David Brown, Sculptor
David Lee Brown, a well-known metal sculptor and Pratt Institute arts educator who lived in Springs before moving to Southampton some years ago, died on Friday after an illness. He was 77.
Mr. Brown was born in Detroit in January 1939 to Raymond Brown and the former Ruth Crowthers and graduated from Cass Tech High School there.
During his high school years he worked as a model builder for Minoru Yamasaki, who designed the original World Trade Center in New York City.
He attended North Carolina State University’s architecture program, studying with Eduardo Catalano, and pursued graduate studies in sculpture at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
After working as the head of the Design Department at the Worcester Craft Center in Massachusetts, he worked with the sculptor José de Rivera in New York City, where he settled with his wife, the former Andrea Samagochian, whom he married in 1960.
Mr. De Rivera chose Mr. Brown to work with him on the sculpture commissioned for the United States Pavilion at the Brussels World Fair.
Professional commissions of Mr. Brown’s sculptures include large-scale installations at the Fort Lauderdale International Airport, Gimbel’s Department Store in Philadelphia, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and smaller and medium-scale works in numerous private, corporate, and museum collections around the world.
The Grace Borgenicht Gallery represented Mr. Brown’s work in New York City. Mr. Brown was best known for his often very large abstract stainless steel sculptures, many buffed to achieve a distinctive mirror-like polish.
His family said he was a devoted design professor, teaching for more than 50 years at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, influencing thousands of students across generations.
A lover of design, architecture, materials, and structures, Mr. Brown also consulted at the Walt Disney Imagineering studio when it operated in Wainscott. His projects at the studio included a free-walking, full-sized robot dinosaur and designing and fabricating the exhibit for a national tour of the United States Bill of Rights original document.
Mr. Brown’s interests were many, and his hobbies ambitious. Early in his career he raced bicycles competitively. He also competed nationally as an oarsman, winning a national title with the Detroit Boat Club’s eight-man boat. In recent years he enjoyed rowing his single shell in Springs and on Mecox Bay.
He was passionate about ice boating — building by hand the first DN boat he raced — and served for several years as the commodore of the Mecox Bay Ice Yacht Club.
In recent years, he was an active and dedicated member of the Southampton Village Volunteer Ambulance Service. He is survived by his wife, his daughter, Victoria Brown of Manhattan, and one granddaughter.
Memorial contributions have been suggested to the Southampton Village Volunteer Ambulance, P.O. Box 832, Southampton 11969.
A memorial gathering may be announced at a later date.