Since a young child, visiting art museums has always brought me to a place of peace and beauty. I, myself, can’t make art, but I have appreciated it my entire life. My mother, aunt and cousin often took me to the Detroit Institute of Art. It has an encyclopedic collection, supported by the vast riches of the auto executives. I loved wandering through its cool corridors or seeing the special exhibits, even the King Tut show that I wrote about last summer. A special cousin was a docent there for 50 years. She once took me to a training session. Though I was an adolescent, I still remember the topic was Jacque-Louis David. I was fascinated by “The Death of Marat” (not owned by the DIA, but that was the period being studied).

The DIA is famous for the Diego Rivera murals in a large hall near one of its entrances. The Mexican Communist was commissioned in the 1930s to paint about industry by the head of Ford Motor Company who was also the Chair of the museum at the time. Though Rivera showed Ford Motors polluting the Rouge River and other unseemly deeds, Edsel Ford allowed the murals to go ahead and they are now symbols of the museum (though Rivera’s wife, Frida Kahlo is much more famous now and he is something of a footnote to history). Rockefeller was not so gracious and ripped up his contract with Rivera when he saw what was planned for Rockefeller Center, though the plans still exist.

My favorite painting came into the collection just as I left for Brandeis. Looking at it now, I think my taste is more sophisticated, but at the time, I was quite taken by the lush colors and dreaminess of the painting. While home the next season, I bought the poster and hung it in my dorm room, where it hung for the next three years. I finally found an appropriate photo of my dorm room in my mother’s albums. My parents and aunt had come to visit when I played Gianetta in “The Gondoliers”.

While wandering around the museum, I confronted it in 2003. I confess, it took my breath away, seeing it up close again after all those years.

Another favorite place to visit with my mother was Cranbrook, a fine private school in suburban Detroit, art museum and science museum. The buildings were designed by the famous Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen in a clean, modern style.

We would sit by the wondrous fountains and write letters to my brother, away at camp, then go in to see the art exhibits, which often rotated.

They have a great studio program and often highlight their students’ work. I found the chuppa that I stood under at my wedding on display at this museum. Again, while on a visit to Detroit in 2003, I visited alone and came across a good exhibit of recently acquired work. I bought the catalog.

After moving to Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis have been my home for 46 years. Dan and I also began collecting art in 1976 with a small bequest from the remnants of my grandfather’s estate. We used to love to go to the Boston galleries. Now we rarely go and find that we are drawn to artists on Martha’s Vineyard. The Featured photo is one of our more recent acquisitions, a painting by Jeanne Staples depicting the bottom of Main Street in Edgartown on a night of the fishing derby weigh-in, an annual event held in September every year with prizes for the largest fish in several categories. One of our favorite restaurants is visible on the left. We think she does a remarkable job of night scenes. We saw the painting in an ad in “Vineyard Magazine”. We weren’t looking to buy anything, and it is LARGE, but we loved it SO much that we just had to have it and found space for it. We bought two other paintings by her that day as well. This past summer, we bought two more, including another night scene. We should open a Jeanne Staples gallery!

Both Dan and I took the basic survey of art history course from Renaissance through “Modern” (a shifting subject) at Brandeis and enjoyed it. I dove further into Renaissance art, but we were both drawn to modern and contemporary art and began collecting locally in the mid to late 1970s. We were thrilled when we bought a Dubuffet from the 1960s in the late 1970s, quite recognizable. It is the only “name-brand” artist we own.

We took our kids to the MFA to see a Picasso show years ago, but they were much more interested in a glass show in a different gallery. The work was remarkable and we were all drawn to the work of Toots Zynsky, who melts strands of glass, pulls them into a shape and molds them. We think they are stunning and have seen her work in museums around the world. No one in Boston represented her, but our favorite gallery searched, found several at a gallery in Michigan, brought two for our inspection and we bought one. Gorgeous, isn’t it?

When Jeffrey was born, my mother-in-law came in to help me. Her childhood best friend was Lois Foster, who was the grand dame and patron of the Rose Art Museum. She came over to visit her friend, looked at what we were collecting and said, “I’ve got to get you involved at the Rose”, and she did. 31 years later, I’m still there, about 23 years on the Board of Advisers and happy as a clam. They have a world-class post-WWII collection, the best north of Manhattan, and continue to add to it every year.

Opened in 1961, their first director was Sam Hunter who had been a curator at MoMA and knew the art scene in New York very well. With a $50,000 bequest, he went to New York and purchased the new, the now! It is the basis of the iconic collection that makes the Rose so famous today.

Above you see Ellworth Kelly, who received an honorary degree from Brandeis at Commencement the next day. His “Blue White”, 1962 is behind him. He did a Q&A with the Rose Director, Chris Bedford (sipping water in the background) in the afternoon before the large dinner for the honorees that evening. Though not in good health (he passed away 19 months later), he was full of stories. He claimed that founding president, Abram Sacher came with Sam Hunter to his studio and personally picked that painting.

A year later, I attended the dedication of a monumental sculpture in front of the Rose by artist Chris Burden. The title comes from a quote by Justice Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court and a noted champion of the rights of workers. The sculpture, though only six years old, has become an iconic fixture on the Brandeis campus. The first night that first-years are on campus, a ceremony is held there as the lights are lit. Brandeis is a young university, short on traditions. It is lovely that this sculpture can be part of an established one now.

Perhaps my favorite work in the remarkable Rose collection is by Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. It, also was part of that first Gevirtz-Mnuchin purchase. Though Roy lived long and was prolific, I think this was one of, if not THE best of his work. Sam Hunter purchased it when it was still wet. Of course, it caused an uproar with the students when it came to campus…he purchased a CARTOON! The flesh tones are made of ben day dots, a painstaking process which looks like newsprint. It is a masterpiece.

I took a course on Northern Renaissance painting with Professor Ludovico Borgo in my last semester at Brandeis. For our final project, we had to write a research paper on a painting from that era that we could visit in person. We had to analyze the provenance of the work, history of restorations, and research other scholarly information. It was much more than just a discussion of the surface qualities of the painting itself. This required real determination and I was truly jazzed about the assignment.

As a life-long fan-girl of Tudor England, I chose to write about either of two Holbeins at the Gardner Museum in Boston. At the time, the Gardner was a beautiful, but sleepy institution on the Fenway, close to the Museum of Fine Arts, with an incomparable collection of just about anything that Mrs. Gardner had chosen to assemble on her many trips to Europe and bring to the Italian palazzo she built in Boston. Similar to the Frick in New York City, this was also once a private home and collection. However, she had always planned to open it to the public.

Hans Holbein the Younger was the court painter to Henry VIII. Mrs. Gardner owned portraits of Dr. William Butts, Henry’s court physician, and his wife Margaret Bacon, Lady Butts. They flanked one of the entrances to the Dutch room, home to some of the most extraordinary and valuable paintings in the museum.

I began my research at the Brandeis library. That got me only so far. Finally, I had to go into Boston. I called the Gardner and spoke with their curator. It was a Friday and a week before my paper was due. She was annoyed. “Oh no! Not ANOTHER one of you Brandeis students!” I assured her that I would be the last to bother her, as the paper was due soon. She let me come over that afternoon.

I was 21 years old. She wasn’t much older. No one else was around. I was polite. I told her my topic and how excited I was to be investigating the subject, as I was really a theater major. I took art history for fun. She perked up. Did I know Gil Schwartz? He was a recent Brandeis theater grad who was working at an improv club in Boston. She’d met him at a party the previous weekend. (Gil was a very handsome, whip-smart guy. He went on to a successful career at CBS, retiring not too long ago as VP of Communications. He wrote smart, funny business books under the pen name Stanley Bing. I googled him recently and was stunned to see that he had dropped dead of a heart attack shortly after retiring. He was a year ahead of me. We had been in several shows together.) When I assured her that we were friends, the mood in the room changed considerably and I was given access to EVERYTHING!

I spent hours reading Bernard Berenson’s letters to Mrs. Jack (as she was informally known), detailing when he first found the paintings in England, what kind of shape they were in, advising her on how much she should pay for them, how quickly she should buy them. These were the REAL letters (I wore white gloves and the letters were in a protective sleeve); not microfilm or reproductions, but the REAL letters, as I sat, reading in a Gothic alcove of this incredible space. I was transfixed. It was a “you are there” moment. It gave me so much of the information I sought.

After soaking all this up (and taking copious notes), I gratefully returned the folders to the curator and went up to the solitude of the magnificent gallery. I sat, cross-legged on the floor and contemplated the two stern faces in the paintings. Ultimately, I decided to write about Lady Butts (painted about 1541-1543) because she had had less restoration done through the years. The room was all mine, and is forever linked to that special day. More than 46 years later, I have a personal affinity with that room.

 

So I was stunned when the news broke that two men, dressed like police men, had broken into the poorly protected jewel of a museum in the early hours of March 18, 1990 and stolen incredibly valuable works of art, including three works from that room: a Vermeer – “The Concert” (and there are SO few in the entire world) and two Rembrandts, including the only known seascape he ever painted: “Storm on the Sea of Galilee”. I had a 10 month old baby at the time, but I cried unconsolably myself. It was unthinkable. I took the theft personally. That was MY room, MY space that had been violated.

30 years later, the works have never been recovered. I don’t believe they ever will be, as they are fragile and wherever they were hidden, (they were slashed right out of their frames) they most likely have not been in proper climate-controlled conditions, and have deteriorated beyond repair. It is also possible that anyone with any knowledge of the theft has died by now.

My voice trembles and I can barely keep it together when I take friends through the museum and show them my room. It reminds me of a transcendent afternoon I spent there in May, 1974.

 

 

Doggedly, I record signs of the coming light.
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