The Quad Cities River Bandits and Figge Art Museum are teaming up to celebrate the intersection of baseball, history, and art with the donation of Hank Aaron, a painting by American contemporary artist Preston Sampson.
The work, gifted to the Figge by River Bandits owner Dave Heller and his wife June Heller, was presented during a press conference Thursday, March 26 at Modern Woodmen Park, before being transferred to the museum for public display.
Located near one another along the Mississippi River, Modern Woodmen Park (209 Gaines St., Davenport) and the Figge (225 W. 2nd St.) have long been anchors of downtown Davenport.
This partnership highlights how two neighboring institutions are working together to strengthen and improve the cultural life of the QC, less than two weeks before the River Bandits’ 2026 home opener.
“I’ve known Preston Sampson for nearly 40 years. He’s a true American original—a brilliant and internationally renowned artist celebrated for his dynamic figurative paintings blending vibrant color, rhythmic energy, and cultural storytelling,” said River Bandits owner Dave Heller. “His art is a journey through America’s last half-century, depicted in colorful and impressionistic expression, and we could not be more proud to display his world-class expressionist pieces right here in the Quad Cities, both at Modern Woodmen Park and at the Figge Art Museum.”
Sampson, a native of West Palm Beach, Fla., is a contemporary artist focused on vibrant, rhythmic, and narrative-driven work that explores the African-American experience, memory, and ancestral guidance. His art is characterized by intense color, symbolic figures in motion, and a commitment to documenting Black history, resilience, and joy.
Heavily influenced by Social Realism and social narrative painters such as Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, and Reginald Marsh, Sampson emerged in the mid-1980s with works that elegantly merge the figurative with vibrant fluid color palettes, based on themes that depict the dignity and pride of the Black community.
The beauty of Sampson’s work is founded upon his mastery of rendering the human form, exceptional ability to capture human emotion, intriguing blending of mixed-media and collage that provides even deeper nuance to his narratives, all in a dynamic, fluid field of warm colors, according to his bio.
His paintings capture the deeper meaning of the sport beyond the field of play. Sampson’s work not only pays homage to sports, but uses athletics as a metaphor for meritocracy and teamwork. His work highlights athletes not only as competitors, but as figures who shape conversations about identity, sport, and community, his bio says.
Heller owns over 30 of Sampson’s pieces. He had first met him in Washington, D.C., after getting his undergrad degree at Brown, master’s at Oxford and taught a year at Yale. Heller saw a Sampson work in a Washington art gallery and was hooked.
“This piece just grabbed me by the neck, this explosion of color,” he recalled Thursday of Sampson’s painting. He did the Hank Aaron piece in 2015 and it had been hanging in Heller’s office.
“Art is not my thing. But that piece just spoke to me in a way that nothing ever happened before,” the team owner said of his first D.C. impression. “And I went to buy it and I was telling the owner of the gallery how great it was. She said to me, the artist is local, I'd love to introduce you. And a few weeks later, I met for the first time my dear friend Preston Sampson. And we have had a nearly 40-year friendship ever since then. And I've fallen in love with his art over and over and over and over again. And I've come to collect his art.
“He's come to become one of my best friends in the world,” Heller said. “To see his art just continue to evolve and change and grow to the point where now he has two of his paintings hanging in the National Gallery of Art Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. is just mind-blowing.
"And it's also a reaffirmation of everything that this country stands for, that you can be the son of a sharecropper and you can just through your sheer talent and will and perseveration, perseverance, become a nationally renowned and recognized artist whose work hangs in the Smithsonian, whose work hangs at the University of Maryland – his alma mater -- and so many other institutions, and whose work as of today will now hang in the best museum in the state of Iowa, the Figge Museum," he said.
“I am so proud to be able to donate to the Figge this Hank Aaron piece on behalf of myself, my beautiful wife June, to make this something that is accessible to everybody in our community every day of the year and allow them all to fall in love with Preston's work, just as I did nearly 40 years ago,” Heller added.
The painting donated by Heller and his wife honors baseball legend Hank Aaron (1934-2021), whose record-breaking career and enduring dignity made him one of the most influential figures in American sports history. Aaron’s early professional career included a formative season in the Midwest with the Eau Claire Bears, where he later recalled finding acceptance and encouragement that helped shape his future.
He played for the Milwaukee Braves (1954-65), broke Babe Ruth’s career home-run record (with his 715th) in April 1974 with Atlanta, returned to the Milwaukee Brewers in 1975-76, and his 755 career homers were later eclipsed by Barry Bonds in 2007.
Connecting with viewers
Like a batter and the speeding ball from the mound, Sampson said of his art: “My intention as an artist is to create an immediate and visceral connection with the viewer. I make it a priority to represent the positive aspects of our history as African-Americans. Long after we are gone, hopefully, the art will remain as a testament to both our culture and our community.”
Sampson, who still lives in the D.C. area, said he’s been very blessed in his career and that Heller is his biggest collector.
“I have been very fortunate to have my work included in quite a few national and international collections. But this in particular means more to me than most things I've done. Not only because it helps expand and gives my work to another broader audience in this country, but it's also my friend that really means a lot to me,” the artist said. “Hank Aaron means so much to me from multifaceted, the connections that I have. I grew up in West Palm Beach, Florida in the 60s, segregation, Jim Crow.”
He got to meet Black baseball players and as kids were treated warmly. In July 1973, at age 13, Sampson said he was in person at Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium to see Aaron hit his 698th and 699th home runs.
His Aaron painting represents more than the legendary ball player, Sampson said. “It represents his ascension through the struggles, how he kind of emerges from this, color and different things that it's more to me than baseball. It is culture, it is perseverance, it is steadfast. And to maintain his professional greatness. During the time we were breaking Babe Ruth's record, the things that he went through made the people, especially the younger people. But that's part of my charge as an artist is to educate, and to give context to not only this baseball player, but the other parts of it in the painting.”
“This means a tremendous amount to me and I'm so happy and proud to be able to share my work with you,” Sampson said. “My mother, who was not college educated, was just a woman, beautiful, strong woman, and she didn't understand my work. I went to art school, I'm a trained artist. But also too, if regular people can't understand what I'm doing, I don't think I've done my job. I mean, I'm an abstract painter at heart. But also too, I want to bring some images or things forward to people, the real people.”
“I think my work is tremendously intellectualized and it’s sometimes it may be missed by some, but clearly not all. But that's what I'm trying to do with my work,” the artist added, noting his friend Heller. “This man loves Quad Cities. This community means so much to him and to be able to be a part of what you build people here and see me thrive. And I'm very proud of you, you know, and what you've accomplished. Who knew 40 years later, that I consider Dave family.”
Heller commissioned Sampson in 2018 to paint the large mural that is on one wall of the third-floor Diamond Club space, featuring many QC landmarks, and represents the Bandit Scholars program.
Heller launched that program in 2009, to fund junior year tuition at Augustana, Black Hawk, Scott & Muscatine Community Colleges, and St. Ambrose University, plus a paid internship with the Bandits.
“The idea is you go from college to become a successful person,” he said of Sampson’s mural. “To me this is everything great about the Quad Cities.”
A priceless gift for the museum
“Baseball has always been part of the cultural fabric of this region,” said Melissa Mohr, executive director of the Figge Art Museum. “Through Preston Sampson’s portrait, Hank Aaron’s story becomes part of the Figge’s collection and a shared point of reflection for our community. We’re grateful to Dave and June Heller for their generosity and for helping connect the worlds of baseball and art in such a meaningful way.”
The painting will be transferred to the Figge, where it will be highlighted in the museum’s Quad City Bank & Trust Grand Lobby, allowing visitors to experience the work immediately upon entering the museum. The painting will also be featured this summer in the Figge’s Learn to Look Gallery as part of the educational exhibition, Summer Pastimes, which explores the role of sport in American visual culture.
Mohr thanked Sampson and Heller for the gift.
“This is a special gift, and it's also a powerful moment when we have a work like this that's rooted in history, artistry, and also cultural meaning, and we're able to give it a permanent home,” she said. “This, for us is very important. I think when we have a work like this that does all of those things, it makes us stronger as a community, and it really unites us together around what we need to be talking about, what we need to be fighting access to at the museum. It also, it really represents something much deeper for us, because art is everywhere.”
“Even looking at this mural that has been created for our community by Preston, you can't separate life from art,” Mohr said. “And we like to make sure that we're creating that environment, and when we do that, we want to make sure that we can also build that. You talked about evolution of an artist, but we talk about evolution of our collection.
"And so the Figge collection was founded over 100 years ago by a gift of art," she said. "Now, in our 101st year, we have another gift of art that continues to move that story forward and continues to build our presence within the community. Also, on a personal note, kind of like the River Bandits and the Figge, we think of these pieces in our collection like members of a team.
“And so we're thrilled that this piece of Hank Aaron by Preston Sampson will be joining a team of others, such as Jacob Warren, who also has works in our collection and who I know was a deep inspiration for you, especially when we talk about the essential American story, when we talk about dignity, achievement, perseverance, some of the things that you touched on your work is now part of this team and also continues to be part of the River Bandits team,” Mohr said.
“And I love our proximity here. We've already been coming up with ideas of how we can how we can make sure that people are experiencing all of this together between our two venues and throughout our community.”
“This is exactly what we try to do, bringing art and people together in ways that are personally meaningful to them, in ways that connect all of us together as Quad Citizens and beyond,” Mohr added. “Preston, thank you so much. It's an honor to receive this work.”
To celebrate the partnership, the Figge will offer free museum admission through April 12 to visitors who present a ticket stub or receipt from any game during the River Bandits’ opening series.
Fittingly (with Aaron's link to America's Dairyland), that opening home series is against the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers from April 7 to 12. For Bandits tickets, click HERE.
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