Insiders shocked by murdered NYC art dealer’s
secret life with escorts
Brent Sikkema was a high-culture aficionado whose final Instagram post was a sumptuous photo of the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris. He regularly rubbed elbows with luminaries such as Michelle Obama.
But the Manhattan art dealer — who was found stabbed to death at his home in Rio de Janeiro on January 15 — had a secret side.
Sikkema, 75, had fallen in love with and married a self-admitted male escort and, social media posts show, was a fixture on the gay scene in Cuba, Rio and Fire Island, NY, for a time.
He was also a devoted father embroiled in a bitter divorce that began in March 2022 and was ongoing at the time of his death, according to public records and Brazilian investigators.
Can a 'devoted' father be embroiled in a bitter divorce?
Alejandro Triana Prevez, 30, has been charged with Sikkema’s murder. Police say the Cuban national — who worked as a bodyguard for Sikkema and his husband during the pandemic — made the six-hour drive from Sao Paulo to Sikkema’s Rio rowhouse, and spent 14 hours surveilling the property before he entered and allegedly stabbed the art dealer 18 times in the neck and face while he lay in his bed.
The weapon may have been scissors, a box cutter or a screwdriver, according to Art Forum. Sikkema’s remains were found by his lawyer who had a key to his home.
Triana is also accused of stealing more than $30,000 in cash, which Sikkema had on hand to buy furniture for a new apartment in the beachfront Leblon neighborhood in Rio, police say.
Friends and former clients of the gallerist said they were in shock over his death and secret life.
“He was a kind soul, but I had no idea about his lifestyle,” said a longtime client who had worked with his Chelsea gallery, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., which represents contemporary artists such as Kara Walker and Brazil’s Vik Muniz. “He never spoke about his husband.”
The divorce action was started by his husband, Daniel Garcia Carrera Sikkema, and Sikkema was “panicked” because Garcia would not accept an amicable settlement, according to Brazilian police, who added that Garcia also wanted a sizable settlement from Sikkema.
Garcia’s attorneys declined to comment. Brazilian authorities have not suggested Garcia is involved in Sikkema’s murder.
Sikkema, who counted New Yorker theater critic Hilton Als and artist Muniz among his closest friends, married Daniel Garcia Carrero, 53, shortly before the birth of their son, Lucas, now 14, by surrogate in California. At the time of the birth, California did not recognize gay marriage, which is why Sikkema is listed as the “mother” on his son’s birth certificate, according to social media. Same sex unions were legalized in the state in 2013.
“When Luc was born, California birth certificates couldn’t recognize two fathers so I became his mother,” Sikkema joked in an Instagram post from May, 2016. “An honor to be in the company of mothers everywhere.”
According to Rio police, Garcia had demanded $6 million for Sikkema to see their son again.
It’s not clear when Sikkema fell in love with his husband, who he called Danny. But Garcia claims in a Spanish-language memoir, “Ticket to Paradise: The Cuban Revolution is the Story of Broken Dreams, Losses, Misery, Terror and Lies,” to have worked as a prostitute in Cuba and Spain. The book was written between 1997 and 1999, and published in 2006, according to an author’s note. In a forward written for the third edition of the book, in 2014, Garcia wrote that he is a “happily married man.”
If you can stand to read more of this sick story, please link to: When Luke was born
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