Later that day Allyn took Bette and Alyson to the on property climate controlled storage room where she housed twenty years of oils on canvases that were hidden away from the world until now. Both Bette and Alyson were in awe at what they saw. The curator and art aficionado wanted to jump in and start sorting and cataloging right away but after several hours of looking through the neat stacks Allyn talked them into returning to the house. She had an idea on how to bring “Season of Hell” back. This got Bette’s attention but they almost had to drag Alyson out of the warehouse.

Allyn led them to the library and pulled out boxes of archives for Season of Hell. After listening to Bette and Alyson talk about the state of the art multi-media interactive art center at the CAC she knew this should be the medium to recreate this famed piece and bring focus to the political climate of its time. They spent the rest of the day until dinner time going through old photos, articles, and documents while jotting down ideas on a legal pad.

When Bette left Allyn Barnes’ estate on late Sunday morning she was beyond herself with excitement about the exhibit. Since Alyson had taken the train from the city to visit her mother Bette offered to drive her back to Soho. When they got into Manhattan they didn’t want to part company so Alyson took Bette to several galleries where she had curated exhibits.

Bette was very impressed with Alyson’s work and based on all the ideas that they’d come up with, it only seemed natural that she should curate her mother’s exhibit for the CAC. They had dinner together and by the time they said their good-byes that evening Bette had persuaded Alyson to not only consult but to become the main curator for the Allyn Barnes collection. There were a handful of people that Allyn trusted of which Bette was one but Alyson knew that her mother wouldn’t appreciate having a lot of strangers in her home. She readily agreed to the proposition. This meant that for the next several months Bette would be making frequent trips to New York to work with Alyson. As they got closer to exhibition time Alyson would be spending time on the west coast too. This pleased both women tremendously as they had already become fast friends.