A proposed collaborative production
Hosts · Deborah Desilets & Dr. Glenn TobyArchitecture, art, music and service meet in one endeavor:
an oasis for public life, from Lincoln Road to the ocean.
Donation recipientThe Book Bank Foundation
↓Enter the storyOriginal conceptual artwork · Working proposal · September 2026
01 / The places we remember
Summer had a meeting place.
Warm brick. The edge of the pool. A neighborhood gathering in the water.Belonging has an architecture.
Stoops, streets and public spaces become part of a life. Lincoln Road asks us to carry that care forward.Two places. Distinct histories.
NYC Parks identified Morris Lapidus Associates as the pool complex’s architect in 1966. Kosciuszko Pool opened in 1971, a decade after Lapidus’s 1960 Lincoln Road redesign.
The two places become cultural bookends: environments made for people, and a question about what we preserve for the next generation.
NYC Parks archive, 1966, pp. 110–112 ↗The places we remember / The art we carry
The King’s Exhibition brings Basquiat’s visual legacy into a gathering of art and community. Its exhibition history includes limited-edition serigraphs after Jean-Michel Basquiat, alongside work by local and international artists.
In February 2020, ABC Columbia reported a King’s Exhibition show in Columbia, South Carolina, with part of the proceeds benefiting The Book Bank Foundation. That connection between art and service is part of Glenn’s contribution to this shared invitation.
Deborah’s interpretive frame
A street for cars.
What comes next?
A public place.
Room for people.
Let the horizon
open.
Deborah’s “From Grid to Green”: from streets organized around cars to public spaces for walking, gathering and joy.
Deborah’s brochure frames pedestrianization as a change in what a street is for: moving beyond the automobile-centric grid toward an “architecture of joy,” public gathering and a greener city.
Photographs and “Water Mirrors Life”: Deborah Desilets’s supplied brochure, page 1. “From Grid to Green” interpretation: page 2.
A shared invitation
The hosts bring complementary experience to the same endeavor: honoring Morris Lapidus’s legacy through a living cultural invitation, with Lincoln Road’s 200–300 blocks and the ocean at its heart.
Host / Morris Lapidus Foundation
Deborah’s collaboration with Lapidus, archival work and curatorial practice bring architectural memory into the present. Representing the foundation, she describes a vision for Lincoln Road’s 200–300 blocks as an oasis to the ocean. That architectural initiative is the shared destination.
Deborah on Lapidus · MDPL ↗Host / The King’s Exhibition
Brooklyn-born, with musical roots in Queens, Glenn connects his life in culture to community service. The King’s Exhibition, The Global Dance Party and the Book Bank Foundation offer ways to gather, engage and support people around the architectural purpose.
Explore Glenn’s story ↗02 / Culture moves with people
From the spaces that hold us
to the sounds we carry.
A conversation across generations
The connections are cultural and generational. These histories do not require an invented meeting or a shared pool experience.
Lincoln Road is redesigned in 1960. Basquiat is born in Brooklyn that year.
Kosciuszko Pool opens in 1971. Basquiat forms the band later known as Gray in 1979.
Toby, Brooklyn-born and musically developed in Queens, records as Mr. Sweety G. At the Place to Be dates to 1981.
Deborah begins working with Lapidus in 1994. Toby founds The Book Bank Foundation in 1997.
The musical story continues / DJ Glenn “Sweety G” Toby
A beat gathers people.
A place gives them somewhere to belong.
Glenn’s present-day mix and broadcast platform carries his musical identity forward. In this collaboration, that energy could invite new audiences into the art, the listening room and the public life of Lincoln Road.
Explore the music at its source03 / Art becomes a meeting place
The King’s Exhibition brings works after Jean-Michel Basquiat into a cultural encounter. In dialogue with Deborah’s architectural and curatorial perspective, that encounter can ask a larger question: what do we want to make possible together?
Enter The King’s ExhibitionThe meeting point / HOSTS
HostDeborah DesiletsHostDr. Glenn Toby
The shared destination is Lincoln Road. Art offers a way to gather around it through a proposed exhibition, interpretation and conversation that connect cultural memory with public possibility.
BitBasel’s 2026 deck places The King’s Exhibition within its Art Week program at Sagamore. Its platform for exhibitions, forums and cultural gathering gives this encounter a wider context, connecting the architectural story of Morris Lapidus with the artistic legacy of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
The supplied deck describes December 2–5, 2026. Final participation, program and partner responsibilities remain subject to agreement. Artist references do not establish an estate partnership.
An interlude / Wall of Sound
KISSA · KISSA · KISSA
Take a seat. Let the record hold the room.
Let a shared moment become a connection.
From the curator’s notebook
The art of paying attention
Inspired by Japan’s jazz listening cafés, Deborah’s developing KISSA concept brings The King’s Exhibition and Water Mirrors Life into one intimate encounter with recorded music, art and architectural memory.
Her curatorial and archival perspective meets Glenn’s art, music and community work. The room becomes a way into their shared purpose: an oasis for public life, from Lincoln Road’s 200–300 blocks to the ocean.
Inside the proposed experience
A carefully selected listening program could give recorded music and contextual storytelling the room to be heard. Curation would determine the selections and secure the necessary permissions.
Art, architectural interpretation and selected archival material could sit in dialogue with the music. Deborah’s Wall of Sound is the curatorial thread; The King’s Exhibition and Water Mirrors Life bring the encounter into view.
A proposed learning strand could connect the encounter to books, reflection and mentoring through the Book Bank Foundation. The aim is to carry cultural attention into young lives and back into the shared public-space mission.
A developing proposal. Program, date, venue arrangements and participating works remain to be confirmed.
Help bring the listening room to life
Proposed support could fund paid curation, archive preparation and rights clearance, sound and installation, accessible participation and learning materials.
Discuss support for this experience04 / What we pass on
The art brings us together. The music holds our attention. What we carry out of the room matters just as much.
Culture can leave something with someone
The Book Bank Foundation brings literacy and community service into the shared endeavor. A proposed learning program could pair books, mentoring and exhibition experiences, helping young people turn an encounter with culture into questions, confidence and opportunity.
The Rhythm of Revenue, Glenn’s book and leadership framework, connects ownership, strategy, philanthropy and cultural stewardship. Alongside Global Dance Party’s music, it could inform conversations about sustaining creative work and passing opportunity forward. Those proposed learning experiences serve the Morris Lapidus Foundation’s central architectural purpose; programs and delivery partners would be agreed together.
Lincoln Road.
An oasis to the ocean.
03 / Water and reflection
Deborah’s brochure connects “From Grid to Green” with an “architecture of joy” and ecological sustainability. Its “Water Mirrors Life” image brings reflection into that story: a street becomes a place to walk and gather, and the shared vision opens toward the ocean.
05 / The architectural purpose comes into view
Deborah describes work with Sobe Sky Development (DiLido) and Sagamore toward revitalizing Lincoln Road’s 200–300 blocks as an oasis to the sea.
She calls it the fulfillment of Lapidus’s last wish: bringing an awareness of the ocean into the city.
Conceptual artwork and geographic bookends · Not an approved site plan.
The architectural setting / A supplied concept
The 2023 community renewal proposal imagines Lincoln Road’s 200–300 blocks as a landscaped pedestrian place, with shade, water and changing art experiences between Washington and Collins Avenues.
The initiative’s focus
A proposed setting for walking, gathering and cultural life. The landscape and public-art ideas give the shared architectural purpose a tangible place.
The wider connection
The broader 100–300 renewal proposal also includes an Artwalk and beach-entry concept on the 100 block, connecting the inland corridor to the Beach Walk.
Deborah’s vision / Lincoln Road 200–300
Help turn a passageway into a place to belong. Deborah imagines the last blocks toward the ocean filled with walking, music, art and everyday encounters, in a cultural dialogue with Brooklyn’s people’s pool. Charitable support can help carry that public purpose forward through a clearly agreed initiative.
Interpretive vision and planning estimates from Deborah Desilets’s recorded discussion, supplied September 2026.
Be part of what people can share.
Bring your support to a conversation about cultural access, learning and community, with The Book Bank Foundation as the intended charitable recipient.
~$800k
Deborah’s proposed first mobilization: begin moving bus activity from the 200–300 blocks. This does not fund complete street closure.
Initial planning estimate$4–6m
Deborah’s discussed next-phase range covers new bus-station arrangements, relocation and the work toward full road closure. Scope and costs require confirmation.
Proposed next-phase range~$28m
The broader activation vision for the 200–300 blocks, described in Deborah’s discussion and the April 2026 memo. A planning horizon, not a verified funding gap.
Broader planning estimateA progression of proposed scope, not amounts to add together. Deborah’s estimates are not approved budgets or a fixed campaign target. Delivery depends on confirmed scope, budgets and required approvals.
06 / A clear first step
Proposed first mobilization
$800,000
Deborah describes this initial estimate as a way to begin relocating bus activity from Lincoln Road’s 200–300 blocks, opening a path toward a more pedestrian public place.
What this first step means
Initial bus-relocation mobilization. It does not pay for complete street closure or the full public-space vision.
What needs to be confirmed
A formal scope, transit arrangements, agency permissions, delivery budget and any initiative-specific donation agreement.
Deborah’s planning discussion
She describes a proposed $4–6 million next phase for broader transit arrangements and work toward full closure, within a roughly $28 million wider vision. These estimates describe different scales of scope; they are not amounts to add together or an approved campaign total.
What support can make possible / proposed scope
Help advance a defined Lincoln Road contribution: design development, public-space interpretation or an authorized improvement within the agreed 200–300-block scope.
Accountability: approved scope, documented recipient, permissions, cost plan and delivery milestones.
Underwrite The King’s Exhibition’s proposed contribution alongside Water Mirrors Life / Wall of Sound: curation, confirmed works, transport, insurance, installation and accessible public interpretation.
Accountability: agreed object list, rights and loan terms, exhibition budget and program report.
Support a selected, rights-cleared archive phase: inventory, conservation assessment, digitization and interpretation of architectural or music-history materials stewarded by Deborah and other owners.
Accountability: an itemized scope, ownership and access terms, and a record of materials preserved.
Develop a costed program with Book Bank: books, mentoring, guided exhibition experiences and conversations about creative ownership informed by The Rhythm of Revenue.
Accountability: agreed audience, delivery partners, participation measures and a learning-program report.
Choose your contribution
Choose a charitable contribution to explore with The Book Bank Foundation. Give toward a purpose you can understand and agree, with reporting defined together. These levels do not purchase project outcomes or promised benefits; selecting an amount makes no payment.
$100–$999
Give $100$1,000–$9,999
Give $1,000$10,000–$49,999
Give $10,000$50,000–$249,999
Discuss a $50,000 gift$250,000–$999,999
Discuss a $250,000 gift$1 million and above
Discuss a $1,000,000 giftPrefer another amount? You can edit your selection on the giving page.
Choose another amount ↗Charitable support / A shared public purpose
A place to pause. A story to discover. A chance to learn and connect. Your support can help give this cultural encounter a public purpose, with an initiative-specific gift defined together with Book Bank.
Glenn’s Brooklyn story connects personal experience to culture and service. The King’s Exhibition brings art into that journey. Book Bank’s established literacy, mentoring and outreach work connects the exhibition to people’s lives. Its history includes art events supporting community service.
Global Dance Party gathers people through music. The Rhythm of Revenue contributes a perspective on ownership, leadership and sustaining creative work. Together, these connections could support books, mentoring and accessible cultural experiences around the Lapidus initiative.
You can discuss support for learning, cultural access or another defined initiative purpose. Agree the use of your gift and how its impact will be reported before payment. This is charitable participation, not an investment, equity or a promised financial return.
Help make belonging part of the story.
Donation recipient
501(c)(3) public charity · EIN 02-0722757
Book Bank is the intended charitable recipient for this exhibition initiative. Choose a defined purpose with the foundation, or support its existing work through general giving.
Project delivery depends on confirmed budgets, partner agreements and required agency approvals. Arrange an initiative-specific gift with Book Bank so its purpose and reporting are agreed before payment.
Opens Book Bank’s official general giving page. A general donation supports Book Bank’s work; it is not automatically earmarked for the Lapidus initiative.
Contact Book Bank to agree the campaign designation before payment. Or prepare a conversation note below.
07 / Your place in the story
A founding conversation begins with the part of this vision that matters to you: a public place, a cultural encounter, a preserved voice, a young person’s opportunity.
Together, define the contribution, the people responsible for delivering it and the evidence of what your support makes possible.
What a donor conversation should offer
A defined public benefit. Clear reporting. Meaningful cultural access. Optional, approved recognition. A role in a legacy that continues through people.
