David Bromberg, Nancy Josephson are leaving Wilmington. But first, she's hosting a major art show

After spending 22 years in downtown Wilmington, during which time he rekindled his music career to the delight of fans nationwide and earned the first Grammy Award nomination of his vaunted career, multi-instrumentalist David Bromberg is leaving Delaware.

Bromberg and his wife, artist/musician Nancy Josephson, are selling their four-story, 8,900-square-foot North Market Street home, which also houses a violin shop he established.

"It's something we always kind of wanted to do: end up in New York," Josephson, a New York native, says of their move, which will put them only a few blocks from Central Park. "We couldn't believe we could get an apartment for what we got it for.

"People were dropping prices left and right. We lucked out."

In the midst of the topsy-turvy pandemic, the artistic power couple purchased a 1,000-square-foot New York City apartment on 104th Street in Manhattan Valley in 2021 with Bromberg returning to the city where he first made his mark as a burgeoning talent during New York's '60s folk revival.

With their building now on the market for $799,000 through Wilmington-based Virtus Realty Advisors, Bromberg and Josephson have been splitting time between Wilmington and New York. They may end up getting a second apartment in Wilmington to store some of the items accumulated over the years in their spacious corner building, she says.

Last year, Bromberg may have closed out his touring career with a farewell show at Beacon Theater in New York, but Josephson, a self-taught artist, is still busy and preparing a final major art show in Wilmington this weekend.

'Joy Factory' coming to Blue Streak this weekend

Josephson's show, her largest ever in Wilmington, is titled "The Temple and the Joy Factory." She will hold its opening reception Friday at Ellen Bartholomaus' Blue Streak Gallery (1721 Delaware Ave.) in Wilmington's Forty Acres neighborhood from 5 to 7 p.m.

The show, which will include about 30 pieces of mixed-media sculptures made with beads and sequins, including busts and "trophy pieces" influenced by her many trips to Haiti over the years, will run for a month as part of the city's May Art Loop.

Some of the displayed works will date back as far as 15 years, but the vast majority were created during the pandemic through recent months.

"It's going to be big for a small space," she says of the show, much of which was part of Josephson's recent yearlong "Flow-Through: The Time Markers" exhibit at Mariposa Museum in Peterborough, New Hampshire. "A lot of heavily beaded sculptures."

You will probably see her most recent "art car" parked out front ― a familiar, yet eye-catching sight in the city. Her new 2019 Honda CRV is in the process of being heavily beaded and festooned with pieces of her art, something she has done for decades and first started as a tribute to her late father.

"I'm not playing. I'm going to attach stuff to the hood and have a whole scene on the roof," she says. "It's going to be too high to get into parking garages. I don't want to decapitate any of my pieces when I go to the Philly airport."

The deal: Chicago to Wilmington

The tidy red brick building at 601 N. Market St. being sold by Bromberg and Josephson was a key part of the deal they struck with the city, prompting them to decamp from Chicago's Hyde Park area for downtown Wilmington in 2002.

Then-Mayor James Baker wanted to beef up the artistic offerings in downtown, which at the time was in the midst of a downturn and not yet dotted with luxury apartment buildings, fine restaurants and venues such as The Queen.

In fact, it was across from the then-shuttered Queen ― more than a decade before the arrival of the La Fia and Merchant Bar restaurants at the intersection ― where Bromberg began relaunching his performance career after a 22-year break with small open-to-all blues and bluegrass jam sessions at a funky hangout named the 4W5 Cafe.

Their now-on-the-market home, which sits at the same intersection as the boutique Quoin Hotel & Restaurant and its underground bar Simmer Down, was fully renovated in 2002 when Bromberg and Josephson acquired the building from the city.

The property includes the 2,682-square-foot retail space on the first floor, now named Wintsch Violins, and three floors of residential space: 2,689 square feet on the second floor, 2,301 square feet on the third floor and 1,228 on the top floor.

They took control of the then-city-owned site in exchange for several years of arts education projects including Bromberg's jam sessions, concerts and a music festival, along with Josephson's work on community arts projects.

The couple paid $600,000 to renovate the property. The city previously had received an offer of $175,000 from a potential buyer, but officials decided the deal with Bromberg and Josephson was the better arrangement for the city.

A condition of the deal was that if the couple moved in the first four years after their arrival, they would owe the city $280,000. In the end, they lasted nearly a quarter of a century.

Their road into (and out of) Wilmington

So how did Bromberg and Josephson, who had no personal connection to Wilmington, end up in Delaware's biggest city?

Bromberg's manager at the time, Stephen Bailey, accepted an offer to be the executive director of The Grand, where he worked until the summer of 2020 in the wake of the pandemic.

FLASHBACK Music legend David Bromberg on his farewell concert, Delaware future, next project

The couple would visit him and the historic venue, which was located only two blocks from what would become Bromberg's future home, spurring their interest in the then-stagnant downtown.

"It was pretty raw here, but we were comfortable with that," she says. "But you could see the change coming."

When it comes to looking back at their Delaware years, Josephson says she will miss their building and her expansive art studio it housed, along with the ease of living in Wilmington and her Delaware friends, although they will always be welcomed in New York, she says.

But these days, the more youthful (and busier) downtown is a bit much for the pair. Bromberg is 78 and Josephson is 69.

"We've aged out of it. We're not going to hip restaurants and hanging out at a bar. The vibrancy that's being infused is not who we are anymore," she says, noting she understands the irony of leaving Delaware for New York City in search of a slower pace of living. "It sounds ridiculous, but it's so much quieter in our apartment than it is here."

Have a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of Delaware Online/The News Journal at [email protected] or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and X (@ryancormier).

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: After 22 years in Wilmington, city's artistic power couple say goodbye