Patch Article Helps UWS Resident Find Long-Lost Famed Painting

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — It was news enough that one valuable and decades-long missing piece of art was found this fall hanging on the wall of an Upper West Side apartment, but history has incredibly repeated itself.

A second missing painted panel by renowned American modernist Jacob Lawrence was discovered by a woman who had read a Patch story in October about another missing panel that was found around that time.

The woman, a nurse who chose to remain anonymous, told The New York Times that Lawrence's name sounded familiar when she read the Patch story about the 60-year missing panel being found in another Upper West Side apartment.

The painting was one of five missing panels from the Black artist's groundbreaking 30-panel series called "Struggle: From the History of the American People," which was on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the time.

After reading the Patch article, the nurse walked over to look at a small painting that had hung on her Upper West Side apartment's dining room wall for the past two decades, according to the New York Times. The painting gifted to her by her mother had a small barely legible signature and a 1996 New York Times profile of Lawrence taped to the back, according to the NYT.

The woman, in her late 40s who arrived in New York from Ukraine at 18, told her realization to her 20-year-old son, who studied art in college, said the New York Times.

The pair found the Met's exhibition on Lawrence after some quick Googling and realized they most likely had a masterpiece on their hands, according to the New York Times.

After three days of calls to the Met went unreturned, the mother-son duo headed over to the museum themselves and explained the situation. A few hours later, the co-curators of the Met's Lawrence exhibition were in yet another Upper West Side apartment, according to the New York Times.

The specific painting is Panel 28, called "Immigrants admitted from all countries: 1820 to 1840," which indeed was one of the four still-missing panels from the famous Lawrence series.

The panel series is currently on a tour of the United States organized by the Peabody Essex Museum.

“We are thrilled to share news of this important discovery, especially at a time when Americans are actively engaged with democracy,” said Lydia Gordon, Peabody Essex Museum's associate curator and the exhibition’s coordinating curator. “Lawrence created this body of work during the modern civil rights era to interpret pivotal moments in the American Revolution and early decades of the republic as ongoing struggles."

The Upper West Side nurse chose to anonymously lend the panel to the national tour.

The Peabody Essex Museum hopes that the increased attention to Lawrence's work will help find the last three missing panels, and if history is any indication — those living on the Upper West Side should do a particularly in-depth sweep of their apartments.

Read More: Famed Painting Missing For 60 Years Found In UWS Apartment