Danny Simmons, an artist, poet, gallerist and energetic cultural organizer who, along with his younger brothers, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and rapper Joseph Simmons, best known as Rave Run of the group Run-DMC, did much to promote the work of emerging black artists, has died. He was 72 years old.
His family announced the death in a statement on Monday, but did not reveal the location, date or cause.
Mr. Simmons emerged as a force in the Brooklyn art world in the 1990s as an artist, organizer and patron.
After leaving a comfortable job with the New York City government, he began painting abstract expressionist works that drew on African motifs and the influence of European and Latin American Surrealists. His first solo show was in New Haven, Conn. in 1993; Soon he began appearing in group and solo shows in galleries around New York.
But his influence on the city’s creative world went far beyond his canvases.
Recognizing how difficult it is for emerging black artists to gain attention, he and his brother Russell started a gallery in Manhattan in 1995. They called it Rush Arts, a reference to Russell’s nickname Rush.
Around the same time, Mr. Simmons created the Corridor Gallery – hence the name – in the front hall of his massive home in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Also in 1995, the three Simmons brothers founded the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation; It became the source of various initiatives including scholarships and grants for emerging artists.
For years, Mr. Simmons held poetry readings in his galleries and other venues. In 2001, he convinced Russell to create a poetry-focused version of “Def Comedy Jam”, the hugely successful comedy show on HBO that Russell had helped create and produce; The result, “Def Poetry Jam”, premiered on HBO in 2002. A stage version opened on Broadway that same year and won a Tony Award.
“Danny is a great artist, the real thing, a cultural hero,” Russell Simmons told The New York Times in 2004, adding jokingly: “Joey is a commercial artist, and I’m just an exploiter, a greedy one.”
Daniel Simmons Jr. was born on August 17, 1953, in Hollis, a neighborhood in eastern Queens that has produced a long list of hip-hop royalty, including rappers LL Cool J, Ja Rule and Young MC.
His parents were middle-class professionals with a strong intellectual bent: his father, Daniel Simmons Sr., was an absentee officer who taught black history at local colleges, and his mother, Evelyn, was a teacher who painted in her spare time.
He encouraged his children to pursue their passions, although it took Danny longer to do so than his brothers, who both emerged as prominent figures in the hip-hop scene in the early 1980s.
Mr. Simmons received a bachelor’s degree in social work from New York University and a master’s degree in public finance from Long Island University.
His graduate career was interrupted by his arrest in 1973 in connection with a campus drug raid. As part of his student job at the entrance of a dorm, he tipped off two FBI agents who were there to buy drugs from a dealer in the building. The agents accused him of being a collaborator.
Under the harsh Rockefeller drug laws of the time, Mr. Simmons faced a mandatory sentence of 15 years, although prosecutors told him they wanted to drop the charges. He confessed to his crime, remained in jail for about two years and then returned to complete his studies.
The experience later inspired him to create a full college scholarship for formerly incarcerated artists who wanted to complete their degrees.
Mr. Simmons has spoken openly about his struggle with drug addiction. He eventually checked into a rehabilitation facility in the early 1990s, and got sober shortly before starting his art career.
For more than a decade, she worked for the city’s Child Support Bureau (now the Office of Child Support Services). In the evenings and weekends, he began painting and organizing events for artists. But he was eager to do more.
In the early 1990s, he turned to his mother for advice.
“Go ahead and be an artist,” he recalled her saying. “No one will let you die of hunger.”
He quit his job in 1992 to pursue art full-time. He also wrote several books, including a novel about the 1980s New York art scene, “Three Days as the Crow Flies” (2003), and a blend of storytelling and art, “The Return of Two Dick Wiley” (2018).
He is survived by his wife, Keiya; a son, Jamil; a grandson; And his brother.
Mr. Simmons moved to Philadelphia in 2015, partly because he wanted to recapture the communal artistic energy he remembered from pre-gentrified Brooklyn.
The following year, he opened a new gallery, Rush Arts Philadelphia, and joined a program dedicated to painting large-scale murals around the city. He curated exhibitions in his own gallery and local museums and once again became a grassroots force in the arts, building a vibrant creative world from the ground up.
“We just need other artists that want to see us move forward, artists that want to show up,” He told The Idol Class magazine in 2022. “And we need people who are willing to do the work because of the culture, because it needs to be done.”
