Robert Delford Brown Jr. was a painter, sculptor, performance artist, and philosopher whose provocative works challenged both the art world and the world at large. Brown, who had undergone hip surgery and walked with a cane, was known to have been scouting locations for an art project involving several rafts when he went missing on Marhc 20 of 2009. He was found dead four days later in the Cape Fear River in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he had moved a few years ago. His death was ruled an accidental drowning.