On the Eve of Trump's Sentencing, an Unusual Art Gallery Opening

New York Times

10-01-2025

It was a bitterly cold January evening the night before President-elect Donald J. Trump was set to be sentenced in a Lower Manhattan courtroom, and an unusual array of figures was gathered in an art gallery in Chinatown that was filled with sketches from his trial.
They were there for the opening of the artist Isabelle Brourman's show 'Paper Trail,' a collection of the works she created when she joined the courtroom sketch artists documenting the political theater surrounding Mr. Trump's court battles last year in New York.
'Seeing her work is like watching HBO for the first time: You can do that?' said the MSNBC news anchor Lawrence O'Donnell, who stopped by the opening before returning to work that evening in preparation for Mr. Trump's sentencing. He had interviewed Ms. Brourman last spring about her unique way of drawing the once and future president in a courtroom setting.
Ms. Brourman, 31, rarely missed a day at Mr. Trump's civil fraud trial, capturing Mr. Trump in a frenetic, highly personal style populated by scribbled testimony and wild hand gestures. In that trial, a judge found Mr. Trump liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and lying about the value of his properties to receive more favorable terms on loans.
She went on to sketch his Manhattan criminal trial, where he was convicted on charges of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened his 2016 campaign.
The opening, at the Will Shott Gallery, drew some lawyers who worked on the civil trial, including Andrew Amer and Colleen Faherty, who worked on the team of Letitia James, New York's attorney general. They posed for a selfie with the artist.
The show also attracted important art world figures, including Drew Sawyer, a curator of the next Whitney Biennial, and Max Hollein, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's director and chief executive.
Mr. Hollein described Ms. Brourman's work as containing 'a palimpsest of truth, documentation and interpretation.'
Her expressive artworks are unlike the more realistic illustrations that court artists typically produce for news outlets in courtrooms where cameras are banned. And although she doesn't hide her political opinions — she voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election — her work has attracted praise from both sides of the aisle. During the civil trial, Ms. James, the state's attorney general, praised Ms. Brourman for bringing 'the courtroom to life.' Mr. Trump nodded approvingly and later sat for a portrait at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
The morning after the gallery opening, Ms. Brourman was already headed to Mr. Trump's sentencing for his criminal case. And later this month, she will head to his inauguration, with a spot reserved for her easel alongside commercial photographers. She also recently gained approval to paint the upcoming Senate confirmation hearings of Trump cabinet appointees like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth. She then plans to create work based on the upcoming trial of Luigi Mangione, who was charged in the murder of a health-care executive.
'It's a collaboration of personal vision and the chaotic unfurling of history,' Ms. Brourman said about her ongoing work documenting the Trump administration. 'It's not so much about Trump and his allies as it is about the freedom of expressing process and uncertainty.'
For her opening, Ms. Brourman had visited Times Square to recruit a man dressed as the Statute of Liberty to welcome visitors into the exhibition. But he canceled the appearance last minute. 'The Statue of Liberty stood me up!' Ms. Brourman exclaimed at the opening.
The gallery's dealer, Will Shott, mostly stood in the backroom talking to visitors and potential buyers about the Trump sketches, which varied in size from that of a large poster to the back of a napkin. Prices ranged between $2,250 and $7,250.
Mr. Shott first encountered Ms. Brourman over the summer, when they played on the same team in 'Drunk vs. Stoned,' an annual soccer game organized in Montauk, N.Y., by artists and art dealers. (Both were on the drunk team.) The pair later discussed the possibility of an exhibition timed in the weeks before Mr. Trump's inauguration; however, they hadn't anticipated that the president-elect would be sentenced the day after the show's opening.
'I think people get hung up on her imagery,' the dealer said. 'But this show is more about Isabelle than any subject matter. It's about this obsession with and infiltration of the political system — and how she gained respect from both sides without pandering to them.'