A spotlight on “The New Antiquarians: At Home with Young Collectors” by Michael Diaz-Griffith

A Collector of Art Collectors

By David Masello

In speaking to Michael Diaz-Griffith, the young chronicler of his fellow young art collectors, he describes symptoms he and others experience while pursuing their mission to acquire fine things. He cites, for instance, a “vibrating in place” when standing in front of Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, among the world’s greatest repositories of a lifelong collecting pursuit — and also an institution for which the now-37-year-old Diaz-Griffith once served as executive director of its American foundation. While he lives in what he calls a “shabby Upper East Side brownstone right out of the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” he continues to dream daily about dining and sleeping in Gothic Revival rooms like those of Soane. “But I am so catholic in my tastes,” he admits, “I could get excited about recreating almost any style or period.”

Jeremy Simien — one of more than 20 individuals Diaz-Griffith profiles in his revelatory book, The New Antiquarians: At Home with Young Collectors (2023, Monacelli) — admits to feeling “a bit embarrassed” as he continues adding to his collection of mostly 19th-century portraits of native Louisianans. When asked, for example, how many paintings he has acquired recently, he replies, sotto voce for fear his wife or others in his Baton Rouge home might overhear, “I may, I guess, have bought, I think, three or four more in the last month.”

And when the Brooklyn-based antiques dealer Collier Calandruccio describes the symptoms that overcome him when he finds a pristine Duncan Phyfe chair or yet another 17th-century Dutch portrait (particularly a tronie, a study of an anonymous person), he uses such phrases as “heart racing.” It makes sense, then, that he feels a “grieving” when he is compelled to sell an object he loves to someone else. “Becoming a dealer required that I make peace with feeling the need to hold things to myself,” Calandruccio notes. “But because I live with most of the pieces, I get to enjoy them before they’re sent on to their next home.”

In his book, Diaz-Griffith recognizes a new breed of art collectors, and in fact he himself collects fine objects, including 19th-century American painted furniture, portrait miniatures, reverse-painted glass portraits, and 19th-century watercolor portraits of interiors. In his ability to recognize that like-minded young people exist (most are also in their mid-30s), he is a kind of cultural anthropologist.

The New Antiquarians not only uncovers select collectors (and characters) living in America and Britain who embrace the past, live amidst it, and promote it, but Diaz-Griffith also tells us why such youngish people exist and how they live with it. Ultimately he convinces readers why we should be glad to know them, regardless of our own age.

“There are a lot of us who want to look, to learn, and to begin acting on the collecting vibe within us,” the author says reassuringly. While he admits that “collecting has never been a young person’s game,” he also acknowledges that such a breed does exist and that their “tastes are much more in line with our grandparents’ than, say, our older siblings.’”

Continue reading this article in Fine Art Connoisseur magazine, January/February 2024. Fine Art Today covers artists and products we think you’ll love. Linked products are independently selected and linked to for your convenience. If you buy something using a link on this page, Streamline Publishing may receive a small share of that sale.

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Alas, Marguerite Louppe did not date her works, although she signed them with a confident flourish in a distinctive lowercase imprint. Continue reading…

Marguerite Louppe: On Her Own

by Lilly Wei

Women artists of talent have too often been overlooked. This is something not yet banished to the past, although, yes, times have changed, and for the better. A gratifying number of women — still not enough — have emerged from undeserved obscurity, some once eclipsed by a more successful husband, lover, or son. A now-famous example is Suzanne Valadon, whose son was Maurice Utrillo. Marguerite Louppe (1902–1988) is another: her life spanned almost the entire 20th century, a period of enormous transitions of unparalleled rapidity.

Louppe’s husband was Maurice Brianchon (1899–1979), an artist celebrated in his day both in France and abroad. She was his active collaborator on many projects and managed his career. He, in turn, was surprisingly supportive of her as an artist in her own right, unusual in the context of the times and within a traditionally patriarchal society. By all accounts, they had an exceptionally close relationship that seamlessly merged the professional and the personal. (Even Christo and Jeanne-Claude, one of history’s most famous art couples — and from a later, more progressive generation — did not officially become a collective until 1994, three decades after they began to collaborate.)

Louppe was born in Commercy, in northeastern France, to a family of prominent engineers that included her father and an uncle, Albert Louppe, who guided construction of a strategically important bridge near Brest that was later named in his honor. Her parents moved to Paris soon after she was born and settled in the wealthy 16th arrondissement, where she was raised.

Rather than enrolling her in a Catholic school, her parents sent her to the Lycée Molière. This was the first French public school to accept girls; its rigor and high standards, as well as its more diverse student body, suited Louppe and served her well later. There she studied literature, turning to art after graduation by taking classes for the next six years at several of the private art academies that abounded in Paris: the Julian, Grande Chaumière, Scandinave, and André Lhote.

These academies were quite progressive; both men and women (who were not yet accepted at more established art schools) flocked to them. The Académie Julian was noted for its radicalism and encouragement of independent thinking, which no doubt reinforced Louppe’s experimental inclinations and interest in the new. Among the fledgling artists there with her were Marcel Duchamp, Jean Dubuffet, and Louise Bourgeois. Julian’s older alumni included Pierre Bonnard, André Derain, and Édouard Vuillard. Louppe met Brianchon at a Julian function through the family of a friend; they married in 1934 and the following year their only child, Pierre-Antoine, was born.

Louppe mounted her last show in 1985 and died three years later in Paris, a decade after her husband. For many years their artworks were stored in a warehouse by their son, largely unseen, although now and then he sold some of his father’s paintings. Pierre-Antoine died in 2012, and, since he never married, he bequeathed his parents’ estate to relatives with whom he was close. Their son, David Hirsh, began to make inquiries in consultation with William Corwin, an artist and art historian. Now their estate is represented by Rosenberg & Co., the powerhouse gallery of modern art established in Paris more than a century ago and forced to relocate to New York during the Nazi occupation. Thanks to its efforts and those of others, Louppe’s oeuvre is enjoying its moment in the sun, the focus of a string of exhibitions and overdue critical attention.

Separate & Together

Louppe and Brianchon seem to have had an ideal marriage, if any relationship can be completely free from complications. She frequently exhibited where he did, no doubt at his urging, but that would have gotten her only so far without her considerable skills, even if they were not recognized as equal to his. At the time very few women artists were appreciated by critics, institutional power brokers, or the public, even when, like Louppe, they were showing at highly regarded galleries such as Charpentier, Charles Auguste Girard, and René Drouet, alongside artists like Bonnard, Georges Rouault, Georges Braque, and Maurice Denis.

Among the couple’s documented collaborations were three murals for Paris’s Conservatoire National de Musique et d’Art Dramatique, of which later renovations have left no trace. Louppe also made illustrations for a novel by Georges Duhamel, the celebrated critic, Nobel nominee, and member of the Académie Française — another indication that she was respected by others beyond her husband.

Louppe and Brianchon enjoyed a full social life and hosted salons for cultural luminaries — a power couple, we might say. But in 1959, after decades at the center of the Paris art world, they bought a property with a commodious farmhouse and garden in Truffières, a village in the Dordogne region of southwestern France. It simplified their life and gave them more time and space to devote to their work, something many artists long for at a certain point in their careers. Louppe got her own studio for the first time and no longer needed to juggle her workspace time with Brianchon’s. She doubled down on studio paintings of still lifes, their house and garden, and the village, all filtered through her idiosyncratically diagrammed compositions.

Alas, Louppe did not date her works, although she signed them with a confident flourish in a distinctive lowercase imprint. Because of this, painstaking research has been necessary to establish a tentative chronology for her output. The timeline that has emerged is often based on stylistic evidence as well as content (e.g., was it painted in Paris or Truffières?), and linked to dated photographs and other archival documents. Even basic facts about Louppe are not always easily confirmed. Since there were no diaries and little correspondence between her and Brianchon, much of their relationship is based on the gathering of related data, from which an idea of their life together can be sketched.

Continue reading this article in Fine Art Connoisseur magazine (November / December 2022 issue)

A look at the marine paintings and life of historic master Emil Carlsen

By Valerie Ann Leeds

Lyricism, quietude, subtlety — these are the defining qualities of the landscape paintings of the Danish American artist (Søren) Emil Carlsen (1848–1932). In his lifetime, Carlsen was far better known for still life subjects, and the misconception that this was his primary genre has prevailed. In fact, landscapes represent a significant aspect of his production, including exceptional marine scenes painted throughout his career.

Warranting particular reappraisal are Carlsen’s compositions picturing open seas, coasts, and falls, which earned critical acclaim and bound him artistically to his Nordic seafaring heritage. Indeed, his life-long connections to Denmark supplied an essential foundation for his art and especially informed his marine paintings.

Carlsen was born in Copenhagen and studied architecture at the Royal Danish Academy for four years. He then turned to art, and although the circumstances prompting this shift are unknown, art was part of his heritage, as his mother and brother were painters. Carlsen studied under the marine painter Christian Vigilius Blache (1838–1920) from 1866 to 1869, but in 1872 he immigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago, where he trained with another Danish-born marine painter, Lauritz Holst (1848–1934). He also studied in Paris in 1875, and returned there from 1884 until 1886.

Although Carlsen developed a unique style, the influence of the two older Danes and the traditions of his homeland are evident in the emphasis he gave to the natural world (especially open space, water, and sky), in his minimal and harmonious compositions, and in their entrancing light and atmosphere. All are features found in much Scandinavian art.

Early Marine Scenes

In 1876, the earliest published account of Carlsen’s marine paintings appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript (he moved to Boston that year after living in Chicago for four years): “Carlsen … has two or three pictures nearly completed which will soon be placed on exhibition in one of our galleries. They are marine and shore views and are remarkably effective.”

His most noteworthy early water composition is a Massachusetts scene with a boat wreck on Nantasket Beach (1876). Created when he was only 28, it is arguably Carlsen’s first mature painting and possesses many of the hallmarks that became essential to his seascapes — the open and spare composition, wide expanse of sky, and horizontal stripe of land. The subtle palette and thin application of pigment are also typical of the technique seen in his early landscapes, but differ markedly from the dark, somber tonalities of his still life paintings.

Duncan Phillips, the critic, philanthropist, and (Carlsen’s later) patron who founded Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection, explained how the artist’s interest in landscape developed, noting that his early landscapes were executed in a manner that was “rather thin and tight, but of a fine tonality and sensitively observed. In those days, no one cared for ‘still life’ and he could not sell his canvases. The world might never have known his landscapes and ‘marines’ if the struggle had not become precarious, so that his friends advised him to abandon ‘still life’ for more popular subjects.”

Carlsen had painted maritime subjects even while in Denmark, as early as 1870. Once in America, he attempted to establish his reputation with still lifes; in fact, he submitted them almost exclusively to major annual shows at the National Academy of Design and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts through the turn of the century. Yet, he continued painting waterscapes, as noted in 1883 in the Boston Sunday Globe: “It will be a loss to one branch of art if Mr. Carlsen gives up his still life-work [sic], but if he succeeds as well with marine subjects the gain will quite evenly balance the loss.”

After 1900, Carlsen became increasingly engaged with landscape and marine compositions and began showing fewer still lifes. It is possible that this shift was influenced partly by his friendship with American impressionist J. Alden Weir (1852–1919), which commenced around the same time. The two artists shared a poetic and suggestive approach to painting nature, although with different results.

Continue reading this article in Fine Art Connoisseur magazine (November / December 2022 issue)

Donating art to an art museum should be a no-brainer, but, in fact, many museums reject far more proposed donations than they accept. Here’s why, and alternative options.

Giving It Away

By Daniel Grant

By most measures, giving to charity is a good thing. Donating cash to nonprofit organizations, books to libraries, clothes to the Salvation Army, child care items to homeless shelters, or artworks to museums helps the public in general and those in need particularly. Moreover, donors receive a tax deduction equal to the value of the donation. Win-win.

Yet there frequently are times when prospective recipient organizations do not want your gift. Cash is rarely a problem unless the donor’s money is ill-gotten (e.g., the Sackler family’s name has been removed from numerous institutions in light of their role in the opioid epidemic). But libraries increasingly turn down book donations (they have too many already), the Salvation Army only wants items that are “gently used” and in full working order, and pre-owned cribs, plush toys, and car seats are now refused by all child-related organizations regardless of their condition.

Giving art to an art museum should be a no-brainer, but, in fact, many museums reject far more proposed donations than they accept. “Ninety to ninety-five percent of material that is offered to museums is declined,” says Michael Duffy, national head of art and collectibles planning in the private banking division at Bank of America. (He acknowledges these numbers are anecdotal, since no one has formally tallied the objects offered to, then accepted or rejected by, U.S. museums, but they correlate with his experience working with art collectors.)

This reality often comes as a surprise to collectors or their heirs who, in Duffy’s words, “think of their objects as assets.” Museums, by contrast, often view new accessions to their permanent collections as “liabilities.” (After all, every item a museum owns takes up valuable “real estate” and needs to be secured, insured, catalogued, and stored in a suitable environment.)

Reasons To Say No

Let’s start with the most basic reason a museum might turn down an artwork: the piece is not in line with the institution’s mission. For instance, a venue devoted to contemporary art has no need for an impressionist painting, regardless of the work’s quality or importance. Even if the institution does collect and display artworks consistent with what a prospective donor is offering, it may still demur if it already has pieces just like the one being proffered. Or the proposed donation may not be as good — in condition or aesthetic quality — as others already in the collection. Moreover, proposed artworks that will need substantial conservation are a red flag.

Then there are the more subtle problems that museum directors do not want to take on. For example, the attribution may be questionable. Is this painting by  Rembrandt or just attributed to Rembrandt? Perhaps it can only be designated as Studio of Rembrandt or School of Rembrandt. In each case, the determination moves further and further away from something definitive, requiring costly research by the museum that accepts the painting and then a diminution of value for the donor whose charitable tax deduction drops accordingly.

Other issues are title (does the collector have full ownership of the piece, unencumbered by liens or claims of theft by former owners or foreign governments?) and provenance, the chain of ownership that is ideally an unbroken line from the artist’s studio to the current owner’s home. In cases where these matters are unclear, the institution needs to devote staff time and money to research. Gaps in the chain of ownership, or the possibility of future claims that the artwork was looted or connected to money laundering (using ill-gotten gains to purchase artworks then sold on to produce “clean” money), also might result in expensive legal challenges to the museum.

Prospective donors may also have expectations about what a museum will do for them that the institution cannot meet. For instance, a collector may stipulate that all of his donations must be exhibited together (reflecting his own vision of the entirety), that some or all must be displayed regularly, or that none can ever be sold. Some even insist upon all of these conditions. “Almost every museum has established accession policies that bar conditions on gifts,” says New York City art adviser Todd Levin. This is in large part because curators and directors don’t want to tie their successors’ hands with binding agreements.

Some institutions make this quite clear from the outset when communicating with prospective donors. The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, for example, solicits gifts of objects, but its website states, “All acquisitions should be outright, unconditional, and irrevocable upon transfer to the museum. The museum cannot guarantee that objects donated will be placed on exhibition or that they will be exhibited or stored intact as a single collection.”

On a more informal basis, professionals representing collectors urge their clients who are looking to donate to “be realistic,” says Boston-based lawyer Nicholas O’Donnell. “If I represent a donor who wants everything to stay together, and for nothing to ever be sold, I tell that person, ‘No one will agree to that.’”

In general, museum officials are more interested in “cherry-picking” — selecting from a private collection only those individual works that complement or differ from pieces already in the permanent collection — than in accepting many works, some of which may be ill-suited for the institution. “With very few exceptions, most collections are not donatable,” O’Donnell says.

Quite understandably, collectors may be in love with what they have purchased over the years, but they’ll probably discover that museum professionals have other priorities and interests. Levin recalls a couple of collectors of American craft who had built their collection over 25–30 years. At a party they met the director of a local museum, who “was very excited to hear they were interested in donating their collection. Not long afterward, he visited their home, took one look and saw that it wasn’t of the right caliber for the museum. He was very gracious to them, but wasn’t interested. The collectors were crestfallen.”

Because museums look at gifted objects as liabilities, officials regularly seek to offset their conservation, insurance, research, and storage costs by requesting cash donations to accompany the objects. Duffy says he once advised “a client who wanted to donate a small Monet painting to [Atlanta’s] High Museum, which considered it secondary or tertiary to Monet’s masterworks,” though it would have been more willing to accept it were the gift accompanied by some cash. But “the donor did not want to also contribute $50,000.” Another Bank of America client had “an early Van Gogh, painted before this artist’s work became more colorful.” The first museum he approached would only take it if it came with $100,000. “The donor was offended,” Duffy explains, “and ultimately found another museum that wanted only $50,000.”

Strategies to Consider When Donating Art

Collectors may spend a lifetime assembling artworks that represent a certain theme or are particularly meaningful to them. But then the process of estate planning, or the finality of death itself, can result in these pieces flying off in different directions — some donated to museums, others taken by heirs, others sold commercially.

Generally, there are three things collectors can do with artworks, antiques, or other collectibles as part of their estate planning.

Option 1 is to bequeath everything to your heirs and let them worry about it; no inheritance tax is due as long as the entire estate falls below the Internal Revenue Service’s current $12.06 million threshold. (If the estate is worth more than that, the federal tax on inherited items ranges from 18 to 40 percent, and state taxes may also be due.)

Option 2 is to have the pieces sold off upon your death; this can incur a capital gains tax of 28 percent, or even 39.6 percent, depending on how long the objects were in your collection.

Option 3 is to have the pieces donated to a museum or other charitable institution upon your death, thus reducing your estate’s overall value while obtaining a charitable deduction. Understandably, quite a few collectors prefer this third option.

In order for a donor to receive a full “fair market value” income tax deduction, the recipient organization must prove that its use of the artwork will further its own tax-exempt purpose, referred to by the IRS as “related use.” If there is no related use, the donors’ charitable deduction will be limited to their “cost basis” in the work — what they originally paid for it. In this case, a painting purchased for $50,000 that is now worth $500,000 would provide the donor with only a $50,000 deduction.

Additionally, if a charity — art museum or otherwise — sells the donated work within three years of receiving it, that sale must be reported to the IRS and the donor’s fair market value deduction may be retroactively lowered to his or her original purchase price, plus certain expenses. As a practical matter, donors should clarify with the recipient institution that the gift must be kept for at least three years. This is especially relevant with charities that solicit artworks they intend to sell off during benefit auctions that generate operating funds.

For some owners of large, valuable collections, there is one more possibility: establishing their own foundation or museum, which will keep the art together long-term. You get all the benefits of the charitable deduction, control over how and which objects are displayed, and the gratification of seeing your own taste memorialized by an institution with your name on the door. Examples created fairly recently include the (Peter) Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Manhattan and Greenwich, Connecticut; the Linda Pace Foundation in San Antonio; The Broad (established by Eli and Edythe Broad) in Los Angeles; and the (Mera and Don) Rubell Family Collection in Miami and Washington, D.C.

For some of these donors, it is control that may matter most. “It’s really not tax-driven,” says Diana Wierbicki, a partner at the law firm of Withers LLP, where numerous clients have set up such museums. Usually these entail collections worth more than $100 million: “You need enough value and volume to make it worth doing,” Wierbicki explains.

Other Options for Donating Art

For those not quite as well-heeled, finding a home for your artworks is a task that many professional art advisers can undertake for you, charging either by the hour (usually in excess of $200 per hour) or on a negotiated per-project basis. Lela Hersh, a Chicago-based adviser for whom collection management is as much a part of her work as helping clients buy and sell pieces, is proud to have helped Joseph and Jory Shapiro. Ultimately, they donated a group of paintings to Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), works on paper to the Art Institute of Chicago, and other works to Rosary College, Spertus College, and the University of Notre Dame. “Eclectic collections can’t go to just one place,” Hersh notes.

A firm launched in 2021, Museum Exchange, specializes in placing artworks in museums, hospitals, universities, and libraries, helping collectors determine where and when to donate their objects. Chief growth officer Michael Darling (formerly MCA’s chief curator) says, “We have 160-plus museums and over 300 donors participating throughout North America and as such have a great chance of finding a good fit.”

Its process is straightforward. Museum Exchange publishes quarterly catalogues of artworks being offered by collectors, viewable by museum staff who submit proposals to receive the artworks as gifts. Donors then select one museum from those various expressions of interest. After a match is made, Museum Exchange manages the donation process through its digital interface, streamlining the potentially complex and cumbersome logistics of a charitable gift.

With or without an adviser’s help, it makes sense for collectors planning their estates to contact museum curators and directors now to indicate what they own and to ascertain if the institutions would be interested in receiving those objects as donations. Too often, Michael Duffy says, collectors just indicate in their wills that their objects should go to a specific museum, leaving their heirs to discover that the objects are actually unwanted and thus require disposition in some other way. The harsh reality that museums reject so many proposed gifts is not limited to the largest and most prestigious institutions; it happens at smaller, regional ones, too. “Collectors shouldn’t mistake their local museum for Goodwill, donating unwanted tangible personal property without first speaking with the museum’s curator or other staff,” Duffy concludes.

About the Author: Daniel Grant is a contributing writer to Fine Art Connoisseur and author of The Business of Being an Artist (Allworth Press).

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For art enthusiasts: A New Book on Anders Zorn and His Process: “Zorn’s Studio: The Artist’s Materials and Techniques”
by Art Historian Emma Jansson

From the Foreward
by Johan Cederlund
Director, The Zorn Museum:

At the turn of the century, Anders Zorn was among Europe’s most celebrated artists. Kings, presidents, financiers, and cultural figures lined up to have their portraits painted by the famous Swede. His sensual pictures of bathing women won wide acclaim, and his etchings commanded prices higher than those of any other artist. Today, Zorn’s name is not as well known, at least not outside of Sweden, but those who encounter his paintings are still fascinated by his brilliant technique, and the ease with which he seemed to create his works. It is as if the paintings were made without effort. Many painters also refer to “Zorn’s palette,” a palette that according to tradition consisted of only four colours: white, yellow, red, and black.

In this book, Zorn’s technique, colours, and work process are for the first time the focus of a scientific investigation. Art historian Emma Jansson refutes the myth of Zorn’s limited palette, and shows how paintings that give the impression of improvisation were in fact preceded by countless sketches and studies, artistic considerations, and deep knowledge of the nature of the materials in use. For Zorn, art was a craft that had to be learned from scratch and in all aspects; he proved himself capable of everything and in any technique.

Emma Jansson’s research on Zorn was conducted at the Institute for Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University. The work resulted in the doctoral dissertation “Making in Context: Reconsidering Anders Zorn’s Oil Painting Practice” (2022), from which this book emerged. It is with our great pleasure that the Zorn Museum, which has followed and supported Emma Jansson in her investigation, is able to contribute to the fascinating results she presents reaching a wider audience.

Get your copy of the book at https://shop.zorn.se.

View more artist and collector profiles here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

Where Creativity Happens: Follow us inside the homes and art studios of these remarkable makers.

Where Creativity Happens: The Lure of Artists’ Homes and Art Studios

By Valerie A. Balint

Daniel Chester French’s Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial (1914–22, Washington, D.C), Frederic Edwin Church’s Niagara (1857, National Gallery of Art), and Grant Wood’s American Gothic (1930, Art Institute of Chicago): these three icons of American art each transcend their physicality.

The Lincoln Memorial has become synonymous with fundamental ideals of democracy, social justice, and the right to assemble freely in protest or celebration. It has become a place of pilgrimage for millions and is perhaps the most famous American artwork of all. Niagara signifies Americans’ ties to our grand landscape as linked to national identity, and to our National Parks system, which is exceptional in the world. Church’s painting has come to represent the exact vantage point we conjure up when picturing the falls and has been reimagined endlessly, even by contemporary artists such as Annie Leibowitz. Wood’s enigmatic commentary on rural life is likely one of the world’s most widely reproduced and re-appropriated images, transformed onto T-shirts, beach towels, and “paper doll” magnets. These masterworks are foundations of America’s cultural vocabulary.

But it is easy to forget that these objects were made by specific people in specific places, created through rigorous physical work and mental engagement by makers who lived in places that both inspired and were transformed by them. Preserved artists’ homes and studios — French’s bucolic Chesterwood (Stockbridge, Massachusetts), Church’s majestic Olana (Hudson, New York), and Wood’s ingeniously compact home and studio space (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) — offer novices, devotees, and connoisseurs alike an opportunity to immerse themselves in the locus of an artist’s creative process, complex personal narrative, and — in many instances — artistic experimentation. This promise of the experiential represents the core ethos of the Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios network, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

A NATIONWIDE PARTNERSHIP

Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios (HAHS) is a professional network comprising 44 (and still growing) preserved artists’ homes and studios throughout America, all now open as public sites. The National Trust for Historic Preservation created the program in 1999, with lead support from the Henry Luce Foundation, to support places that tell the rich stories of our nation’s art history. Collectively, these member sites represent the legacy of more than 300 visual artists across 21 states and three centuries. Together, they engage more than 1 million visitors annually in meaningful experiences that link creativity to place.

The network represents the only program in the nation dedicated to providing professional support to this unique category of preserved sites, serving as a model for similar consortiums overseas. It is the leading voice promoting public awareness of the important role that artists’ residences and workplaces have played in the development of our nation’s art.

Member sites reflect the breadth and depth of art history in the U.S. and include places dedicated to iconic painters and sculptors such as Thomas Cole, Edward Hopper, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, as well as those celebrating decorative arts practitioners such as furniture maker Sam Maloof (Alta Loma, California) and photographers like Alice Austen (Staten Island, New York). In addition, there are several important artists’ colonies, including the impressionist enclave at the Florence Griswold home (Old Lyme, Connecticut), that served as creative hubs during their heydays.

These preserved sites include artists both well-known and less familiar. Andrew Wyeth, the central figure among three generations of artists, was fueled by the environment of his boyhood in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and by the nearby Kuerner Farm to create enduring images in a converted schoolhouse. To visit is to understand better both his works and the complex and deeply introspective person who remained inspired by, and close to, his childhood home.

By contrast, Theodore C. Steele, American impressionist and member of the Hoosier Group, moved to rural Indiana and transformed his landscape, which then became a favored subject. The walls and mantels of the house he designed and helped build are adorned with quotations that convey his personal credo as well as a painterly ethos, including: “Every morning I take my hat off to the beauty of the world.”

No less personal is the Arts and Crafts home that painter Grace Hudson designed in Ukiah, California, with her ethnographer husband, set in a region inhabited by the indigenous Pomo peoples. The couple lived among the tribes and documented their disappearing culture — albeit through decidedly Western eyes. Less known today, Hudson and her imagery were incredibly popular in her time and now warrant rediscovery.

IN THE INNER SANCTUM

Stepping into an artist’s studio invites alchemy; secrets are revealed that cannot manifest on a museum or gallery wall. The enticing rows of patina compounds in jars, wire armatures, and chiseling tools found in sculptor Ann Norton’s Florida studio — or the small modeled maquettes Thomas Hart Benton used in his St. Louis studio to compose figurative arrangements for his monumental painted mural cycles — make clearer the complex processes involved in making art.

Some studios are replete with props and costumes, such as the authentic indigenous artifacts that appear in works by the Montana painter Charles M. Russell and Taos artists Henry Sharp and E.I. Couse. Other artists outfitted studios with devices of their own design to aid in their efforts. Daniel Chester French created a section of rail track that extends beyond his studio doors, enabling him to move large-scale works in progress outside to contemplate changes in natural light and perspective. Denver-based artist and educator Vance Kirkland rigged a series of straps from the ceiling so he might paint suspended over the large canvas on his worktable.

Perhaps nowhere is process felt more acutely than in the studio Jackson Pollock (and later Lee Krasner) used at their home in East Hampton, Long Island. The impossibly dense paint-splattered floor (left by Pollock) coupled with painted remnants of gestural arcs on the walls (left by Krasner) immerse visitors in their respective processes.

Similarly, the roaring surf that ceaselessly pounds against the rocks outside Winslow Homer’s Maine studio places visitors directly within one of his masterful coastal landscapes.

BEYOND THE STUDIO WALLS

These sites have become places to learn about artists and their art, but they also invite other types of inquiry. In these personal spaces, unfettered by clients or critics, artists were free to experiment and expand beyond established boundaries. Often they responded to the tension between inspirations drawn from their locales and the impulse to shape those same locales to represent their own aesthetic sensibilities. Many sought (and achieved) the integration of the natural, the built, and the collected. The result? Tangible autobiographies of sorts that evolved — sometimes over decades, beyond the timeframe of any singular work’s production or a career-defining moment. In their homes and studios, painters, sculptors, and decorative artists could redefine themselves as architects, landscape architects, interior designers, and even curators. Grant Wood outfitted his space with metalwork fixtures he handcrafted. Chicago Imagist Roger Brown adapted a commercial building to serve as home and studio, but also to be what he deemed “a museum” to house his vast collections.

Visitors can discover new facets of an artist they thought they knew, as well as re-manifestations of the familiar, perhaps revealed in a different guise. Seemingly disparate environments like Church’s Olana and Russel Wright’s Manitoga are two examples where such synergies can be found. Both represent examples of holistic environments conceived to encompass multidisciplinary forms of expression. Church’s Persian-fantasy home, an amalgam of inspirations from his sojourn to the Middle East and his imagination, sits within the landscape he spent 40 years perfecting, one worthy of any Hudson River School composition. Church reveled in color, grand proportion in relationship to intricate detail, panoramic composition, and theatricality in both life and art. His decades-long effort is now recognized as a work of art itself.

Similarly, industrial designer Russel Wright’s modernist integration with nature at Manitoga (Garrison, New York) is a totality of art and design. In a home built on a former industrial site, Wright changed the tableware and other fittings with the seasons and was able to enact the principles outlined in his 1950 publication Guide to Easier Living. His experimentations with natural elements — like a pressed butterfly screen, stone doorknobs, and birch bark-wrapped doorways — under-score that any of these beautifully executed designs could be extracted and hold pride of place under a museum vitrine, but are best understood in their original context.

Numerous sites reflect similar impulses by their artist owners, including those who transformed existing buildings. Donald Judd’s live-work environment at 101 Spring Street in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood, an erstwhile sewing factory, became an informal teaching salon and an installation of contemporary works by himself and colleagues, a concept he pursued further in Marfa, Texas. Georgia O’Keeffe’s adobe compound in Abiquiú, New Mexico, which she completely transformed to satisfy her minimalist preferences, inspired many of her works.

Still other artists chose to move beyond traditional concepts of studio and display altogether, such as Fonthill, the fantastical creation of tile maker Henry Chapman Mercer, in Doyles-town, Pennsylvania. Mercer invented a method of building with concrete, eschewing the conventional construction norms of his day, while also including exacting, but reimagined, architectural elements that he encountered on his European travels. The resulting tableau presents a dizzying display of his signature tiles, encyclopedic ceramics, and book collections, which all have become part of the larger installation.

A more recent example of this experimental relationship between working and living spaces is conceptual artist David Ireland’s architectural sculpture: his Victorian home in San Francisco’s Mission District shatters previous conceptions of how art and life can continuously interact in the same space and strict classifications of painting, sculpture, and performance. Ireland, who died only 11 years ago, famously asserted, “You can’t make art by making art.” Instead, he made art a part of daily living, transforming his traditional home into a holistic installation that he worked for years to create, in part by covering his walls with layer upon layer of polyurethane that now glows like amber. The house, restored and then opened to the public in 2018, illustrates our increasing desire to engage with artist spaces.

These examples represent only a fraction of the innovative spaces that await visitors to the Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios.

VESSELS OF ART AND COLLECTING

Many of these diverse sites are exquisite examples of design and decoration, reinforcing artists’ abilities to compose, combine color, and harmonize. During this unprecedented time, as many of us work from home (as artists often do) and commune more deeply with our personal spaces, the implications of wall color choice and the objects we surround ourselves with become more pronounced. All aesthetic choices, conscious or unconscious, say something about who we are. So, too, for artists, who often hang their walls or grace their landscapes with artworks of their own design. Many sites boast large collections or works by the artists who lived there, giving visitors unparalleled opportunities to explore their oeuvre.

Still other sites incorporate works created in situ, such as the abstract frescos George L. K. Morris and Suzy Frelinghuysen installed throughout their modernist home in Massachusetts, or the epic mural cycle that self-taught African American artist Clementine Hunter created in a former slave building at Melrose Plantation in rural Louisiana, where she lived and worked most of her life. Other artists surrounded themselves with artworks by friends or colleagues or artists from long ago who inspired their own creativity. Sculptor Chaim Gross’s Green-wich Village home and studio is replete with works by his contemporaries, many of whom were friends. Painter Gari Melchers, who lived and taught in Europe for many years, brought back Dutch masterworks to display in his Virginia home.

Many artists were also astute collectors and curators, adorning their spaces with personal touchstones or objects of inspiration as diverse as African masks, Pre-Columbian artifacts, local seashells, and Americana kitsch. These choices, which are part of the deeply personal narratives and impulses of the artists, cannot be seen elsewhere. They are among the most unique treasures the sites have to offer art and object lovers, and they present opportunities for all of us to tap into that creativity to find new ways of living artful lives.

About the Author
VALERIE A. BALINT is the program manager for Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios (HAHS), based at Chesterwood in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Prior to joining HAHS in 2017, she served for 17 years on the curatorial staff at Frederic Church’s Olana, and previously at Chesterwood and the Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio (all are HAHS sites). She wishes to thank staff members from all of the sites who provided images for this article, and also her colleague Alexandra T. Anderson for her thoughtful review of it.

View more artist and collector profiles here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

This is a mural commission story that begins in East Aurora, New York. There, a community of makers has built a reputation for high-quality craftsmanship that continues with its base at the Roycroft Campus, the “birthplace of the Arts & Crafts Movement in America.”

Thomas Kegler is a contemporary landscape painter and a Roycroft Modern Master Artisan whose style drew the eye of a political scientist with an artistic vision for his home library.

When Fine Art Today saw the finished work, we had to know more. The following is our interview with Kegler, who takes us behind the scenes of this tremendous project. The mural, a landscape that incorporates historical references, was designed from the beginning to integrate seamlessly with the existing architectural elements of the room it was intended for.

Our conversation begins with the first color study and winds through the process all the way to the custom lighting and cabinets, including Thomas’s advice for artists and collectors who are interested in a similar commission.

Cherie Dawn Haas: I love that your client had the vision to see that he wanted a Roycroft-inspired mural in his own home. Going to the beginning of your process, tell me about the initial drafts for the project. You said you started with Photoshop and a color study, for example.

Thomas Kegler: Yes, the client had shared with me the concepts and many reference images. So I Photoshopped a rough composition by putting things inside relationships because there were so many pieces of the puzzle in this, to try to see how we were going to integrate them, and what was going to be the foreground or the background. Creating this was the easiest way to hash out a quick composition, and also be able to make very fast changes with the client based on his input.

Once the Photoshop composition was approved, then I went to the color study. It was quite small: 2 by 10 inches. It was used to work out the color scheme more than the details at that size. It let us know where the major elements were.

Cherie Dawn Haas: What was the conversation like when you showed him the study? Were there many changes after that?

Thomas Kegler: Most of the changes were happening in the Photoshop compositional arrangement. Once that was pretty well set, we had a good discussion on the overall mood and color concept. After I worked up the small color study, there were only a couple of small, very slight color enhancements, to help call attention to certain architectural features.

Cherie Dawn Haas: Tell us about the custom woodworking architectural components.

Thomas Kegler: Here in my hometown, I worked with an artist who isn’t a Roycroft artisan but works in the same vein. He’s a custom cabinetmaker specializing in arts and crafts, and quarter-sawn oak, which was a dominant feature.

Cherie Dawn Haas: And you mentioned that the lighting was a big part of the mural installation.

Thomas Kegler: We, the client and I, expressed the challenges of how to illuminate a 10-foot-long painting and not have hot spots and have an even light. The cabinetmaker did a little investigation and came across the solution. It’s a fairly flat system where you route a channel into the wood below the painting. You lay in a light track that goes all the way across. It’s beautiful because you can even put a soft filter on top that diffuses the light.

Being able to dial in not only the brightness and darkness, but also the temperature, was really interesting, because in the painting there are, I would say, cool passages in rainforests, and also warm passages of the desert. When you go from a warm light to a cool light on the painting, it’s amazing to see how some areas would just literally disappear and become unimportant, while other areas come into dominance. So the Egyptian section just pops and glows, and if you dial down to the cool, that just kind of dissipates, and then the rainforest comes to light. It’s really interesting to see that experience happening live.

There’s also the in-between light, which is what the client always keeps it at. So you’ve got the warm and the cool and the neutral, which is what you’re seeing in the reference photos. Usually, I paint in a fairly neutral light, so that’s the experience that he’s also getting.

Cherie Dawn Haas: What advice do you have for artists who may be asked to do a similar type of project?

Thomas Kegler: Commissions are kind of a dance in themselves. When you’re working with a client, obviously, the first thing you want is clarity, really good communication, and knowing exactly what the client is looking for.

I’ve worked with enough clients over the years to know that some of them are extremely open, and they really know your work and trust that. They have a vague idea, and they want you to kind of run with it and do your own thing. And then other clients can be at the other extreme, where they have a very clear vision of what they want the artist to do.

Whatever the situation is, I think it’s really important that the artist establishes clarity and communication: what services they’re offering, and having a clear agreement or a contract that outlines it (once everything has been hashed out, get it all in writing). And having clear expectations of the size and a timeline.

I always also build in space for modifications. Often my contract includes two minor modifications, and after that, the client will be billed X number of dollars per hour.

In addition to clarity and communication, it’s important to not surprise the client. Don’t just take the information they give you and then do the painting. I think it’s so important to do small preliminary sketches and color studies to show the client so that everybody’s on the same page. It’s all part of that clear communication.

Cherie Dawn Haas: On that note, what advice would you have for art collectors?

Thomas Kegler: Clear communication (laughs). Ask what they’re looking for, be clear, and discuss the timeframe. It’s kind of like working with a building contractor. Almost always, it takes longer than anticipated, and unusual things can arise or we build in extra time. And then if you deliver to the collector early, it just builds an even better relationship for future work.

I would say 99 percent of the time, I do come in early on the timeframe. It’s always best to leave with a good taste in the mouth on both sides. Coming in with an open mind, and also celebrating the artist’s vision, and not trying to dictate too much. Give some parameters, obviously, because it’s going to be living in your space, and you want to have a connection, but at the same time, you’re approaching an artist for a reason. And hopefully, it’s because the client has a really strong connection with past work. Look at it as an opportunity to not only celebrate the artist, but also challenge them into pushing their creativity a little bit and being open to that.

Cherie Dawn Haas: I agree, and I think that when people do that, it gives the artist room to surprise them in a great way.

Thomas Kegler: Absolutely. I had a really unusual one during the middle of the pandemic. I got this random e-mail from a guy in Australia. So it was a red flag that it was going to be a scam. He wanted to do a commission, so I said, “Sure.”

I usually put Bible verses with my titles, so he asked if I could do a painting based on a verse he chose. I said yes and asked what he wanted the painting to look like. He said, “Surprise me.”

This was a big painting, so it wasn’t cheap, and I thought, “This is completely a scam.” Well, to make a long story short, he sent me a check for half down. Two months later, I sent the painting to him, but he paid for it in full before I even sent it, and he loved it. What a pleasure that was, to simply have a few words as the springboard and have a client just let me run with it. You never know what you’re going to get with commissions.

Cherie Dawn Haas: I bet that was a dream job. I’m glad that you mentioned the titles because I was curious whether you titled this particular painting we’re featuring, and if so, what was your inspiration?

Thomas Kegler: The title is “Continuum, Isaiah 52:7.” Typically when I’m working on a painting, the final title, 90 percent of the time, comes at the end. I’ll ponder what the painting is about.

This collector had visited a lot of these places so he wanted the painting to celebrate a lot of different monuments and significant points of interest in the world. So to me, the painting was about humanity, and about society and culture.

What I typically do is search for Bible verses pertaining to the painting’s meaning, whether it’s as simple as hope, love, or whatever. The majority of the time a verse will just pop to me and say that’s the one that needs to live with that title.

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!” — Isaiah 52:7

Helpful Links:

• Visit Thomas Kegler’s website and discover his works as well as his coffee table books
• Listen to PleinAir Podcast: Episode 48, Thomas Kegler Talks Talent and Embracing Failure 

Go on a behind-the-scenes tour with Suzie Baker, who shares her advice on how to build an art studio, including a warning and plenty of inspiration.

By Suzie Baker
(Featured in “Color Magic for Stronger Paintings” with PaintTube.tv)

I began planning my studio six years ago, only to set it aside once I got the first quote. With two kids in or headed to university, it wasn’t the right time to embark on such a financial commitment. And then, 2020 hit.

By 2020, both kids’ graduations were on the horizon, and I found myself with a freshly emptied calendar due to Covid. So I gathered ideas (thank you, Pinterest), contacted a contractor and an architectural designer, and returned to the drawing board.

A year and a half later, I was moving into my new studio. Along the way, I learned a few things. Read on if you want to update or build an art studio. Perhaps the solutions I came up with will help you sand down some rough edges in your construction plans.

Let’s start with four tidbits of advice to get you off on the right foot.

1. Get Advice

“None of Us is as Good as All of Us.” ~ Ray Kroc

After getting my ideas together and the initial drawings established, I went to Facebook. I asked for the collective wisdom of artists who have gone before me in the studio building process, asking: “Please share your brilliant studio ideas, best choices, can’t live without, and should-a-duns! Photos and article links are appreciated. Lay it on me y’all!!” Here are some highlights from that online dialogue:

“Good lighting. Make it a special place where you will love spending time. Spare no expense. A sink is helpful. Comfortable chair and bookcases. Picture hanging system and gallery lighting.” ~ Andre Lucero

“I’ve felt a lot better since getting an exhaust fan to expel the bad air. An air purifier was not enough.” ~ Anette Power
(Followed by) “Yes….very important, especially when working with oils & mediums…. we often don’t feel lung damage until it’s too late.” ~ GV-Artist Voorhies

Lori Putnam said, “North Light, Wine Racks, Floor Plugs,” and many more ideas. Lori included a link to her rolling workbench, which she converted to a taboret. I must admit, I was going to steal that workbench idea from her before she suggested it.

The most common comments were concerning storage.

I encourage you to go to my “Suzie Greer Baker” Facebook feed and search for that July 2020 post. There are plenty of idea starters there.

2. Establish a firm foundation

“Well begun is half done.” ~ Aristotle

The planning stage took nearly as long as the construction stage. Much of the added time was due to navigating the time delays of city governance, meeting requirements, and accommodating restrictions. Fortunately, this protracted delay resulted in thinking through and revising details, avoiding hasty missteps.

3. Seek a fresh, knowledgeable perspective while still in the planning stage.

“Sometimes a change of perspective is all it takes to see the light.” ~ Dan Brown

I was on round two of my building design when I showed the plans to my friend and fellow artist John Michael Carter, OPAM. Right away, he noted a significant issue. Michael reminded me that this space was, first and foremost, a studio and recommended revising the location of the loft to open up the north wall for more light. I had been looking at the plans too long and trying to make the studio accommodate too many purposes. Michael’s fresh eyes and years of experience saved me from making a big mistake. Whew!

4. Warning to the eternal optimist, it WILL take longer and cost more than you planned.

“Keep Calm and Carry On” ~ British Government 1939

There will be setbacks, inclement weather, building mistakes, scheduling conflicts, and backlogged materials. Take a deep breath and remind yourself to be patient. You want the space to be correct. You will forget the extra time and added expense when it is said and done.

#StudioGoals

My old studio took up my house’s whole formal living and dining room. As a result, I found myself constantly organizing and reorganizing my space to get my work done. As my career grew, so did the need for storing frames, panels, shipping boxes, packing material, booth panels, easels, paint and brushes, and so much more. All this, combined with a desire for good lighting and an open workspace, made the need for a dedicated studio imperative.

With this in mind, my studio design goals included ample storage, an open modular workspace with multiple work areas, thoughtful lighting, and a living space for visitors, including a bathroom and kitchenette. Here’s how it turned out.

The kitchenette includes a coffee bar, sink, and fridge. Plus, a bedroom, full bath, and patio make this space perfect for visiting family and artist friends.

Proper, consistent, and controllable lighting is essential to any artist. Researching lighting and planning its implementation can make your head spin. My working light consists of the north light windows and a U of shop lights using 12 Waveform, 5000k Bulbs with a 95+ CRI rating. Each 8-foot section, made of joined together 4” shop lights, is on its own switch. I added a chandelier to mix some form into all that function.

These ground floor views show north light windows, concrete floors, Hughes 4000 Easel, and Husky tool chest taboret. The four iron beams, an architectural find, became central to the design of the space.

The upstairs guest space includes an eclectic mix of furnishing and vintage pieces my Dad hung onto since the 70s.

Two sloped-roof but sizable storage areas are to the left and right of this room. Frames are on the left, with packing materials on the right. Keeping these items handy but out of the way is a huge plus.

I designed this built-in (below) to keep the open floor plan as open as possible. A space-hogging 36” deep flat file tucks under the slope of the stairs. Old school furnishing and up-to-date tech merge in the desk area with an Ethernet cable planned for just the right spot. The horizontal glass door was salvaged off an old cabinet from my Dad’s shed.

Unter the stairs storage: My storage goal was to keep all stored items one deep, so I could see everything at a glance. This photo shows the back of my flat file, leaving room for folding chairs and extra tables.

This delightfully distressed workbench (shown below) will only get more interesting with a bit more paint, don’t you think?

Nearly every surface and material choice is meant to be forgiving as it wears. Since everything will likely get oil paint on it at some point. I chose two interior paint colors for everything, including the baseboards and ceilings, for easy touch-ups.

Artwork Hanging Solutions

I had the builder install a short pile carpet over a plywood wall. This allows me to nail, hang, and repeat throughout the year as paintings move in and out to collectors, galleries, and exhibitions. Another modular solution I found was a slat wall. This hanging system is standard in retail spaces and can be purchased at your area home improvement store. I looked at many hanging systems. These are the two I decided would work best for me.

The stairs and loft floors are painted standing seam subfloor. The brass and wood handrail is ship salvage from Nautical Antique Warehouse in Galveston, Texas.

Strong magnets ordered online, combined with decorative knobs from Hobby Lobby, made for super helpful magnetic hooks. These magnets are so strong that I could use them to hang the drapery behind the model for our local portrait group.

Connect with Suzie Baker
Website | Newsletter | Instagram | Color Magic for Stronger Paintings workshop

Related Article: Priorities: Her Home is in Her Art Studio (A studio tour with Lori Putnam)

The Seattle-based artist Dale Chihuly (b. 1941) is known worldwide for colorful, expressive creations in glass that have — during his five-decade career — revolutionized our understanding of this material, which had long been discounted by connoisseurs of fine art as “merely” decorative or industrial. Through his efforts, glass has become another legitimate medium in the field of sculpture, as integral to it as bronze or clay. Chihuly’s work has grown in scale as production technologies become more sophisticated, and he continues to draw inspiration from diverse aesthetic traditions, including those of Italy, Ireland, Japan, the Czech Republic, and the Middle East.

Glass has always captivated us — for its translucency, for its familiarity, for the thrilling possibility that it can shatter — yet Dale Chihuly has empowered it to excite even more people through his compelling arrangements. Given the general perception that Chihuly is a maximalist who adores bright colors and soaring heights, it may seem odd to align him with the minimalist movement that arose in the late 1960s.

In fact, his repetitive use of an industrially produced element (glass) does link him to canonical minimalists like Donald Judd, who stacked and wall-mounted steel boxes painted with enamel. Perhaps more evident is Chihuly’s link to the movement of process art, with its emphasis on non-traditional materials and the act of creation, rather than on the finished product as a precious, irreplaceable treasure. (Chihuly’s crew members never fret when a piece of glass breaks during installation; they always bring along extras.)

And surely no one can miss the role Dale Chihuly has played in our era’s embrace of installation art. Of his monumental, site-specific, often gravity-defying displays, the artist explains, “I want people to be overwhelmed with light and color in some way they’ve never experienced.” Now more than ever, experience is king, and Chihuly is especially successful when he places objects above our heads. Be they Chandeliers or Persian Ceilings, his installations literally immerse and involve viewers in colorful beauty, dazzling light, potential danger, and an almost childlike sense of wonder.

Today Chihuly’s art can be found in more than 200 museum collections worldwide, and Chihuly Studio has become an entrepreneurial juggernaut that distributes enormous quantities of editioned glass works, editioned prints made after his gestural drawings, colorful blankets and scarves bearing his designs, substantial books, and eye-catching posters. This output has never wavered in quality since my first encounter with the studio in 1996 when I helped (as a junior administrator) present a hugely popular Chihuly exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

In February 2020, the leaders of Chihuly Studio kindly invited me to Seattle to see what they were doing nearly 25 years later. My first pleasant surprise was exploring Chihuly Garden and Glass, a long-term exhibition located at the foot of the iconic Space Needle. Inside is a suite of galleries introducing Chihuly’s career through eight impressive room-installations accompanied by helpful videos of the artist and his hot-shop team at work. The visit culminates with ogling a 100-foot-long arrangement hung from the ceiling of a 40-foot-high glasshouse, then strolling through a garden featuring more installations and a pavilion offering live glass-making demonstrations.

Unlike the public, I was also invited to the Boathouse, the large complex facing Lake Union where Chihuly supervises his energetic glass-making team in the hotshop. Finally, I visited the administrative headquarters of Chihuly Studio, which contains a by-appointment gallery for top clients and a high-ceilinged warehouse where every commissioned project is tested before shipment to the client.

Sometimes when I already know and like something, I stop seeing it clearly. I have always admired Chihuly’s works in glass, but the Seattle visit reminded me of how essential it is to move around his deftly arranged massings of them — better yet, through them. This trip showed me that half of Chihuly’s artistry relates not to glass but to his brilliance in presenting it. The latter owes much to his early training in interior design and architecture (I had no idea), and also to how he arranges, and lives with, his own collections of art and artifacts. (Again, I had no idea.)

Always Innovating

It helps to review how Chihuly got here. During his first year attending the University of Puget Sound in his hometown of Tacoma, he successfully remodeled his mother’s recreation room and enjoyed the experience so much that he decided to pursue architecture and interior design at the University of Washington in Seattle. In a weaving class, he incorporated glass shards into woven tapestries, signaling an alertness to boundary-crossing that became evident later. In 1965, Chihuly earned his B.A. in interior design, confident enough of his ability to conceive, draw, and fill up spaces that he later worked for a Seattle architecture firm (briefly).

The young man had already caught the glass bug, however, so in 1966–67 he earned an M.S. at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) while studying glassblowing under Harvey Littleton, who had launched America’s first glass program there. The next academic year was spent earning an M.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, where Chihuly began exploring environmental works using neon, argon, and blown glass. This led to a Fulbright fellowship allowing him to become the first American blower to work in the hotshop at Venice’s famous Venini glass factory. There he observed the team approach to blowing glass, not the solo approach normally used by Americans that kept the scale of their creations modest. (The more people lifting and turning the molten glass, the larger the pieces to be made.)

In 1969, Chihuly established RISD’s own program in glass and taught there for 11 years. Two years later he co-founded the Pilchuck Glass School, an hour north of Seattle and initially envisioned as a summer-only program. The rest is history, as Pilchuck’s (and Chihuly’s) success has since transformed the Pacific Northwest into America’s leading regional hub for glass art. That summer, Chihuly created his first environmental installation featuring glass objects floating on water. At RISD the following year, he partnered with James Carpenter to make the installations “20,000 Pounds of Ice and Neon” and two “Glass Forests,” and in 1971 their collaborations were shown at New York City’s Museum of Contemporary Crafts.

Though he was spending most of the year on the East Coast, Chihuly was still very much a Westerner. In 1975, he began the Navajo Blanket Cylinder series, and the following year three examples of it were acquired by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Naturally this breakthrough encouraged Chihuly; in 1977, his Basket series was inspired by a visit to the Washington State Historical Society in Tacoma, where he admired Northwest Coast Indian baskets that seemed to be slumping under their own weight.

Later that year he exhibited “100 Pilchuck Baskets” at the Seattle Art Museum on a steel table. Like their inspirations, most were monochromatic and only a few were asymmetrical, but that soon changed: Chihuly became more comfortable allowing gravity, centrifugal force, and the fire’s heat to form Baskets with undulating walls. This willingness to “let go,” and a shift toward brighter and more diverse coloring, was an inheritance from Jackson Pollock and other abstract expressionists, whose randomness Chihuly had long admired.

In the late ’70s, Chihuly began thinking about space in new ways. Influenced by the Standing Stones of Stenness — a site he had visited in the Orkney Islands — he assembled mini-installations (what he calls “sets”) of smaller glass pieces that fit into and around a larger one. This impulse took on new energy in 1980 with the Seaforms, baskets that began to resemble shells, and a year later with the Macchia, spotted baskets he massed on tabletops and pedestals as Macchia Forests. (Their name was coined by his sculptor friend Italo Scanga [1932–2001] because “macchia” means “stain” in Italian.)

Other expressions of his desire to activate space include his windows for Shaare Emeth synagogue in St. Louis (1980) and sets for two musical productions (Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Seattle Opera, 1992; and Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, Seattle Symphony, 2007).

In 1985, Chihuly began making glass in vaguely ancient forms with the Persians series. These were often wall-mounted or stacked on shelves and wall cases, and soon he was setting them onto pergolas through which viewers look up; they can even be found under plate glass at the bottom of his own lap pool. From his training in design and architecture, Chihuly knew how to light for maximum impact, and also which wall colors boost the intended effects.

The significance of light took center stage in 1992, when Chihuly launched his Chandelier series with an exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum; four years later, the first permanent outdoor one was inaugurated in Leavenworth, Washington. In 1996, he realized a personal dream to install 14 Chandeliers over the canals and piazzas of Venice. Planning for that project got underway in 1994, just as Christo and Jeanne-Claude were famously wrapping Berlin’s Reichstag in silver fabric. During his visit with them there, Chihuly was deeply impressed by the ambition and public-spiritedness of their mega-installation and adapted some of their strategies for Chihuly over Venice.

A new chapter opened in 2001 at Chicago’s Garfield Park Conservatory. This was the first of many interventions in botanical venues worldwide, where Chihuly’s organic forms interact well with those of nature. The latest such presentation is on view at Nashville’s Cheekwood Estate and Gardens (July 18, 2020–January 10, 2021).

Chihuly continues to innovate. Around 2019 he experimented with a Venetian cane-working technique called merletto (“lace”). He departed from its customary precision in order to convey a more expressive energy by applying mesh-like drawings of white cane glass onto his Baskets. “This series mimics the feel of lace, the way it moves and drapes easily into soft forms,” he explains.

Chihuly Studio CEO Leslie Jackson Chihuly sees Chihuly Merletto as “another example of how Dale continues to explore the medium of glass and stretch his vocabulary through new ideas and old techniques.” The fruits of this labor can now be enjoyed on Traver Gallery’s website, which presents the glass works alongside his drawings for them.

Dale Chihuly – His Own Little Museum

Chihuly’s knack for arranging things also stems from his parallel life as a passionate acquisitor. “When I start to collect something,” he says, “I often don’t start with a single object. Sometimes I start with 10 or 20 or a hundred. It is like creating my own little museum.” Chihuly carefully organizes and catalogues his discoveries, then displays them with dramatic flair. During my visit I was delighted to find every corner of the Boathouse adorned with collections; there’s a lot to see, but it doesn’t feel like an episode of Hoarders.

Like much of his generation, Chihuly started by gathering stamps, then anything automotive (actual or miniature). Having grown up in the West, he has an affinity for historic Native American baskets and blankets, hand-carved canoes, and the sepia-toned photogravures of Native Americans taken by Edward S. Curtis (1868–1952). It also makes sense that a master of glassmaking collects ancient handblown glass, primarily from the heyday of the Roman Empire: “I love the patina that only time and age can give the surface of an object,” Chihuly notes.

This artist is an unabashed fan of other artists. His private rooms contain entire walls covered with art books with their attractive covers facing out; one features more than a hundred volumes devoted to Vincent van Gogh, though Chihuly also admires Winslow Homer, Charles Demuth, and John Marin, among other historic masters.

The bulk of the collections, however, have little to do with fine art: “I love to find the beauty in everyday objects,” Chihuly notes. Thus there are enormous holdings of accordions (which his father and brother played); album covers; anonymous black-and-white photographs; bottle openers; cameras; cast iron doorstops; chairs (primarily from the mid-20th century); dollhouse furniture; fishing decoys; inkwells; juicers; kitchen-related items, including children’s tin stoves and Fiestaware ceramics; matchbooks; paperweights; papier-mâché masks; pocketknives; postcards; posters; radios; shaving brushes; toy soldiers; and much more. And the quest continues: “I’m always looking,” Chihuly admits.

Dale Chihuly was already an enthusiastic collector in 1967 when he began a lifelong friendship with Italo Scanga, who made neo-Dadaist assemblages of found objects. Visiting flea markets was their inexpensive hobby, a pastime also pursued by another RISD faculty member, the painter Richard Merkin. Yet another role model for voracious collecting was Andy Warhol, with whom Chihuly traded artifacts. The two met in 1970 when the Manhattan-based pop artist curated a show at RISD’s museum titled Raid the Icebox 1. This necessitated Warhol’s rummaging through the permanent collections during five visits to campus; ultimately he exhibited an array of half-forgotten items from the storerooms including shoes, chairs, parasols, wallpaper, hatboxes, Native American blankets, and more.

So why does Chihuly’s mélange of masterworks and detritus matter? “My collections inspire me and are often a source for new ideas,” he replies.

Most importantly, the arranging of collections both informs and benefits from Chihuly’s concurrent arranging of glass. In 2017 his artist friend Bruce Helander published a richly illustrated book, Chihuly: An Artist Collects, that offers a glimpse inside. He wrote that Chihuly’s glass art is “irrefutably about beauty, craftsmanship, and contour, as well as the aesthetics of repetition and organization (cultivation) of a collection of handblown objects that are all different, but are strongly connected by a universal trait.” Indeed, Chihuly’s gorgeous glass works would be less impactful without his deft contrasting of their distinctions and similarities through placement and lighting.

My stroll through room after room of Chihuly’s bottle openers, fishing decoys, and matchbooks could have been a claustrophobic ordeal, but it became a visual revelation thanks to the eye that had ordered them. I may never need to see another toy soldier, but am already anticipating my next immersion in a room of Chihuly’s glass.

View more artist and collector profiles at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

While moving house, we worry if our possessions will be transported safely. Our anxiety only grows when it comes to unique items such as fine artworks, heirloom antiques, and family memorabilia — things that cannot be replaced if they get damaged or destroyed.

Fortunately, the past decade has witnessed the blossoming of “fine art logistics,” an industry of professionals who get artworks safely from Point A to Point B. This field’s growth has been stimulated by the global proliferation of auctioneers, galleries, online platforms, fairs, and museum exhibition tours, but individual collectors have also played a role and now stand to benefit from the overall raising of standards.

Only 25 years ago, it was difficult to find a firm that understood the special challenges of moving an artwork across town or across the world; hardly any trucks featured the “air-ride” shock absorbers that prevent paint from chipping off a century-old canvas, or the climate-controlled cargo holds that ensure a wooden sculpture will not dry out and split apart. Now, with a bit of online research and some pointed questions on the phone, collectors residing anywhere in the U.S. can find a suitable firm.

Not surprisingly, today’s best practices in fine art logistics were pioneered in partnership with leading museums. Museum staffers see every object in their collections as precious, and so they literally wear the “white gloves” we all associate with superior service to move artworks around their own facilities. When it comes time to send an artwork offsite (on temporary loan, for example), museums turn to specialist fine art shipping firms. What appears below is the gold standard — the safest (and most expensive) way they do it. Not every privately owned artwork merits all of these steps, of course, and not every collector can afford them. But it’s helpful to learn first what constitutes best practice.

First, the best firms send in some freelance “handlers” to help museum staffers remove the artwork from a wall, pedestal, or storeroom rack. On a flat surface, it is measured and then swaddled in acid-free “archival” packing materials (such as Tyvek, the synthetic sheeting also used in housing construction). Items set to travel by truck within the region are simply “soft-packed” and then braced inside sturdy cardboard boxes. But those going on an airplane, ship, or a truck journey lasting more than two hours require a professional carpenter (back at the firm’s workshop) to construct a wooden crate. This is customized inside with acid-free foam molds, braces, and buffers that will hold the swaddled object firmly in place during the bumpiest of rides.

Once sealed and tagged with a unique bar code for digital tracking purposes, the soft-pack or crate is loaded onto an air-ride, climate-controlled truck headed to its final destination, to an airline’s cargo-processing facility, or to a storage warehouse. The most expensive trucks are “exclusive use,” which means that only your item is on board; less expensive is “shared use,” in which other owners’ items are dropped off before or after yours. (The latter scenario means more, albeit rare, chances for your item to get damaged or even stolen.) At the final destination, the crates must be carried by experienced handlers, and the warehouse (if one is needed) must have suitable temperature, humidity, and security controls.

Of course, it is up to each collector to decide how many of these steps are necessary or affordable, but rest assured the smartest firms stand ready to discuss and customize your plans. Among the leaders in the U.S. are Gander & White, Crozier, Uovo, Lockson, Fine Art Shippers, Arrow Express, Renwick, ARTA, Aiston, and APFAS. Uline is America’s leading distributor of packaging and shipping materials for those who want to prepare the item themselves before the truck arrives to take it away. If your artwork is traveling abroad, your U.S. firm may split the journey with a partner over there; in Britain, for example, one of the leading shippers is Momart, and in France, LP Art.

In all matters logistical, better safe than sorry.

Information: aiston.com, apfas.com, arrowexpress.com, crozierfinearts.com, fineartshippers.com, ganderandwhite.com, locksoninc.com, renwickfas.com, shiparta.com, uline.com, uovo.art