Collectors

Funny thing about collecting: Most of the time, collections simply grow, rarely shrinking, and they need more space. Case in point: Dallas collectors Cindy and Howard Rachofsky. They and another couple, Amy and Vernon Faulconer, are opening a building to show their collections called The Warehouse. It’s 18,000 sq. ft. and is a joint venture with another couple, Amy and Vernon Faulconer. The first show is titled Parallel Views: Italian and Japanese Art from the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The Warehouse will also sometimes borrow works from other private collections and museums, too.  (Hat tip to The Art Newspaper.)

You’ll recall that the Rachofskys had shown some of their collection in their home, which was designed by Richard Meier (at left). Its website now says that that is closed to the public, and that the couple has:

moved all of our educational programming to The Warehouse. This will include all middle school, high school, university, and museum group visits, as well as more in-depth programs. The Warehouse is a new art space developed by two collecting couples – the Faulconers and the Rachofskys. The building contains about 18,000 square feet of exhibition space, divided into 16 galleries, and will show works from both the Rachofsky and Faulconer collections. We are very excited about the experience with art in this new space.

The Warehouse is accessible by guided visit only, and it’s free.

It’s also open only to groups in pre-arranged visits, though individuals may go to Sunday Open Houses and Friday Public Visits.

The Rachofskys are part of the collectors’ group in Dallas that in 2005 agreed to donate hundreds of millions of dollars to the Dallas Museum of Art. Their bequest, at the time at least, involved “about 400 works by Mr. Richter, Donald Judd, Bruce Nauman, Sigmar Polke, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Tom Friedman, Kiki Smith, Robert Gober, Mona Hatoum, Jim Hodges, Robert Irwin and others. It also includes the house that Mr. Rachofsky, a hedge fund manager, began building in the 1980’s as a residence and came to use as a gallery when it was completed in 1996,” according to The New York Times.

That house was about 10,000 sq. ft. So they are nearly doubling their space with The Warehouse.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Rachofskys

If you are interested in collecting, and how various collections come together, you might pick up a copy of the April issue of Traditional Home magazine. In it, under the headline Seats Of Learning, I chronicle how a woman named Diane Jacobsen, already a collector of American art, became an avid acquisitor of chairs.

It all began about six years ago, when she bought a couple, almost on a whim, then more, then noticed how they engaged people. She researched and learned, and now owns about 50; 43 of them are touring museums around the country in an exhibition called The Art of Seating: 200 Years of American Design. It is now on view now at the Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia, and it’s booked at other museums through mid-2015. You can see the Texas Longhorn chair, c. 1855, at left, and Ionic Column, from 2010, at right — two in the show.

While my article details Jacobsen’s collecting, it’s really, as I wrote, about:

…the sharp-eyed, idiosyncratic collectors who see value in amassing a group of things that others might overlook. Leonard Lauder, the cosmetics king who owns what many consider to be the best group of Cubist paintings in private hands, is also a lifelong collector of postcards. He started buying them at about age 6, credits them with turning him into an art collector, and has purchased more than 150,000 over the years – most of which are promised to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. “I am an incurable collector,” he says, adding “The thrill for me is the hunt.”

I mention other collectors in that category in the article, including Eugene V. Thaw,

…whose collections of Native American art and Old Master drawings have graced the galleries of several museums, [and who] also saw art in staircase models. Created by cabinetmakers in England and France in the 18^th and 19^th centuries to demonstrate their skills, these wooden marvels were shown at and donated to the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum a few years ago. Thaw has collected in other niche areas, too, like bronzes from the Russian and Chinese steppes just before the Christian era. “I’m not interested in following the crowd,” he says. “I’m interested in the object and learning about them, and I learn by owning and looking and studying them.”

What he describes are the real collectors, not the contemporary art chasers of today, who are after only names, trophies to hang on their walls to gain social credence. You can be a contemporary art collector and a real collector, of course — it’s all about movitation and method.