swann Galleries is honored to bring Patricia’s wonderful art collection to auction as a single-owner sale of over 80 works of art. The Patricia Scipio-Brim collection spans over a century of modern, postwar and contemporary African American Art, from Edward Bannister to Tomashi Jackson. Highlights include an impressive, colorful group of abstract paintings; several acrylic canvases by Sir Frank Bowling, OBE RA; a 1990 pastel on paper by Ed Clark; and a 1971 Alma Thomas acrylic work on paper from her Atmospheric Effect series. The collection also includes numerous unique artworks by such important postwar artists as Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Beauford Delaney, Norman Lewis and Bob Thompson, and significant contemporary artists like McArthur Binion, David Hammons, Adam Pendleton, Faith Ringgold and Kara Walker. The collection includes not only paintings but assemblage, works on paper, photography and fine prints. Our illustrated printed catalogue will serve as a valuable record and commemoration of her decades of patronage of Black arts.