The Museum Of The American Gangster

Below is the official press release for the new Museum of the American Gangster, located at 80 St. Marks Place in New York City, and which is set to open its doors next month.
This promises to be an exciting new venue and venture for all those who share an interest in the subject matter, as well as an entertaining and educating experience for the curious.

I am also happy to announce that plans are currently in the making to display a selection of my original portraits from this project at the Museum for an extended period of time. I will have more details on all this forthcoming.
I must humbly admit there will be something nicely gratifying that the portraits will hang mere blocks away from where many of these men strolled the streets so many years ago and this feels a bit like a homecoming for the artwork. I will post more details as they come in.

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The Museum Of The American Gangster - Press Release

The Museum of the American Gangster (MAOG) presents an opportunity to gain insight into the hidden, inside world of the American gangster through artifacts and stories told by those involved. We are working with a team of criminal authors, historians and related institutions, as well as family members and estates of pivotal crime figures, to create a museum that both casual fans and invested scholars could enjoy and benefit from. Beyond exhibits and artifacts, MOAG will offer dedicated research facilities, access to original source documents and articles, oral histories, workshops, walking tours, live performances, historic reenactments, lectures, movies and presentations.

The MOAG at 80 St. Marks Place features a full gallery space with gift shop, as well as an authentic speakeasy and a maze of hidden rooms and artifacts in the basement left over from Prohibition (which are all part of the exhibit). Frank Sinatra was a singing waiter in our restaurant as a youth (yoot?), and our gallery served as living quarters for Leon Trotsky in 1917. The 160-seat, professional Off-Broadway theater on site premiered You're A Good Man Charlie Brown in 1967 and is the site of Lord Buckley's final performance before his death in 1960. (And that is just the tip of the iceberg.)

MOAG's goal is to objectively and authentically present the role that crime has played in shaping the politics, culture, myth and lore of New York City. Criminals will not be glorified or sensationalized, nor will they be vilified -- rather, this institution intends to allow visitors insight into how and why criminals (on both sides of the law) chose the life they did. Where did they come from? What were their options? What was their relationship to the community? This is a chance to dig deep into the lives and minds of some of the country's most successful crime figures.

Where better to explore the influence of criminality in America than in the neighborhood where such heavyweights as "Lucky" Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and "Bugsy" Siegel planted the seeds of modern organized crime? Where their predecessors, men like Jack Zelig, Monk Eastman, and Paul Kelly paved the way for future mob influence over labor, politics and entertainment in NYC? Where Tammany Hall headquartered their century-long stranglehold on politics with the assistance of local gangs? Where the most powerful Prohibition-era bootleggers lived, operated and fought for control over an underground empire? Where the infamous Irish-Nativist wars paralyzed Lower Manhattan in the 19th century? Important American history is in our own backyard and MOAG is dedicated to presenting this very important aspect of it.

The MOAG daily preview hours of operation are Monday through Saturday, 12:00pm to 5:00pm, for a reduced admission fee of only $10.

Museum previews begin with a special Sunday, March 7, 2010 event, from 12:00pm - 5:00pm.

For more information, visit http://moagnyc.org

Thanks to the Knickbocker Village blog for posting the video.

Sholem Bernstein

Apologies for the slowing down of posts since the beginning of the new year but as I have mentioned earlier I've been busy with other projects. As most people who freelance surely know, work schedules can be far from concrete and routine.

In that time though I have managed to finish up another portrait to add to the series. This time around is the lesser known Sholem Bernstein, a low level operative of the Brooklyn / Brownsville troop of Murder Inc. soldiers.

Bernstein was a talented car thief whose services were instrumental in procuring getaway cars that would later trace to a dead end in an investigation. Nothing of much importance was ever given to Bernstein further than placing his hands on the ten o'clock and two o'clock behind numerous stolen steering wheels, and pushing down on the gas. Sholem, who some called Sol, drove the getaway car at the fateful murder of candy store owner Joseph Rosen in 1936. Rosen was a former garment industry worker whose trucking business had been forced into retirement by Louis 'Lepke' Buchalter's powerful influence over labor racketeering in New York. Rosen was set up with a small candy store in Brooklyn by Lepke in order to try to help the man support his family. This was after a few missteps Rosen had working for a couple of other trucking companies under Buchalter's control. The candy shop faltered and Rosen, understandably embittered towards Buchalter, demanded financial reprimand and rumors flew that the candy man was looking to blow the whistle on Lepke's empire with one quick visit to Thomas Dewey's office.
Emanuel 'Mendy' Weiss was one of Bernstien's passengers on the Sunday morning of September 13 when Rosen was face down on the floor of the candy store, his body host to seventeen bullet holes. Joe Rosen's murder seemed perhaps inconsequential at the time to Lepke, who had overseen and ordered numerous syndicate hits, all calculated carefully, but this one would later prove to be the foundation of his downfall, and lead to his trip to the electric chair in 1944.

Inevitably Bernstien's minor stature in the underworld of Kings County manifested him into an easy pushover for the borough's District Attorney William O'Dwyer and prosecutor Burton Turkus. Looking at an extended trip to Sing Sing, Bernstein folded like an old accordion and was holed up in room 622 of The Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island soon after; his neighbor in room 623 was Abe Reles. He was one of the four important turncoats under police protection, along with Allie 'Tick Tock' Tannenbaum and Mickey Sycoff, who were across the hall in room 626.

Tannenbaum and Bernstein were key figures in Buchlater's trial for the prosecution. Tannenbaum's corroboration of the Rosen murder, and the eye witness account from Bernstein, sealed Lepke's fate along with Mendy Weiss.
Amazingly enough, court transcripts from the trial detailed that Bernstein's attempted an extortion racket while passing the sometimes agonizingly long hours under lock down at the Half Moon (he, along with the others were there for over a year). This was done through threatening letters sent out to potential victims who shady past he was acquainted with in the old neighborhood. These paper threats passed through the hands of the policemen on duty who were unaware of their content, onto their intended mark. The scam however proved unsuccessful.

Like Allie Tannenbaum and Abe 'Pretty' Levine, Sholem Bernstein disappeared from sight and was never heard from again following the fall out of the trials and subsequent string of executions.
He and Tannenbaum did make court appearances in 1950, when Abe Reles' case and a probe into police corruption was reopened by the serving District Attorney Miles McDonald (O'Dwyer had gone on to be New York's 100th Mayor in 1945). Appearing like hoodlum ghosts out of the past, Bernstein and Tannenbaum made their statements and answered questions then quickly faded away once again, their post-Murder Inc. days still remaining a mystery to this day.