Dick Shack began buying contemporary art in the middle of the 20th Century, when a Jasper Johns could be had for $100, his spending limit at the time.
He and his wife, Ruth, then built a world-class collection that includes works by Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, the Cuban artist José Bedia and the South African artist William Kentridge.
Early on, they agreed their only birthday and holiday gifts to each other would be works of art.
The Shack’s Brickell Avenue penthouse became “a well-known stop on the Art Basel VIP circuit,’’ said fellow collector Dennis Scholl, vice president/arts for the Knight Foundation and, like Dick Shack, a founding board member of North Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Arts.
The Shacks frequently opened their collection up to visitors, and gave away many pieces to museums. Dick Shack accumulated and donated large photo collections and helped establish ArtCenter/South Florida on Lincoln Road.
Still, there was plenty of art surrounding Shack when he died at home on Monday. His wife of 58 years, a former Miami-Dade Commissioner and longtime community activist, said her husband suffered heart problems and succumbed to a massive stroke, his second in recent years.
Born Richard A. Shack on May 15, 1926 in Brooklyn to Eastern European immigrants, the retired entertainment agent was 85.
His roster of stars included Tony Bennett, Harry Belafonte, Liberace, George Burns, Johnny Cash, composer Burt Bacharach, actor Robert Shaw ( Jaws), poet Rod McKuen, singer Anita Bryant and her one-time au pair, Kathie Lee Johnson — later Kathie Lee Gifford.
“Dick Shack was the consummate collector of contemporary art,’’ said Scholl. “In 1981, he invited me to his home [then in Miami Shores] to see his and Ruth’s collection. When I walked into the bedroom, I saw three works of art by Gene Davis mounted on the ceiling over their bed...He showed me that there were no limits to collecting and that building an art collection was an artistic experience in its own right.’’
So dedicated were the Shacks to their collection that they once bought an entire apartment to house a single sculpture. By then, they were living on the 28th floor of a Brickell high-rise, having consolidated every apartment on that floor into one 5,000-square-foot flat.
Shack, who held a bachelor’s degree in advertising from the University of North Carolina, was a U.S. Navy veteran of both World War II and the Korean War. He and Ruth moved to South Florida in the late 1950s from New York, where Dick had worked for the DumontTelevision Network and the powerhouse entertainment agencies GMC and MCA.
In Miami, “he was in charge of conventions and special events for Agency for the Performing Arts,’’ his wife said. “It was Richard’s invention to book [entertainers] at conventions instead of nightclubs.’’
He also produced “magnificent Broadway shows’’ for corporate clients like Xerox and Buick.
“The star was the Buick,’’ she said. “The audience would stand and cheer.’’
Ruth Shack, an early South Florida feminist and human-rights leader, said her husband helped desegregate Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale hotels by refusing to book top-flight black entertainers anywhere that wouldn’t accept them as guests.
