On Collecting Fine Art >

Born in Germany but a U.S. citizen for many years, the New Jersey-based businessman Dieter Weissenrieder became interested in the visual arts as a young adult thanks to a close friend who became a curator at a major German museum. His wife, Eleanor, a retired schoolteacher, grew up in suburban New Jersey, so she has visited New York City’s museums all her life and began bringing Dieter along soon after they met. The couple have always enjoyed traveling, especially in Europe, and have visited many museums there.

“More than 40 years ago,” Dieter recalls, “Eleanor and I made our first art purchase because the small house we were renting needed some art on its walls. From a gallery in Greenwich Village we bought a landscape painted by a French artist, and we still own it today. In the 1970s, we acquired our first sculpture in Taos when we began skiing and visiting galleries there.”

In fact, the Weissenrieders are devoted skiers and have skied out west every year. Those experiences exposed them to what is now called Art of the American West: “We started to develop relationships with gallery owners in various ski resorts,” Dieter explains, “and as we got more hooked on art, we began attending auctions and museum benefit sales,” especially at the Autry Museum of the American West (Los Angeles) and Eiteljorg Museum (Indianapolis). The couple also drew inspiration from a fellow collector: because they have a house in Scottsdale, Arizona, they often visited the enormous and outstanding collection formed by Eddie Basha in nearby Chandler. (Fortunately, Basha’s heirs have donated it to the Heard Museum in Phoenix and Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West so that many other people can enjoy it, too.)

Today the Weissenrieders own paintings and sculpture by William Acheff,  Gerald Balciar, Amery Bohling, John Buxton, John Coleman, Don Crowley, Michael Dudash, Toni Falk, John Fawcett, Deborah Copenhaver Fellows, Fred Fellows, Bruce Greene, Robert Griffing, William Haskell,  Karin Hollebeke, Walt Horton, Doug Hyde, Jerry Jordan, Sue Krzyston, Steven Lang, Mel Lawson, Chul Young Lee, David Mann, Curt Mattson, Frank McCarthy, Denis Milhomme, K.W. Moore, Sr., Paul Moore, Bill Nebeker, Rock Newcomb, Gary Niblett, Don Oelze, Robert Peters, Dave Powell, Heide Presse, Robert Pummill, Alfredo Rodrigues, Scott Rogers, Roseta Santiago, Harry J. Sharre, Tim Shinabarger, Daniel Smith, Matt Smith, Gordon Snidow, Nathan Solano, Ray Swanson, Andy Thomas, Russ Vickers, Curt Walters, and David Wright. Sadly, several artists who were alive when they acquired the work have subsequently died, including Joe Beeler, Glenna Goodacre, Allan Houser, Harry Jackson, and Oleg Stavrowsky. Also in the Weissenrieder Collection are important pieces of Native American pottery by Autumn Borts-Medlock, Eric Fender, Jody Folwell, Susan Folwell, Tammy Garcia, Al Qoyawayma, Maxine Toya, and Alvina Yepa.

“Getting to know the artists has added an exciting dimension,” Dieter remembers. “Eleanor and I feel that collecting art without ever meeting the artist is not as rewarding as developing a relationship.” (Only rarely have they bought work by a deceased artist, perhaps five in total, including E.I. Couse.) “Now” Dieter continues, “we deal primarily with the artists themselves and with galleries. Because we have run out of wall space, we have even told several artists to create smaller paintings if they want us to continue acquiring!”

The Weissenrieders have formed a particularly close friendship with John Buxton and his wife, Noralee. Illustrated here is a painting Dieter commissioned, “Great Falls of the Passaic at Paterson,” a breathtaking site of natural beauty now protected as a national park. Dieter wanted his friend to imagine the falls as they might have looked around 1750, when Native Americans relied on their abundant supply of fish. The Weissenrieders visited this place with Buxton, who had hired a senior Boy Scout to paddle the artist’s canoe deep into the falls so he could get a better sense of scale and perspective.

Dieter picks up the story: “Alas, the current proved too strong, so the canoe capsized and got a big hole in its side. Luckily, the young man was a good swimmer and we were able to pull the canoe out of the Passaic River about 400 feet downstream. The bad news: the canoe was totaled; the good news: John won two major prizes for this gorgeous painting, and we now have a wonderful memory to cherish forever.” In addition, the Paterson Museum located nearby displays a giclée replica of the painting to help visitors appreciate the significance of the falls historically.

Yet another close friend who carefully researches his scenes of Eastern Woodland Indians is Robert Griffing, represented here by “Pushing through the Billows.” Dieter admires how this artist studies elements such as clothing and tools “right down to the smallest detail,” and he recounts with a smile a missed opportunity to acquire yet another work by Griffing: “A dealer offered us one privately, but Eleanor and I balked at its price. Ten months later, that painting fetched a sum 70 percent higher during an auction we attended. It’s the one that got away.”

Dieter tries to have lunch with Buxton and Griffing at least once a year near Pittsburgh, where he owns a manufacturing plant. He and Eleanor are also friendly with the artist John Fawcett and his wife, Elizabeth; during a visit to the Weissenrieders’ small farm, Fawcett painted a portrait of their entire family mounted on horses, a large work that hangs over the fireplace in their living room. The collectors have visited the California home of Denis Milhomme and his wife, Lorene, who were especially pleased when the Weissenrieders loaned three of Denis’s best works to his 2022 retrospective at the Eiteljorg. The sculptor Scott Rogers and his wife, Janette, have visited the Weissenrieders in New Jersey, and Dieter still treasures their visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it was “great to listen to Scott analyze the artworks on view.”

Though the pace of their collecting has slowed, Dieter says that he and Eleanor still aim to acquire art “that is meaningful, tells a story, and will outlast us.” They have succeeded on all three counts.

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From the Fine Art Connoisseur March/April 2025 Editor’s Note: “The art collectors highlighted in this issue of Fine Art Connoisseur buy art with their eyes and hearts…”

Collecting Art for the Right Reasons

My favorite issue of the year is the one that highlights real-world collectors of contemporary realist art. This is that issue, and we hope you will enjoy “meeting” the individuals and couples who have so generously opened their doors. These folks now join 97 others we have profiled since 2015, and we are honored and grateful to welcome them to this community.

Why do we do this? First, people need role models, in any walk of life. We play tennis better after watching Coco Gauff, and we cook more effectively after Bobby Flay demonstrates the recipe. It’s harder with art collecting because there is no single way to do it, and unfortunately the best-known collectors are financiers and movie stars paying millions at auction for a Hirst or a Koons. Good for them, but that’s collecting warehoused-investment-assets with your ears, not art-to-live-with with your eyes. I’m far more intrigued by celebrities who collect items of comparatively low value: just for example, Tom Hanks buys antique typewriters, Angelina Jolie goes for medieval and Renaissance knives, and Claudia Schiffer seeks out mounted beetles, butterflies, and spiders.

Great, but this is a fine art magazine, and besides, buying anything when you’re a hundred-millionaire is not particularly difficult. The real trick is to buy wonderful “unbranded” art on a regular budget, away from the limelight and the art advisers who think about this stuff all day. The folks highlighted in this issue buy art with their eyes and hearts, living with and enjoying it, sometimes enhancing their lives further by getting to know the artists who made it.

The hardest step in this issue’s preparation is asking the collectors to choose just two artworks to illustrate in their profiles. That’s like choosing among your kids, but the collectors do it bravely, and they understand why we ask them to. It’s simple: we can dedicate only two pages to each collector, and if we were to fill them with seven or eight “favorite” images, there wouldn’t be room for the words. Besides, each artwork would look more like a postage stamp than a painting. And so we go smaller (in number) and bigger (in photo size), reminding everyone that these two images don’t represent the whole collection, only evoke it.

Our work on the collector profiles never stops, so it’s already time for us to plan next year’s edition. There are great collections — many still being formed — in every region of this country, and no one person could possibly know all of them. Though our research is well underway and we already have some terrific names in sight, I hereby invite you to send me suggestions or nominations of other collectors. Our criteria are simple: they must be U.S. residents (still living) who have collected, or are continuing to collect, superb contemporary realist art created any time after 1980.

Ideas are welcome from everyone: the collectors themselves, their friends, families, dealers, advisers, curators, etc. Please just send me an email (ptrippi@streamlinepublishing.com) and I will move it forward. Rest assured that our team is discreet; all communications with collectors will be virtual, and we will not turn up unannounced at their homes to take photos! The individuals selected will have an opportunity to fact-check everything, and in fact they themselves will provide the photos to be illustrated. That said, it’s our editorial team’s decision who goes in, and who doesn’t.

Thank you as always for your incoming suggestions, and please enjoy learning about this year’s fascinating collectors.

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Building an Art Collection – a Fine Art Collection Profile >

Tom Vining is a retired veterinarian who lives in a small town 75 miles west of Houston. His home is adorned with approximately 275 paintings, almost all of them on display with — amazingly — enough wall space for more. Ranging from figures and still lifes to landscapes and cityscapes, these works have been created by impressionist and realist artists in America, Russia, and Ukraine, most of them after 1980, though a few before.

Tom says he did not grow up with original art: “I remember my dad doing some paint-by-numbers and framing prints of famous paintings, but the real spark for my interest in art was beginning a new relationship at age 40. In 1992 my partner and I made our first visit to Santa Fe, where we purchased three landscape paintings by Don Brackett, Eric Wallis, and [the late] Louisa McElwain. I was hooked, so when we returned home, I began seeking out galleries near our second residence in rural Texas, between Houston and Austin. Luckily, I found The Gallery at Round Top, which was owned by two artists willing to answer my questions and educate me more than I ever could have on my own.”

One of those generous artist-gallerists was Karen Vernon, and Tom began purchasing paintings by local and regional artists she represented, then joined an organization in which she was active. Arts for Rural Texas is dedicated to providing arts education for youngsters who would otherwise never be exposed. Its programming includes after-school and summer art camps, exhibitions of student and professional artists, and the subsidized transport of pupils to attend live performances in large school auditoria throughout Fayette County.

Every year Arts for Rural Texas mounts Art Walk, a juried exhibition presented in the main square of Fayetteville (population 258). Over the years Tom has bought lots of art there and has also taken many more trips to Santa Fe, especially off-season, when dealers and artists are better able to relax and share their insights at length. In time, he discovered and “fell in love” with comparable artworks from the Soviet Union, Russia, and Ukraine, and he is especially fond of the students who are sustaining this artistic tradition at the Repin Institute in St. Petersburg. (Sadly, the availability of their art in the U.S. has been challenged by trade sanctions imposed on Russia since 2022.)

Today, the Vining Collection encompasses works by such American talents as George William Allen, William Alther, Sunny Apinchapong, Suzie Baker, Phil Beck, Ovanes Berberian, Kathie Boehneman, Don Brackett, Michelle Chrisman, Graydon Foulger, Kaye Franklin, Greg Glowka, Walt Gonske, A.D. Greer, Eric Harrison, Rick Hodgins, Qiang Huang, Eric Jacobsen, William Scott Jennings, Robert A. Johnson, Roger Hayden Johnson, Rusty Jones, Ramon Kelley, Sonja Kever, Phoenix Kooper, Margie Leach, Calvin Liang, Chen Liang, Huihan Liu, Frances Macaulay, Sally Maxwell, Janice McCubbin, Ken Muenzenmayer, C.W. Mundy, Lenore Prudhome, Manfred Rapp, Jean Reavis, Laura Robb, Bob Rohm, Don Sahli, Mary Scott, Carol Swinney, Gary Taylor, Linda Tibolla, Hsin-Yao Tseng, T.W. Vanya, Karen Vernon, Scott Wallis, and Bruce Williamson.

The Russian and Ukrainian artists represented include Lyudmila Agrich, Nikolai Babasyuk, Arthur Bakhtiyarov, Ekaterina Belova, Olga Grigoryeva-Klimova, Vladimir Kholuev, Viktor Kiselev, Slava Korolenkov, Valery Koserukov, Sergei Kovalenko, Vladimir Kovalov, Olga Kuzmina, Oleg Lomakin, Piotr Marmanov, Andrew Piankovski, Erik Rebane, Semon Rotnitski, Andrey Selenin, Alexander Shabadei, Irene Sheri, Boris Spornikov, Vadim Suvorov, Evdokia Usikova, Helve Viidalepp, Ivan Vityuk, Nina Volkova, Olga Volkova, Edvard Vyrzhikovski, Fedor Zakharovich Zakharov, Zinaida Zatsepina, and Tuman Zhumabaev.

Tom says he buys regularly from artists themselves; about 30 of those represented in the collection have had the pleasure of visiting him, and indeed four paintings have actually been created in his house. All visitors are struck by the intelligence of Tom’s juxtaposition of artworks from different regions; on one wall, for example, hang complementary tree scenes painted in 1979 by Fedor Zakharovich Zakharov (1919–1994) and just last year by Eric Jacobsen (b. 1966). The close aesthetic connection between Old and New Worlds is epitomized by the presence of two masters in the Vining Collection: Nicolai Fechin (1881–1955) and Sergei Bongart (1918–1985) both immigrated to the U.S. and thrived here, introducing generations of their new compatriots to “the Russian School.”

Tom also buys regularly from galleries and is quick to credit three dealers as particularly inspirational: Paul Eubanks at Paul Scott Gallery (formerly Gallery Russia) in Scottsdale, Dianna Eaton at Kyiv International  Gallery (formerly Art of Russia International) in Santa Fe, and Vanessa Rothe in Laguna Beach. He admits he is stunned by “the determination of younger artists to bypass the gallery system.” He says, “They do not seem to realize that few artists will prosper without someone promoting their work and investing time and money to do so. Being discovered on the Internet is like finding a needle in a haystack. Even established artists will fade away if they are not promoted constantly.”

Tom continues to show support for artists by attending fundraisers that benefit Arts for Rural Texas and other nonprofits, and when local galleries invite their artists to teach on site, they frequently come to visit his collection. (In fact, entire art classes from local schools have come through.)

Not every acquisition is straightforward, of course. Tom confides: “Sometimes, I find too many great pieces at the same time. Fortunately they seem to wait for me to come back and collect them. One piece took three years because there was always another one I liked more. Once I had to wait eight years for a very expensive painting, and sometimes I find that a desirable painting I passed on has later shifted to another gallery at a moment when I can actually acquire it.”

Clearly, patience has been an essential virtue in the Vining Collection’s formation, and will continue to be so.

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A Western Art Collection Profile >

The artist Billy Schenck lives near Santa Fe with his wife (and business partner), Rebecca Carter, in a handsome adobe house built by the renowned landscape architect John Brinckerhoff Jackson (1909–1996) and then completely renovated by the couple. Here at the Double Standard Ranch they have created their own Shangri-La for making and displaying art, and also for playing the equestrian sport of ranch sorting, at which Billy excels.

Born in Ohio, Billy “began drawing before I can remember.” In 1965, during his freshman year at the Columbus College of Art & Design, he spent $125 (a substantial sum then) on a painting created by a sophomore friend named Peter Kambitsis. Soon he transferred to the Kansas City Art Institute and began collecting art by his peers there, too. Billy still owns all of those works, including six paintings by classmate Stanley Whitney that are the only figurative works Whitney made before famously turning to abstraction.

A key component of Billy and Rebecca’s collection is contemporary Western art. They follow only 20 or so artists, but in depth, much the same way that Dr. Albert C. Barnes did a century ago when he focused on such contemporaries as Renoir, Cezanne, and Matisse in order to create what became Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation. The artists represented are James Butler, Russell Case, Kang Cho, Anne Coe, Frank Croft, Glenn Dean, Josh Elliott, John Fincher, Logan Hagege, Brett Allen Johnson, Jerry Jordan, T. Allen Lawson, Ed Mell, John Moyers, Erin O’Connor, Roseta Santiago, Tim Solliday, Tracy Stuckey, Kim Wiggins, Kathy Wipfler, and Dennis Ziemienski. (Robert Daughters is also here, though he passed away in 2013.)

Billy notes that all of these artists are “technical virtuosos who tend to have an immediately recognizable signature style”; he and Rebecca plan to publish a book on this group, something they have already done for their stellar holding of historical Western art, which encompasses such stars as Maynard Dixon, J.H. Sharp, and Frank Tenney Johnson. When it was exhibited at what is now the New Mexico Museum of Art, that trove drew record-breaking crowds and is still the only private collection presented at the museum since it was founded in 1915. (The show went on to visit six other venues nationwide.)

Also in the collection are key examples of handcrafted ranch furniture made by Thomas Molesworth between 1932 and 1950; this was his best period, after he had studied under Frank Lloyd Wright and brought his Arts & Crafts techniques to Cody, Wyoming. In addition, the Schencks are admired for their prehistoric Southwest ceramics.

Billy says the contemporary Western art has been purchased in a variety of settings — from the West’s many exhibition-sales benefiting museums, from galleries and auctions, and from other collectors and artists. He explains, “I know the living artists we collect because I have exhibited alongside all of them. People always assume that because I’m an artist, we acquire just by trading with other artists. But that is not true. We are extremely specific about the pieces we want, and those we get are usually exceptional and would never be available through a trade. We buy from the dealers and galleries that represent our colleagues and from the museum shows where their work is available.”

Some artists can be disorganized, but not Billy. Every artwork — regardless of value or rarity — is fully documented, including provenance, condition, the price paid, and the current market value. Billy and Rebecca keep this data digitally and also printed out in binders, and they have built a 1,000-square-foot climate-controlled storage unit that houses approximately 350 paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs.

In their home and office, nothing gets direct sunlight, and most photographs are kept in flatbed drawers to protect them from light and heat. Not surprisingly, the collection also includes the only complete set of Billy’s own serigraphs, lithographs, and etchings, along with color trial proofs and the original drawings used to cut the silkscreens. The serigraph collection has been exhibited at five museums and can be requested for loan in the future.

When asked about treasures that got away, Billy laughs and recalls: “There are a number of cases where I missed a painting and got it only after it went through two or three more sets of hands. One of them took 17 years before I acquired it. For the prehistoric Southwest ceramics, my all-time record was waiting 46 years to get one piece. In many cases, I did not have the financial wherewithal to acquire them right away. Moreover, I outlived all of the owners and bought the pieces from their estate sales. There are several instances where I had owned pieces and sold them in moments of financial weakness, then was able to buy them back as long as 40 years later.” He concludes, “Obviously the key is patience and living long enough.”

Billy is too modest to note one other key asset: his superb eye that discerns which artwork to pursue. Without that, patience and longevity will get a collector only so far.

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From the Fine Art Connoisseur January/February 2025 Editor’s Note:

Transcending the Circus

Well, you know I have to address it. For over a month now, people have mentioned it the minute they learn I edit a magazine about art collecting.

In November, the world fluttered yet again about the artist provocateur Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960) and his latest sensation. The Italian’s conceptual piece, “Comedian” — a yellow banana duct-taped to a white wall exactly 63 inches above the floor — soared past its $1.5 million estimate to sell for $6.2 million (including fees) at Sotheby’s New York. The winner, Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun (b. 1990), beat out six other collectors after a five-minute bidding war. He won the banana (which he proceeded to eat on camera a week later), plus a certificate of authenticity and an instruction manual for how to replace the banana every time it rots. You really could not make this stuff up.

“Comedian” has been attracting attention ever since it debuted at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair in December 2019. Any hopes that the subsequent pandemic might quash such nonsense in the art world were dashed, of course, and now its circus of vulgar novelty and conspicuous consumption goes on. (To be sure, there has always been a strand of absurdism in the arts: think of Marcel Duchamp presenting a commercial urinal as a Fountain in 1917, but that was over a century ago and jokes don’t remain amusing quite that long.)

David Galperin, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s, opined that “Comedian” “transcends geographies, language, understanding, cultural differences” and cited “its universality, the way it kind of pierces through the cultural zeitgeist to the very center.” In 2021, Cattelan himself said he does not see Comedian as a “joke,” but rather a “sincere commentary and a reflection on what we value.”

“Sincere” is not a word I would have conjured in this context, but I agree with both men that the visual and intellectual emptiness of “Comedian” perfectly reflect the emptiness of our “cultural zeitgeist.” If this is the only contemporary art that most Americans have heard about, no wonder they think art collecting is a racket, the loathsome love child of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Madison Avenue.

For decades, cynics have noted — quite correctly — that Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” (1503–06) is just a piece of wood covered in oil paint. It has no intrinsic or material value, only the incalculable value of its fame and history. Yes, but it also possesses beauty and meaning; it connects us with its maker and its sitter in powerful, sometimes perplexing, sometimes thrilling, ways. I don’t see anyone connecting powerfully with the banana, or with Maurizio Cattelan. He is justly admired as a brilliant skewerer of our era, and as a brilliant businessman. Yet Leonardo will be remembered for all time; his Italian compatriot will be forgotten within half a century — probably sooner — because satire and publicity stunts get stale so quickly.

This season’s frenzy of irony, cynicism, and commodification has not left me outraged or sad. Rather, it makes me cherish even more keenly the skill, thoughtfulness, and authenticity of the artists highlighted in Fine Art Connoisseur. There is no point in moaning about the global circus of cutting-edge contemporary art. Let’s ignore it and get on with making, viewing, studying, and buying the good stuff.

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A Fine Art Collection Profile >

Melba and Tom York are proud residents of Rockport, a once-sleepy fishing town that has blossomed into a lively arts enclave on the coast of South Texas, 30 miles northeast of Corpus Christi.

Melba says she dabbled in ceramics in her mid-twenties and later took classes with the realist artist Wayne Floeck, who specialized in depicting animals, primarily from Africa. Under his tutelage she painted a desert ram in fine detail, which was a particular pleasure because she and Tom had visited Africa themselves. But then, she laughs, “My short-lived art journey was brought to a halt by the birth of our daughter, and so began my deep appreciation for artists and the joy their creations bring. I realized that I would have to live my Bohemian art life through others.”

Shortly after they married, the Yorks visited Tom’s parents in Rockport during its annual Independence Day festival, where artists from across the country exhibit their latest works. “At that moment,” Melba recalls, “we fell in love with coastal art and became interested in meeting the artists and acquiring their art.” They have been doing that ever since, and now own more than 100 paintings. Among the artists represented in the York Collection are Joey Blazek, Angalee DeForest, Anita Diebel, Shirley Farley, Larry Felder, Susan Forest, Lisa Baer Frederick, Robin Hazard, Caro Jackson, Elsa Lopez Mathews, Jeffrey Neel McDaniel, Lisa Millard, Bonnie Lou Prouty, Rebecca Bridges Rice, Clementina Rivera, Barb Robinson, Steve Russell, Alison McLean Schuchs, Betty Shamel, Debbie Stevens, and V. Vaughn.

The Yorks’ first purchase of an original artwork was a quirky scene of angry pelicans painted by Shirley Farley (1930–2017), who had grown up in Hollywood (her cousin was Marlon Brando) before moving to Rockport. Melba later sold that piece because it didn’t suit her home decor, but she came to regret that decision later. She takes up the story: “So I walked into my favorite antique/resale shop in Rockport, where the owner was busy preparing a large estate sale. I spotted a large painting a good 50 feet away and shouted, ‘Braxton, is that a Farley?’ He replied, ‘Yes, but you’ll have to wait until the sale starts. And it’s pricey!’ Melba responded, ‘I don’t care. I want to buy it now!’ So Braxton wrote up the receipt, and now we have that large Farley [illustrated above] hanging over our fireplace. Since then, we have learned that if you see a painting you love, don’t hesitate to pull the trigger because someone else will love it, too.”

The Yorks are particularly pleased to have spotted on Chairish (a website worth checking) a small pen-and-ink drawing created by the founder of the Rockport Art Colony, Simon Michael (1905–2002). He was the original occupant of the Spanish-style hacienda compound named Tortilla Flats that the Yorks purchased, renovated, and occupied upon retiring. Melba confides, “I think the ghost of Simon Michael inhabited my spirit after we moved into the house because that is when I really became interested in collecting art.”

Most of the couple’s acquisitions have come directly from local artists participating in Rockport’s annual festival or exhibiting at local galleries. They are active supporters of the Rockport Center for the Arts, which was devastated in 2015 by Hurricane Harvey but in 2023 reopened in an impressive new building shepherded into existence by executive director Luis Puron. It’s clear the Yorks are devoted to their community; Melba explains, “I look at our artworks every day and love the memories they evoke, and I love the people who painted them.”

Indeed, the Yorks know most of these artists personally and have become close friends with many of them. When Harvey severely damaged the residence of artist Anita Diebel, Tom and Melba had her move into Tortilla Flats until her home was habitable again. Since then, Diebel has opened a thriving gallery that features a range of artists and synchronizes its events with Rockport’s monthly art walks.

Melba says the couple’s passion for art makes it easy to meet new friends. Among their closest are artist Elsa Mathews and her husband, Lloyd; Bob and Jean James, who introduced the Yorks to the art made by another gifted local, Brother Cletus (1933–2016); and Richard and Denise Smith, who also have, in Melba’s words, “a beautiful art collection.”

Given the heat and humidity for which South Texas is known, the Yorks keep their artworks out of direct sunlight, with many under ultraviolet-resistant glass, and monitor their air conditioning to ensure a stable temperature. Most of the works are displayed by theme, and Melba admits she gets “teased that I’m going to have to start hanging pictures from my ceilings.” She says, “I believe in the philosophy that more is not enough, and my goal is never to need to paint my walls again because they are covered with art!”

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Art Collection Spotlight > Ever since Dennis Elliott met the artist Judith Linhares in 1978, he has followed her work, along with the white rabbit she has frequently included in her paintings. Like Alice who chased that animal down the hole into Wonderland, Elliott, a prolific artist himself as well as the founder of the International Curatorial Studio Program (ICSP), has followed the progression of scenes Linhares paints and produces in her Brooklyn studio.

“Much of her work is a bit like what you’d find in Wonderland, as if Lewis Carroll might have constructed his stories in paint,” says Elliott, who in 1994 founded ICSP, an influential nonprofit which, to date, has brought some 2,500 mid-career artists from 88 countries to New York City for residencies.

While Elliott has long admired the fantastical nudes for which Linhares is best known, he has developed a particular penchant for her still lifes. This work above, “Go Tell Alice” (2022), represents exactly what Elliott most admires about Linhares’s canvases. “It’s very lush, it’s radiant, it’s easy to like, it’s delicious,” he says. “I consider her flower paintings second only to Van Gogh’s, though I have to admit I like hers even better.”

Although Linhares has had a successful career as an artist and teacher since she moved to New York from her native California in the 1970s, she has long been regarded as “an artist’s artist,” Elliott observes. But with a solo show at Florida’s Sarasota Art Museum in 2022, multiple shows and ongoing representation at the New York gallery P.P.O.W., and a solo show in 2023 at London’s Massimodecarlo, Linhares is increasingly known to a wider public.

Elliott particularly admires her ability to paint still lifes from memory. “In that sense, this painting and others are very un-still life,” he says, noting that it wasn’t until the early 1990s that she embraced the genre as one of her preferred forms. “With this particular work by Judy, there are references that draw people into the painting right away.” He points not only to the rabbit, seemingly about to hop off the canvas, but also the depiction in a corner of an iconic photograph that shows the late abstract painter and actress Deborah Remington playing a set of bongos.

“I happen to know that Deborah was a hero of Judy’s, and she likes how this photo of her represents a significant kind of freedom. What could sum up freedom more than playing the drums on a hot day on a Southern California beach with not much on?”

As a painter who describes his own canvases as “featuring forms that often look like things floating in outer space,” Elliott admires Linhares’s ability to carefully construct paintings. “She is like Van Gogh in that way,” he says, “for she understands how to develop space on a canvas and then be very attentive to brushwork. She’s always conscious of the position of the painting and where the edges of the canvas are.”

Having watched her progression over the decades, Elliott knows that paintings of hers that may look easy and spontaneous are, in fact, the result of weeks of work. “Nothing of hers is done in an afternoon. She paints and erases and takes paint away and then adds paint again. It’s a process.”

Elliott confesses that it took years for him to admire still lifes by any painter. “It came with age,” he recalls. “Normally, as a young snotty grad student at what’s now called the California College of the Arts, where coincidentally Judy was studying at the same time, though we didn’t know each other, I would have been dismissive of the genre. Now, I find great, radiantly colored still lifes like this one to be sources of solace, to be contemplative. All of Judy’s paintings provide that for me.”

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From the Fine Art Connoisseur November/December 2024 Editor’s Note:

Sharing Makes Us Stronger

The United States is fortunate to have a lively museum scene, with hundreds of thousands of artworks on public view at their home institutions and thousands more in circulation through traveling exhibitions. Even so, vast holdings of American art remain tucked away in museum vaults, inaccessible to art lovers due to financial and logistical constraints.

That’s a regrettable situation now being addressed in earnest. Earlier this year, Art Bridges launched its Partner Loan Network, fostering long-term collection-sharing partnerships among museums of all sizes nationwide. This initiative existed in another form for the past seven years, but now its scope has broadened. “By providing a platform for museums to share their collections, the Partner Loan Network offsets limitations to collection-sharing by providing logistical and strategic support to get artworks out of storage and share them with communities across the country,” explains Anne Kraybill, CEO of Art Bridges.

Art Bridges is a foundation created by the arts patron Alice Walton, whose family founded Walmart and still controls it. Art Bridges has its own collection of art, and it works closely with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, Walmart’s hometown.

Today the Partner Loan Network involves more than 200 institutions ranging in size from the gigantic Museum of Modern Art to the more modestly scaled Peoria Riverfront Museum. Art Bridges coordinates the preparation of the artworks to be loaned, including insurance, crating, and shipping, at no cost to participants, and additional grants to support educational activities are available. Over the past year, nearly 280 objects were rotated, enhancing the collections of 29 borrowing institutions.

A useful example can be enjoyed this season at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. On view there through December 8 is the exhibition “The Great Search: Art in a Time of Change, 1928–1945,” which takes its title from the 1939 World’s Fair held in New York City.  Organizer Holger Cahill, then national director of the Federal Art Project, spoke of the modern American artist’s “search that takes many paths” — a yearning desire to seek out new and enduring forms that would aid democracy.

Among the master artists represented in this year’s show are Milton Avery, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and Andrew Wyeth. Though many of the works come from the Westmoreland’s superb collection, others have been loaned through a multi-year, multi-institutional partnership formed by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Art Bridges. Philadelphia holds a particularly outstanding collection of American art, yet simply cannot show all of it. Why not, then, share some of those treasures, especially with another great venue in the same state?

Collaborations like this will help move our field forward, especially in this time of soaring costs and understaffing. To learn more about the network, visit artbridgesfoundation.org, and enjoy some of the resulting projects now underway.

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From the Fine Art Connoisseur September/October 2024 Editor’s Note:

Honoring the Past and Looking Forward

Every issue of Fine Art Connoisseur reminds me how exciting the field of contemporary realist art has become, across the United States and among practitioners of every age. A key marker of this vitality will go viral on September 13, when all eyes turn to Washington, D.C., for the installation and illumination of the National World War I Memorial in Pershing Park, two blocks from the White House. More than 4 million American men and women served in uniform during the “War to End All Wars” (1914–18), and 116,000 of them gave their lives, a figure especially shocking when we consider that the U.S. did not join the conflict until 1917, three years after it started.

The memorial’s focal point is “A Soldier’s Journey,” the 60-foot-wide bronze relief encompassing 38 figures conceived and executed by the New York City-based sculptor Sabin Howard (b. 1963). It traces the progress of an individual American combatant, who departs home, endures appalling ordeals, and finally returns to his family. Here we see not only soldiers: also depicted and honored for their contributions and sacrifices are nurses, spouses, and children.

Sabin Howard and architect Joseph Weishaar have endured their own journey; planning for the memorial began well over a decade ago, the groundbreaking occurred in 2017, and then came the pandemic. Howard has spent years developing his vision in New Zealand, England, and suburban New Jersey, working closely with his wife, Traci L. Slatton, who helped formulate his ideas around the composition’s narrative element.

I eagerly look forward to attending the unveiling this month, and I encourage everyone to follow the media coverage, which will alert the general public to the fact that great realist art is still being made. Fine Art Connoisseur has long covered the achievements of Sabin Howard, who excelled at the New York Academy of Art after studying at the Tyler School of Art’s program in Rome. Fortunately, there are many more talents out there excelling, including the team of sculptors Howard gathered to develop this project.

I am excited to learn where all of these gifted artists will turn next, and I encourage you to learn more about this month’s unveiling at sabinhoward.com/WWIcc.

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Ray and Lori Allen of San Diego have assembled a collection of contemporary realism that got its start through Ray’s long-standing love of art. In high school, he took classes in drawing and sculpture that triggered this interest, and while he was studying at Chicago’s DePaul University, it wasn’t uncommon for a professor to ask if anyone had seen Ray.  Usually the answer came back, “He’s at the Art Institute” downtown.

Today the Allens own works in their art collection by such gifted artists as Richard Becker, Michael Bergt, Anna Chervonnaya, Claire DeLandro, Yuriy Dymshyts, Dan Ferguson, Geraldine Grove, Jacquline Hurlbert, Joan Irving, Lauretta Lowell, Peter Matosian, Willie McGrath, Daryl Millard, John Modesitt, Jacob A. Pfeiffer, Craig Pursley, Artem Rogowoi, Dennis Sarazhin, Jan Dorian Whitney, Will Wilson, and Jeanne Zvetina.

Ray is not certain, but he thinks their first acquisition was Peter Matosian’s colorful scene of women and animals in nature, “Rio Papagayo.” The Allens spotted it in the window of a gallery in downtown San Diego, and that was that. If dealers still wonder if displaying art in their front windows is worth the effort, here’s more evidence it is. Years ago, San Francisco’s John Pence Gallery graced its window with the painting by Will Wilson illustrated here, “Canary Watching” — now the Allens’ favorite artistic possession.

“When I first spotted it there,” Ray recalls, “I was flabbergasted. I had never seen a painting with such emotion. We went in to look, but felt the price was beyond our reach. John Pence told us about Will’s background and about a new show he’d be in a week later. Every night I would just dream of that painting! Lori took pity on me and agreed we should go back to San Francisco from San Diego for the exhibition opening. When we got there, we made a beeline for “Canary Watching” but were shocked to find a ‘red dot’ on its wall label. My heart was broken! John Pence came over, saw the sorry looks on our faces, and confided, ‘I knew you’d be back.’ He had been saving the painting for us.”

Beyond underscoring what a gentleman John Pence is, this recollection reminds us that an artwork can inspire us not only through its appearance, but also through the story behind it. Wilson told the Allens that “Canary Watching” depicts a bouncer he had met in front of a bar. The young man was going through chemotherapy as part of his cancer treatment, which explains his baldness. His pet canary was also sick, which we can gather from its ruffled feathers. Fortunately, the man recovered, though his bird did not.

Also illustrated here is “Mocked,” one of six paintings by Michael Bergt that the Allens own. It too came via John Pence, who explained that it is the artist’s homage painting to Hieronymus Bosch’s famous “Christ Mocked (The Crowning with Thorns)” at London’s National Gallery. Having traveled to London specifically to see that masterpiece, the Allens learned that a strike by security staff would make it impossible to explore that area of the building. Clearly a return to London is in order.

Over the years, the Allens have been gratified to watch realism become “much more mainstream” in the world of contemporary art. Today they buy from galleries and fairs (such as the LA Art Show), and also directly from artists. Indeed, Ray says they have met several of “their” artists and correspond with a few.

The Allens admire aesthetic approaches other than realism, too, noting that “it’s hard to explain why a specific work triggers the sense of joy we get out of it.” Their only historical work is a painting by California’s Selden Connor Gile (1877–1947), though they note that John Modesitt’s contemporary landscapes are very much in the style of another California master, Maurice Braun (1877–1941).

As with so many art collectors, wall space has become a challenge for the Allens. Ray says, “We now store some paintings and rotate them on our walls,” a worthy process that often revives that dopamine hit of joy owners got the day they acquired the piece in the first place.

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