Free The Art of Secrets by Jim Klise Page B

it. Our book of Darger watercolors definitely needed a title before we auctioned it. I mean, to me, “Untitled” is about as interesting as a car without tires.
    Kendra suggested something creepy like
Naked Girls Fight Off Old Men.
She said it would generate a lot of interest from the general public.
    â€œBut wait, are they
girls
?” I asked. “A certain part of their anatomy says otherwise.”
    With a choking sound, Kendra indicated we had reached a place beyond her comfort zone. Mom said, “Now listen for a minute. The gender ambiguity doesn’t suggest that Darger was a pervert. Just the opposite. The research suggests he was truly an
innocent.
It’s possible this profoundly isolated man did not know there was a difference between boys and girls.”
    Anyway, best way to put it was, the gender of the kids in the album was dubious.
    Mr. Delacroix had shown us a list of Darger’s titles. A lot of them don’t make sense. Things like
At Jenny Richie.
Or
At Jenny Richie at Hard fury/2000 Feet Below.
Or
Sacred Heart: Battle of Marcocino.
The titles don’t exactly roll off the tongue.
    Darger also wrote a 15,000-page illustrated novel he called
Th
e Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion.
    I mean . . . right?
    Our mom knows way more about art than we do. She was an art major in college. No matter where we’ve lived, she’s always taken us to museums and taught us about artists. Mom deserves the credit for coming up with the title we used:
Dubious Figures Frolic in a Fantastical Dreamscape.
    The best part is thinking about what the money will mean to the Khans. They already moved into a new place. Picture it: This family goes from living in a cramped apartment in a so-so neighborhood to a Lincoln Park penthouse with marble floors and a sweeping view of Lake Michigan.
    Kendra and I started this thing, and it’s snowballing. Everybody is on board to transform this family’s life for the better. And the Darger artwork . . . obviously, that’s the key. We never could have expected that. It’s like a magic rabbit yanked out of a hat.
    To be honest, it still blows my mind that I am one of the people who got this going. For the rest of my life, no matter what else I do, I can tell myself:
How cool that you pulled that off. You changed that family’s life.
    Wait, sorry. That sounds self-centered. Your story isn’t about us. Put it this way, maybe your story can be about what happens when people come together to help each other. Even people who don’t really know each other. It’s the power of teamwork, right?
    Speaking of which, I should probably get onto the court. Otherwise, Coach P is gonna have me running drills until I puke.

Editorial: True art of people helping people
    HIGH SCHOOL fundraisers typically don’t make the news. After all, schools routinely plan events to help pay for sports programs, classroom computers, even music equipment.
    But the upcoming charity auction at the Highsmith School on Chicago’s Near North Side has made plenty of headlines this month. Among the items up for sale is a booklet of drawings by Chicago “outsider artist” Henry Darger (1892–1973). As numerous media sources have reported, the artwork was found in a discarded box left beside trash cans in a Lincoln Park alleyway. The drawings, which were authenticated this week, have been appraised at more than half a million dollars.
    Darger’s posthumous reputation among collectors is “one of the great stories of 20th-century art,” according to Mr. Jean Delacroix, an art teacher at Highsmith.
    The discovery has brought welcome public attention to a fundraiser that is more remarkable for a completely different reason: All the money raised will go to one specific student. Not to extracurricular activities, not to infrastructure, but