Mystery Solved: Brooklyn 'Hipster' Artist Behind Trump Tombstone in Central Park

If you were walking through Central Park’s Sheep Meadow on Easter Sunday this year, you may have seen it.

Maybe it gave you chills. Maybe it made you laugh.

A 420-pound tombstone, erected under dark of night, bore Republican presidential candidate and real estate mogul Donald J. Trump’s name and birth year, plus this epitaph: “Made America Hate Again.”

The stone was quickly removed, but the NYPD opened an investigation to make sure Trump's life wasn’t in danger, according to the New York Times. Fingerprint dusting and video footage turned up no evidence. But when Gothamist published an anonymous interview with the artist behind the installation of the headstone, police got their first clue: The article included a photo of the headstone before it was carved, sitting on the chipped tile floor of the engravers’ showroom.

The first showroom police visited, according to the Times, was the bullseye: In the Supreme Memorials tombstone shop in South Slope, bordering Park Slope and Gowanus, officers recognized the chipped floor from the picture in the article.

The store owners reportedly identified the “hipster” (in their words) who had ordered the stone as Brian A. Whiteley, 33 — a Brooklyn-based artist whose art “explores phobia, paranormal experience, radical politics, the occult and religious phenomena,” according to his website.

In another anonymous interview, this one with the Times, Whiteley explained that the tombstone — which he describes as “political satire and a guerrilla art piece” — was intended “to remind Donald what type of legacy he’s leaving behind.”

Whiteley, who's represented by the Christopher Stout Gallery in Bushwick, has been pulling morbid stunts in Brooklyn pastures for years. Neighbors may know him as the guy who wandered around Green-Wood Cemetery dressed in a full clown suit and haunted Prospect Park in a Bigfoot costume.

The local artist's career in paranormal, political art must be very lucrative: Though the storeowners who made the headstone wouldn’t say how much it cost, another dealer told the Times that a stone like that would run about $2,450.

Police have not filed charges against Whiteley, according to the Times. Patch has reached out to both Whiteley and the NYPD for comment and will update this story when we hear back.

Simone Wilson contributed to this report.

Photo courtesy of Sachin RB/Instagram.