George Lindemann Journal - "America’s least wealthy art collectors see 50/50 vision realized" @timesofisrael By Renee Ghert-Zand

Audiences around the United States are streaming into museums to view contemporary art collections enriched by two of the country’s least wealthy art patrons. Although Herbert and Dorothy Vogel are retired civil servants without independent means who live in a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment, they amassed a collection of close to 5,000 pieces of conceptual and minimalist art. In 2008, they gifted 50 works to 50 museums, one in each state.

The Vogels donated the art works with the provision that they would be exhibited within five years. Now, midway through 2014, nearly all of the museums have complied with the stipulation, and a film has been made documenting the impact of the Vogel’s 50/50 vision on the museums and their audiences.

“Herb & Dorothy 50×50” by Brooklyn-based director Megumi Sasaki, reveals the Vogels’ story captivates museumgoers and art lovers as much as the art itself. (The film is a sequel to the 2008 film “Herb & Dorothy,” which introduced the couple to an audience outside the art world.)

“The story of Herb and Dorothy goes beyond a story of art,” Sasaki tells The Times of Israel. “I think the most striking thing is that they could have been millionaires, but they never sold anything. It’s hard to believe such people exist — especially in New York!”

In 1992, the Vogels entered in to an agreement with the National Gallery of Art, granting it stewardship of the couple’s collection. At the time, they had 2,400 paintings, objects, drawing, photographs, prints and illustrated books. Although they gave some pieces to other institutions, they chose to entrust the vast majority of their collection to the NGA because of its practice never to de-accession, or sell off, any works.

By the time the NGA assisted the Vogels in actualizing the Fifty Works for Fifty States project, the collection had basically doubled in size, and included works by Robert Barry, Will Barnet, Lynda Benglis, Sol LeWitt, Edda Renouf, Richard Tuttle, Pat Steir, Robert Mangold, Mark Kostabi and 168 others.

The couple was known for befriending and patronizing artists before they became famous.

“We only bought what we could afford, and we bought what we liked,” Dorothy Vogel explains in a phone conversation with The Times of Israel. They lived off Dorothy’s public librarian salary and used Herb’s postal clerk pay to acquire art.

“They defied ‘art collector’ stereotypes and stuck to their own rules. They — especially Herb — had an amazing eye,” says Sasaki.

Cheryl Laemmle (American, b. 1947), Happy Birthday 1990, 1990.Oil on canvas. 18 x 13 7/8 inches. Fleming Museum of Art, 2009.4.19

Herb Vogel died just shy of his 90^th birthday in July 2012, but Dorothy, 79, continues to live in the apartment they moved to soon after their 1962 marriage. It’s also where they stored their massive collection.

While Dorothy no longer collects art, she does keep close tabs on what is being done with the pieces that she and her husband gave to the museums across the country.

“The website has not been completed,” she noted with some impatience about Vogel5050.org, the site created to document and publicize the project. The museums are expected to upload all the works donated to them by the Vogels as soon as they have been exhibited.

At the same time, Dorothy admits that keeping up with the administrative tasks associated with an art collection can be daunting.

“I gave up on trying to keep a cataloguing system at some point,” she recounts about the years when all the art was somehow crammed in to the apartment, along with her, her husband and a menagerie of cats, turtles and fish. The walls, ceilings and floors were covered with art works, and hundreds of others were stored in closets and cabinets, on shelves, and even under the bed.

“Sometimes there were pieces I never even got to see. Herbie would come home with something and stash it away while I wasn’t there,” she recalls. “The first time I saw them was when they were exhibited.”

The couple never thought to rent a storage unit. “To tell you the truth, I was always the one who was worried what we should do with the collection,” Dorothy shares. “I worried there might be a fire or a theft, but nothing happened.”

Archival photo of art lovers and collectors Herb and Dorothy Vogel (Courtesy of Fineline Media)

Well, not exactly. One thing did happen. A fish in a tank placed in front of an Andy Warhol jumped up and splashed the artwork. “We had to restore that one piece,” she says.

Herb was the driving force behind the couple’s appreciation for and collecting of art. Born to an Orthodox Jewish immigrant family in Manhattan, he would visit museums with his father. According to his wife, his first interest was nature, but at some point his passion shifted to art. Although Herb never finished high school, he studied art history and took painting courses at New York University.

“He hung out with artists and wanted to be a painter,” Dorothy says.

Dorothy, who describes herself as a proud, cultural Jew (“I don’t fast, but I don’t go out on Yom Kippur”), grew up in a Conservative family in Elmira, New York. Although her first love was music history, she learned to embrace the visual arts after meeting Herb at a reunion event in the city for young people who had vacationed at a Jewish resort in the Poconos.

Although she doesn’t consider herself religious in any way, Dorothy does not believe in mere coincidence.

“Things are set in motion beyond. I was meant to do this,” she says of her meeting Herb and the ultimately far-reaching art collection journey they set out on together.

Vik Muniz (American, b. Brazil 1961)
Untitled
1999
photographic image on porcelain
Overall: 12 3/8in. (31.4cm) dia.

They had no initial inkling that their collection would ultimately make so significant an impact on institutions and individuals nationwide. Janie Cohen, director of the Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont, one of the Fifty Works for Fifty States recipients, appreciates the Vogel collection for its thoughtfulness and the fact that it covers a very specific period in American art with “a pretty broad reach.”

The Fleming Museum has mounted two exhibitions of its Vogel collection, one of paintings and sculpture and one of works on paper.

“The shows generated a lot of interest,” Cohen notes. “And the impact has been not only with the public, but also with our teaching at the university.”

The 50 works gifted to the Huntington Museum of Art in Huntington, West Virginia filled a gap in its collection. “We had little in our contemporary collection that was minimalist and conceptual,” shares senior curator Jenine Culligan.

“Some of these works, like Richard Tuttle’s notebook drawings, are really different and they sparked a conversation among viewers about what art is,” she reports. “It’s an important question, especially since our audience is made up of a lot of first-time museumgoers, as there are not many museums in our region.”

Looking back, Dorothy realizes she misses the people more than the art.

“Being part of the art world was important to me. It’s interesting to know the art and artists of your time.”

Ronnie Landfield (American, b. 1947), Step in Time, 1985.Acrylic on canvas. 22 x 15 inches. Fleming Museum of Art, 2009.4.23

Herb and Dorothy slowly withdrew themselves from the art world as Herb’s health deteriorated in his last years and Dorothy focused her energies on taking care of him. But for as long as they possibly could, they attended the openings of the exhibitions at the 50 museums, Dorothy pushing Herb in his wheelchair through the galleries.

“I did the right thing,” says Dorothy as she looks back not only on the decision to share her and her husband’s collection with the people of the United States, but also on her life with Herb.

“He did what he wanted to do and I helped him. I enjoyed doing it with him.”

The George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann

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George Lindemann Journal - "America’s least wealthy art collectors see 50/50 vision realized" @timesofisrael By Renee Ghert-Zand