Bill Burroughs in back bedroom waiting for company, he’d arrived from South America in August & we stayed together in my apartment till December working on _Yage Letters_ and _Queer_ manuscripts – Ace Books’d printed first paperback _Junky_ edition that Spring. “I come home from work [at N.Y. World- Telegram, newspaper copyboy] 4:45 and we talk till one A.M. or later . . . am all hung up in a great psychic marriage with him for the month —,” so I wrote to Neal Cassady, September 4, 1953.
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Subject ID142148
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Depiction IDeb9c79bf-860b-4bb2-9f54-063d71f4fab3
Subject ID142148
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Created2026-05-22
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleBill Burroughs in back bedroom waiting for company, he’d arrived from South America in August & we stayed together in my apartment till December working on _Yage Letters_ and _Queer_ manuscripts – Ace Books’d printed first paperback _Junky_ edition that Spring. “I come home from work [at N.Y. World- Telegram, newspaper copyboy] 4:45 and we talk till one A.M. or later . . . am all hung up in a great psychic marriage with him for the month —,” so I wrote to Neal Cassady, September 4, 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/142148
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Depiction ID7939308b-4c2c-4525-9477-fa4a8d807502
Subject ID205209
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleMe asleep, snapped by Peter Orlovsky in our little whitewash-walled room Tangier 1961
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/205209
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Depiction ID1b0719c3-f2d1-4d94-b5d5-f49070572b3f
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titlePeter O. sleeping in our small room Tangier 1961. Did "Sex Experiments" there.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/213282
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Depiction ID3a84beb5-0386-42f4-8ab9-3ac8d3ce07d6
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleMy uncle Abe Ginsberg, Daughters of Israel Geriatric Facility, West Orange, New Jersey, April 13, 1986. He was too weak to sip from a straw. He lifted his hand as I stood at the foot of the bed with camera. He died a week and half later. He had whispered, “I love you” when I first came in his room.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/144252
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Subject ID150441
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titlePeter Orlovsky (b. 1933 –) visiting his family — Lafcadio then age 47 had lived with us S.F – N.Y. 1955 – ’61 & intermittent years later on; Mother Katherine aged 78 totally deaf lip-reading some after botched mastoid operation N.Y. Eye & Ear Hospital 1933, drunken surgeon; Laff’s twin sister Maril who’d roomed with Peter & me East 2’nd Street Lower East Side 1959 while attending baby-nurse school in Jersey, later a half-dozen years she quit hospital job angry hearing other nurse voices’ “filthy gossip” she said about Me and My Brother, Robert Frank’s film on Orlovskys— all this two decades before this moment. From second floor flat on lonely Cottontail Road they needed taxi for any heavy shopping with monthly Social Service Indemnity checks at Supermarket a mile away in Center Moriches, Long Island. July 26, 1987.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/150441
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleNeal Cassady & I went upstairs to attic at Millbrook estate near Poughkeepsie, big house where Tim Leary’s Castalia Foundation was then experimenting with psychedelic DMT, a half hour trip. Here Neal rests with eyes closed watched over by Susan Metzner in charge of holding the vial of clear liquid, just injected. I’d driven up from N.Y. with Kesey’s Merry Pranksters in their bus, Fall 1964.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/143978
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Depiction ID5a27e943-a91c-4d7f-9d8f-93f71a4c88b2
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleWilliam S. Burroughs sitting up in back bedroom waiting for my company...
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/142167
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Depiction ID2065665f-acdd-42c1-a036-92a735e7fb66
Subject ID143963
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleWilliam S. Burroughs looking serious, sad lover’s eyes, afternoon light in window, cover of just-published _Junkie_ propped in shadow above right shoulder, Japanese kite against Lower East Side hot water flat’s old wallpaper. He’d come up from South America & Mexico to stay with me editing Yage Letters and Queer manuscripts. New York Fall 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/143963
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Depiction ID169c1e54-1391-4764-b7e7-b50ea42ec645
Subject ID172700
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineCorcoran Collection (Gift of Betsy Karel)
subject_titleTemporary Marriage Certificate
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/172700
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Depiction IDd412b8e6-b8e2-4f9a-80eb-34c9d9c75b6b
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleCarl Solomon in his Prince Street apartment several years after we were locked up together in residence on Sixth Floor ward, New York State Psychiatric Institute. He got shock treatments, introduced me to Jean Genet’s _Miracle of the Rose_ and Antonin Artaud’s _Van Gogh, The Man Suicided by Society_ translations, I stayed eight months, weekends off. Afterwards, working mid-town at his uncle’s Ace Books publications, he gave Kerouac small advance on first _On the Road_ sketches (scroll later rejected), saw Jaime DeAngulo’s classic _Indian Tales_ first hard-back through press, & edited William Burroughs’ _Junkie_ paperback first edition. New York, 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/142169
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Depiction ID9bc17dab-2ee1-4c4b-82f6-7d4115287729
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Ann Solomon
subject_titleEleanor, Chicago
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/92939
typeimage
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Providernga
Depiction ID39b62d10-7f3a-4e1c-8946-5dd94a3b610d
Subject ID143969
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_title“Now Jack as I warned you far back as 1945, if you keep going home to live with your ‘Memère’ you’ll find yourself wound tighter and tighter in her apron strings till you’re an old man and can’t escape…” William Seward Burroughs camping as an André Gideian sophisticate lecturing the earnest Thomas Wolfean All-American youth Jack Kerouac who listens soberly dead-pan to “the most intelligent man in America” for a funny second’s charade in my living room 206 East 7th Street Apt 16, Manhattan, one evening Fall 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/143969
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Depiction IDd451ba87-66fc-4a6e-9b23-210289560285
Subject ID142147
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleHerbert E. Huncke, author _The Evening Sun Turned Crimson_, who introduced "hip" vocabulary & attitudes to writers later labeled "Beat", his room Hotel Elite, N.E. corner 8th Avenue and 51'st street diagonally opposite Madison Square Garden. Rare glimpse of Huncke, then hustling bread on Times Square, strung-out - he fixed at the sink. Saw him infrequently that season, though we'd known each other well since 1945, found his room to say good bye, leaving New York to hitch south, Mexico and Bay area, here just before Christmas, Manhattan 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/142147
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Depiction IDb383eeb8-456b-4d3d-96f0-9005f1c3d4cd
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleBill Burroughs, more friendly + open than I realized at the time - 1953 - really pleased!
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/163963
typeimage
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Providernga
Depiction IDaefd4e84-8a34-481a-ab00-197692d08e2b
Subject ID142208
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleBill must've said something funny from the floor, we were taking snapshots of each other on same couch, my $13.00 Kodak Retina pawn-shop camera in Burroughs' hands. He stayed in the apartment East 7th Street between Avenues B & C most of that Fall 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/142208
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Depiction ID5c8f6bb5-8efd-485d-964b-5a91d1121c97
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift from the Estate of Kazuko Oshima
subject_titleRobert Frank, Boulder, Colorado
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/152657
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Depiction IDd197303f-21fa-4aad-9973-a5f4b94827b9
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineTrellis Fund
subject_titlePhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/118320
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Depiction ID6ce0e169-3379-4b71-97ef-be92c6c31a06
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineCorcoran Collection (Gift of Betsy Karel)
subject_titlePinkey and Tabitha, Room 28, Hotel St. Paul
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/172701
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Depiction ID68963832-1b00-4e38-a3d4-2e59bc01677c
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleLou Reed, poet-musician (hero to avant-guard Czechoslovak intellectual rock-band dissident "Plastic People of the Universe" defended from government persecution by playwright Vaclav Havel and his Charter 77 friends) at make-up table in green room, public Theater Lafayette Street New York, invited by impresario Rose Lesniak (above) to Master Ceremonies, Premiere of Poetry- Music Video Clips by Anne Waldman ("uh! oh! plutonium") and myself ("Father Death Blues"), September 1984.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/213308
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlinePatrons' Permanent Fund
subject_titleWyoming
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/118413
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Depiction ID68f042e2-5838-4aa2-b125-97bc3c030fe4
Subject ID160744
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleLiving Theater genius Julian Beck 48th Street New York hospital room, his stomach-abdomen lining cancer allowed remission for the next year while he made films & video & theater & books from Zurich to Miami; “Death is the ultimate corruption,” he announced, that day I visited, Medical Arts Center, May 1984.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/160744
typeimage