Harlan Crow’s dictator garden and other crimes against taste
by Tony Bravo,
Datebook/San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 2023
When news of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow’s close, financially entwined friendship with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was revealed in a story by ProPublica, it wasn’t just the expensive gifts or luxury trips Crow gave the justice that caught my attention.
It wasn’t even the fact that the billionaire bought Thomas’ mother’s house and allows her to live there rent-free so he can one day turn it into a museum dedicated to the justice that I found most startling.
What astounded me was the extremely problematic (and very odd) collection that Crow exhibits at his Dallas estate and other properties.
I don’t mean his paintings by Renoir, Monet and Stuart, or the objects related to American history, like silver forged by Paul Revere and a helmet that belonged to President Dwight Eisenhower. It was the objects he’s collected that relate to some darker parts of history. In particular, the Nazi stuff.
Crow’s Third Reich collection is known to include an autographed copy of Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf”; Hitler’s personal linens and tableware (decorated with Nazi symbols); and two paintings by the art-school reject who slaughtered millions while chancellor of Germany.
If you’re thinking that collecting Nazi memorabilia is a total nefarious-rich-person cliche, don’t worry. It gets weirder.
On the Dallas estate’s rear lawn is an area Crow has dubbed the Garden of Evil. It holds a collection of statues of former communist dictators including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Fidel Castro, as well as philosopher Karl Marx and Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.
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https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/art-exhibits/harlan-crow-clarence-thomas-17905145
This guy Harlan Crow
owns the 6 Just-Uses of SCROTUS.
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