opening reception on Friday, September 18th from 5:00-7:00PM
Paths That Cross: Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Lynn Davis
Speak to me heart
When we were young we all had dark hair, possessed swaggering confidence and had made our vows as evolving artists. We crossed paths, full of life, all a bit reckless, creating separate bodies of work on our own terms. However, we found our way to one another not through art, but love. It was 1986 and I was living in Michigan, with my husband and son. I received a call that both Robert and his longtime partner and patron, Sam Wagstaff, were in the hospital with AIDS related pneumonia. We drove to New York and for the next four years witnessed Robert’s greatest mortal challenge, the fight to live.
It was then, in New York, that Robert, Lynn and I came together. Robert confided that in my absence he had grown very close to Lynn and trusted her beyond measure. For that alone I loved her. Her laugh, her mystical intelligence, her white hair, her equally white icebergs, rising like magnificent torsos, not yet destroyed by environmental change. We formed our own alliance, hoping with all our being to keep him alive.
On January 14, 1987, Sam Wagstaff lost his battle with AIDS. Robert called me, uncharacteristically distraught. That night I sat up and wrote the lyrics to Paths That Cross, which my husband later set to music. I wrote it to comfort Robert but shuddered at the thought that I may one day require comfort myself. The time did come, and on March 8th, 1989, only hours before his death I pledged to Robert I would continue to create work magnifying his name, which I have done my best to do.
The loss of Robert only drew Lynn and me closer. Our friendship, first centered around Robert, has been ever unfolding. Our paths more parallel than crossing. In the years since, we have weathered much, have shared beauty, loss, sacred nights, prophetic dreams, sanctioned silence, much black coffee, and a good share of laughter. When Lynn offered me the opportunity to collaborate with her, I experienced the same exhilarating sense of mission that I had once experienced with Robert.
In the Paths That Cross exhibition the three of us stand together once again. It is an unexpected gift, the opportunity to view aspects of our work and mementos mirroring one another. I have always felt one of the greatest gifts Robert gave me was bringing Lynn into my life. Our collaboration and continuing friendship is uniquely ours, and yet unquestionably contain aspects of Robert who dwells always in our common muscle of memory.
- Patti Smith, 2026