A White House sale just missed!

I bought this painting around 2007 from a private art dealer, never having heard of Joseph Delaney (1904-1991), but knowing his brother Beauford Delaney was a famous black artist. I loved the scene because as a New Yorker born and raised, I had cut my teeth shopping at the famous department stores on Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, with Macy's being perhaps my favorite. The bustle of the garment district and the unusual vertical format captured my attention, along with the colorful scheme. I found out that Joseph Delaney was a prominent NYC painter who had participated in the Washington Square outdoor art show for decades and he worked  under the WPA art project, winning a prestigious scholarship from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation. Never being a shrinking violet, I wrote to Oprah Winfrey and the White House,  thinking that either the former, known for her extensive collection of work by African American artists or our new president, Barack Obama, might be interested.  I set the price in the lower five figures. Well I never heard from Oprah, but I did hear from William Allman, the long-time White House curator, who couldn't have been nicer. For several months we went back and forth, with Allman trying to present the painting at a White House collections committee meeting (or the equivalent) but because Obama was just settling in, that meeting kept being postponed. Finally after several months had transpired, I was relating this story at a family pre-wedding breakfast that included my second cousin, who with his wife have established two foundations to support educational and immigration causes, and he expressed interest in buying the painting if the White House did not. In fact that is what ended up transpiring and the painting was dropped off at the foundation offices in Greenwich Village. What an adventure!!!