A legend of the tattoo trade finds a permanent home
Wes Grimm's family artifacts are the core of the new Bert Grimm Tattoo Museum in Kansas City. Credit: TNS/Kansas City Star/Rich Sugg
Wes Grimm comes from a long line of untamed eccentrics — ramblers and hustlers, prizefighters and riverboat steersmen — and at 63 years old he still very much honors the family tradition.
On a recent Monday morning, Grimm arrived at the new Bert Grimm Tattoo Museum in midtown Kansas City wearing a black cowboy hat, a bolo tie dangling over a floral shirt, jeans and oxblood cowboy boots. He did not remove his sunglasses. Sitting in an old wooden chair, he pulled up his sleeve to reveal a faded tattoo of a grim reaper.
“Great-grandpa put that on me,” Grimm said, his voice all Texas and cigarettes.
He meant Bert Grimm, a pioneering tattoo artist whose life and work Grimm and a handful of other local tattoo enthusiasts have spent the past few years cataloging, documenting and processing for public consumption. The museum opened in May inside a creaky old converted house.
Tattoo artist Davey Gant, left, shares a laugh at the Bert Grimm Tattoo Museum with Mickey Haake, who works at the front desk. Credit: TNS/Kansas City Star/Rich Sugg
Circus circuit
“Bert came up around carnivals and circuses,” Grimm explained. “Back then, in the early 1900s, tattooing was illegal most everywhere other than circuses, so you had these tattoo artists traveling around from show to show and interacting and keeping an eye on each other’s work. And that developed into a style, what they call American Traditional. All of tattooing in America today trickled down from what they did. And Bert was among the last of those guys who were part of that tradition — who rode those trains and worked those circuses and created those tattoos.”
Tattooing in America is a folk art that has long gotten little attention.
That's something that can largely be attributed to a society that for most of the 20th century pointed the crooked finger at tattoo parlors and the people that patronized them. But taboos have faded. Today it is estimated that at least 30% of Americans have at least one tattoo, and nearly half of all Americans under the age of 40 have tattoos.
The internet has made information about tattoo culture much more accessible, and in recent years a smattering of operations devoted to tattoo history have cropped up in the United States.
The idea for the Bert Grimm Tattoo Museum was hatched early in the pandemic. Bert died in 1985 at the age of 85, and over the years, Wes Grimm had amassed a large collection of his great-grandfather’s belongings and ephemera: old tattooing instruments, photos of Bert and other legendary tattoo artists, and sheets and sheets filled with tattoo “flash” — the pre-drawn designs posted on the walls and in books at tattoo shops.
“I’d been lugging this stuff around with me for 40 years, from Hawaii to California to Texas,” Grimm said. “Whenever I could, I’d try to bring it to a tattoo convention or show it to friends. I wanted people to see it. But what I lacked was a dream. Then Dave came along with a dream.”
Making a museum
Davey Gant is an artist who’s been working for the last five years at Grimm Tattoo, which Wes Grimm opened in Kansas City in 2011. Gant is also a history buff. When a house near Grimm Tattoo became available, Gant suggested they lease it and put Bert’s tattoo treasure trove on display. They could apply for 501(c)3 designation and have all the art and artifacts formally appraised and inventoried.
They could, in short, make it a bona fide nonprofit museum.
“I had a very basic knowledge of American tattoo history, but seeing what Wes had, to me it seemed super important,” said Gant. “I felt that this stuff needed to be out there so that people could see it and study it.”
On the walls of the museum hang vintage collections of Bert’s flash: mermaids and anchors, butterflies and roses, shrieking eagles and bloody daggers. Wes Grimm has trademarked and copyrighted several of Bert’s most iconic designs — a weeping heart, a grinning sun — and sells shirts and totes with their images at the shop and on its website.
Nonprofit status has been secured. Though the museum is still a work in progress, it is open, and in addition to displaying Grimm's paraphernalia, the museum is also a functioning tattoo shop with Gant serving customers during museum hours, Monday through Friday.
