Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Collectors

What Makes A Good Collector? And What Is Craft vs. Art? Two Stories

Usually, the most noteworthy collectors–aside from those, like J. Paul Getty, with the wherewithal to buy anything they want–are the ones that go their own way, that collect a field that’s out-of-fashion but full of worthy artworks. Usually, they both self-educate and they seek expert advice.

One such person is Walter O. Evans (at right), a retired surgeon who began purchasing works by African-American artists back in the late 1970s. He now owns one of the best such collections in the United States. Perhaps you have heard about him–part of his collection was on tour. The Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art,” customized for each venue and managed by Evans’s wife, Linda, visited about 50 museums between 1991 and 2012.

Evans also donated about 60 works to the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2005, though his trove still numbers in the hundreds. As I wrote:

Evans now owns works by virtually every important black artist up to and including Modernism icons Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Archibald Motley, Robert Scott Duncanson, Mary Edmonia Lewis, Henry Tanner, Beauford Delaney, Alma Thomas, Norman Lewis, Benny Andrews, and Aaron Douglas.

I saw a number of them myself earlier this year, when I visited his townhouse in Savannah’s historic district on assignment for Traditional Home magazine, which published my article in its October issue. More than one person I spoke with called the collection “museum-quality.” One of his works by Jacob Lawrence is at left.

Evans is an interesting guy, a pioneer in more ways than one. You can read my article about him and see more of his art collection here.

102773785_w_0In the same issue of Traditional Home, I write about a quilt artist named Victoria Findlay Wolfe. She helped start the modern quilt movement, and is also has a very interesting story. She started as a painter and she draws inspiration from artists including Matisse.

Furthermore, for those of you who prefer to think about quilts as craft rather than art, she has another art connection. That “Findlay” in her name refers to her husband Michael, Findlay, a director at Acquavella Galleries and author of The Value of Art.

You can read her story and see some of her quilts here.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Traditional Home

Miles To Go: The Met Breuer’s Unspoken Task

The Metropolitan Museum* put on a show for the press last week at a briefing on the Met Breuer. It took place, oddly (for the Met) in a black gallery in the main museum building and over cocktails at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Tom Campbell, Sheena Wagstaff, Jeff Rosenheim (photography) and Limor Tomor (performances) spoke. I was encouraged by two things in particular: Campbell said that the Met has spent time and money spiffing up the building, returning it to the condition in which it opened in 1965, they said. Wagstaff spoke also somewhat, and I learned more in conversations over drinks, by the range and potential of Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible, the first large exhibition set for the Met Breuer. I hope the exhibit lives up to its potential, which is large.

Met-breuerThe building opens to the public on March 18, to members beginning March 8, and–presumably–to trustees, donors and patrons before that.

And, I would hope, to another group, for the Met Breuer has a very big job to do aside from showcasing modern and contemporary art in historical context, as only the Met can do. The Met Breuer must win over potential patrons, specifically collectors of modern and contemporary art.

It’s no secret that the Met’s collection in these areas is, shall we say, full of gaps. But I’m not sure the extent of the gaps have been digested by the press, though surely Wagstaff knows.

So today I conducted a little exercise. I made a list of the top best-selling living artists last year, American and European. I added in a few names, like Kiefer, that few people would quarrel about as important. Then I put all of their names into the Met’s online collection database, and recorded the number of works by each the Met owns, the number on view, and whether or not (Y or N) the Met owns a major piece. (? means it’s debatable.)

The results are  below.

I know there will be quarrels with this list. The market doesn’t rule taste or historical importance, I agree. I actually hope the Met doesn’t acquire art by some people on the list. But this roster is better than an arbitrary list drawn up to my taste. And by the very fact that these artists attain high prices at auction, the Met probably cannot afford to buy them, and therefore must depend on donations from collectors.

The Met does have something to offer collectors, and rightly it is the historical context that might make contemporary works more understandable or give them more gravitas (we wish). The Met Breuer, if it shines, should begin that process in earnest.

Here’s the list.

ARTIST                 OWNED      ON VIEW          MAJOR WORK?

  • Auerbach            2                 0                      N
  • Bacon                 2                  1                      ?
  • Cattelan              1                 0                      N
  • de Kooning        27                 3                     N
  • Doig                    2                 0                      N
  • Frankenthaler    46                2                       ?
  • Freud                 12                1                       Y
  • Hammons           1                 0                       N
  • Hirst                    3                 0                       N
  • Hockney            76                 2                      Y
  • Johns                81                 4                       Y
  • Kapoor                2                 0                      ?
  • Kiefer                 58                1                      Y
  • Koons                 0                   0                    N
  • Marden               5                  0                     N
  • Martin                 4                  0                      N
  • Nauman             8                   0                     N
  • Noland               0                   0                     N
  • Ofili                     1                   0                     N
  • Pistoletto            1                   0                     N
  • Polke                   6                   0                     N
  • Pollock            125                   2                     Y
  • Prince               11                    0                     ?
  • Reilly                  0                    0                    N
  • Richter               7                    0                    N
  • Rothko              17                    3                    Y
  • Ruscha             49                    0                    N
  • Ryman               3                     0                    N
  • Stingel                0                    0                     N
  • Warhol            109                   4                    N
  • Wool                  1                     1                    N

Photo credit: Courtesy of the Met

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met.

No So Fast: Private Art Museum Under Scrutiny

“I’m not against it being done, but it’s got to be done well,” [Rob] Storr [dean of the Yale School of Art], said. “If there’s to be a public forgiveness for taxes there should be a clear public benefit, and it should not be entirely at the discretion of the person running the museum or foundation.”

BrantFdnThat statement sums up my thoughts about the phenomenon described in Sunday’s New York Times, in the business section. Writing Off the Warhol Next Door: Art Collectors Gain Tax Benefits From Private Museums, by my friend Patricia Cohen, describes not just the well-known trend for big collectors to start their own private museums, but more importantly the tax benefits they receive when they do. As she point out, “their founders can deduct the full market value of any art, cash and stocks they donate, even when the museums are just a quick stroll from their living rooms.”

More important, just how open the museum must be to the public is very unclear. Regarding Glenstone, owned my Mitchell Rales, Cohen writes that it had only “10,000 visitors from 2006 to 2013,” while the Hall Art Foundation in Vermont has had about 1,500 since its opening in fall 2103.

Consider this from the article:

…among the charitable activities that specifically involved the Greenwich [Brant Foundation Art Study] center and were highlighted on his foundation’s 2012 tax return (the most recent publicly available) were visits by Larry Gagosian, Mr. Brant’s superpowered art dealer, and his fellow billionaire collectors, Victoria and Samuel I. Newhouse Jr.

In fact, museums don’t have to be public at all. They can fulfill public interest requirements by lending art, letting researchers in, or giving grants.

There are lots of ins and outs on this issue, and there’s much more in the article–but I also worry that these collectors may be skirting the “public” purpose, following the letter but not the spirit of the law, as one critic noted.

It’s more worrisome in recent years as the IRS, which governs these foundations, has lost staff for reviewing these (and other) private tax returns. Perhaps we need clearer, more stringent rules about public purpose.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Brant Foundation Art Study Center

Detroit: Time To Put Artists On The Spot?

Supporters of the Detroit Institute of Arts have been celebrating for almost a week now–it was last Friday that the court ruled in favor of the Grand Bargain, which buys freedom for the DIA. But with a catch: the museum still has to raise more than $10 million to reach its $100 million mandated contribution to the deal. And then it must raise about $300 million over the next eight or so years for its endowment, to replace the money it is receiving from the millage tax–which ends after 10 years from its inception.

WarholDollarSignPlus, it always has to raise something on the order of $8 million a year for operations to balance the budget.

At this stage, every little bit helps. Last Saturday, according to the Detroit Free Press, the museum rejoiced in the fact its (accidentally) well-timed celebratory gala raised more than $1 million. That’s its largest annual fundraising event.

Which got me thinking. Michigan is wealthy, and there is still more money to tap there. But the support from national foundations, some–like the Getty–with no connection to Detroit, highlighted the fact that the DIA is more than a Detroit institution. With its fantastic collection, it’s a national treasure.

Wouldn’t a joint effort by artists and artists’ foundations be a headline-grabbing move that might inspire others beyond Michigan’s borders?

I found this list of the world’s 15 richest artists (I cannot verify it accuracy; in fact, I think it may be missing people like James Turrell)–their fortunes range from $1 billion (for Damian Hirst) to $20 million )for Georg Baselitz). It is true that the DIA’s contemporary art collection isn’t full of their works; it’s a universal museum. But,as I said, every little but helps now and the donor circle must widen.

Artists’ foundations may be even more helpful, if they wanted to be. In 2011, in The Art Newspaper, András Szántó called them “a sleeping giant of philanthropy.” There were, he said, about 300 at the time with $2.7 billion in assets.

I know that many artists are generous–frequently donating works of art for auction, for example, and to museums. Some are regular donors in other ways; Alex Katz, for example, gives artworks by contemporary artists to museums or money to buy such works, I’m told.

It seems to me that a joint gesture by artists and artists’ foundations, following the lead of the foundations in the Grand Bargain, would be an inspiration that could have a ripple effect, perhaps even to the collectors who this week have proven that they have plenty of capacity to help out a national treasure.

 

 

Five Questions For Leonard Lauder As The Met Reveals His Cubist Collection

So this week the art world and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s* members are getting a first look at the Leonard Lauder Cubist collection–assembled over the past 40 years. The masterpieces and seminal works he has purchased amount to the best private Cubist collection in existence, by design:  He always has a museum gift in mind as he collects. When I spoke with him in 2012, he said: “Many people collect to possess. I collect to preserve, and no sooner do I have a collection put together than I am looking for a home for it in a public institution.”

TerraceOftheHotelMistralThat belies reality, a little–he has told me that it’s long before he starts looking for a museum that he thinks about the coherence and importance of a collection he’s assembling. That quote came from a visit I made to him to discuss his postcard collection, much of which he gave to the MFA-Boston.  I wrote about it in a short piece for New Yorker.com, which relates–among other things–how he became a collector as a child.

More recently, but before he was giving interviews for the big Cubist reveal, I asked Lauder some questions via email. most of which I’ve  not seen asked or answered elsewhere. Here are his replies.

Which purchase/which painting convinced you to focus on Cubism, why and when was that? 

The picture that prompted me to focus on Cubism in a big way, and not just as part of a modernist collection, was Picasso’s Scallop Shell (Notre Avenir est dans l’air), which I acquired in 1980. But it is was a few years later, while attending a lecture by Kirk Varnedoe at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York, that the importance of this picture for my future collecting really hit me. The slide of it was projected on the screen and Kirk discussed it at length and I learned things about it that inspired me to dig even deeper into Cubism. I had bought it from the Leigh and Mary Block Collection, when it had been partially dispersed and I realized that if I could obtain pictures of this quality I was going to keep them together. As it happens, not that many people were collecting cubism at that time: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism were driving the market.

What was your first purchase of a Cubist work? Does it remain in the collection, or was it sold? Has there been much selling, to refine the collection?

I bought two drawings by Fernand Léger in the early months of 1976: Drawing for the “Staircase”, 1913, and Study for the “Aviateur”, 1920. The first was a beautiful gouache and oil on paper, from his famous pre-war “Contrasts of Forms” series and the second, a watercolor in his postwar Purist period style that really grabbed me for its clean lines and precise design. (I have a few Legers from the early 1920s, and think of Purism as the last moment in the original heroic years of Cubism.)

I have sold very few of my Cubist works– I think I can count them on one hand, and only when I wanted to refine the collection, or in another case, because I was feeling financially pressed at the time.

You have two works from the historic first show of Cubism in 1908–when did you get them, and what are the stories behind their purchases? (E.g., were they hard to find, were many other collectors after them? Etc.)

The Terrace of the Hotel Mistral, 1907, was in a fine American private collection for years–the Werner and Margaret Josten collection. It was the dealer Stephen Mazoh who brought it to my attention in 1994. Since I was already known by then as a collector of Cubism, dealers often put me on the list to contact–maybe even the top of the list. This was not a picture that I had identified and chased as was often the case, but one that came to me. As soon as I saw it, I knew what it was: Braque’s last fauve, first proto-Cubist picture, and that it was in the famous show. Trees at L’Estaque, the second picture that I own that was in the historic Kahnweiler show and part of the breakthrough landscapes by Braque of “little cubes” (as the critics called them), came from the Douglas Cooper estate, the majority of which I had purchased in late 1986.

ScallopShellWhich work had the place of honor in your apartment–and why?

They are equally honored. But the one that takes up the largest wall area is Léger’s The Typographer, (1918-1919), simply because it is by far the largest in scale, a scale unusual for a Cubist picture.

What will hang in your apartment when the exhibition is up at the Met?

Before I started to collect Cubism, I had started to acquire works by German and Austrian modernists. I still have several painting and drawings from this earlier phase of my collecting and those will take pride of place while the works are on exhibition at the MMA. As you know, I have also bought fabulous modern posters over the years, from the first half of the twentieth century. I also intend to hang some works by my fiancé, Judy Ellis Glickman, who is an acclaimed photographer.

The exhibition, which opens on October 20, presents 81 works of art. You can bet they will be a treat to see.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum

*I consult to a foundation that support the Met