  |
|
Dale and Doug Anderson have two airy, art-filled homes, in New York City and Palm Beach, Florida. Until last fall, their New York apartment contained a large, arresting collection of contemporary glass, ceramics and fiber cohabiting with contemporary and vintage Native American art from the Northwest Coast. That Northwest Coast art is gone now. Shelves lining the living room display carefully selected groupings of work by just a few artists rather than the previous wide-ranging array of objects. Intense, large-scale color photographs dominate the walls. For the Andersons, who are known for their craft collection, medium is no longer a determining factor in what they collect, and objects, even entire collections, come and go. As to their preferences in art, the Andersons' approach to collecting mirrors a general trend in art wherein categorization by material is no longer relevant. Artistic intent and content determine how a work of art will be understood and desired. Their generous, repeated donations to art museums-over 700 pieces given to 14 institutions in the last 20 years-and their advocacy on behalf of artists-scholarships, curatorial programs, support of museum exhibitions-distinguish them as a new breed of enlightened, 21st-century collector. Most collectors have a relationship with one or two museums. Glass collectors, that most generous and supportive subgroup within contemporary collecting, do extremely well at serving on boards and fundraising for nonprofit groups in which they have an interest. But few collectors attempt the scale and intensity of the Andersons' ongoing involvement. How do they do what they do? Dale is the aesthete, Doug the strategist. "Doug came home one day with a Richard Marquis teapot," Dale recalls. "He said, 'I am going to change your life.' And he did!" That quixotic murrine teapot is the only object Doug would ever bring home. "Dale loves the act of finding things that are very new, so she is our scout and our curator. I would never intrude in what she's thinking about," Doug explains. "My college degree is in art history and that is where my understanding of our collecting comes from. I am perfectly happy with my role, which has to do with pruning at a very high level. It's about taking what you've got and making it look as important as it ought to be, and giving the material the respect it ought to have." Explaining their arts advocacy, Doug recalls, "As we were collecting the studio crafts movement, we were collecting the artists as friends. And one of the things that we wished to do was to be an advocate for them. We have been as active as we know how to be. George and Dorothy Saxe are among our closest friends, and they were the ones who inspired us to give up our privacy and invite people into our home, which is what they have done for years." Dale adds, "For me, there is no greater pleasure than having someone come to the house, look at the work of an artist, ask me for the gallery and then have them tell me they bought something. What could be better? That is sharing. I love it if people come away from my home with a bit of knowledge that they pursue further." Glass reigns in the opalescent, humid light of the Andersons' Florida apartment, where they have assembled impressive works by the most influential artists in the medium. It is no ordinary survey. A dramatic, self-confident installation by Dale Chihuly meets the uneasy and halting ceramic sculpture of Doug Jeck; an aggressive Gregory Grenon portrait of a perturbed woman overlooks a room where shelves display petite, pretty objects and vessels that, on second glance, are not as innocent as they appear. An unmistakable undercurrent of something more complicated, something on edge, comes through even as I am lulled by the beauty and restfulness. A new direction is immediately apparent in the New York apartment. It is sparely installed and my first impression is of the dominance of beautiful insects, as in the suite of oversize photographs, The Food Chain, by Catherine Chalmers, and Dale's own mounted petit point embroideries of many kinds of insects. There are large, color photographs by Sandy Skoglund and Anthony Goicolea, their imagery surreal and thought-provoking. And on Doug's desk-"for perspective," he says-are a series of five black-and-white photographs by Duane Michaels, Grandpa Goes to Heaven. The sculpture in glass, clay and fiber has been carefully selected, with a focus on few rather than many artists. In glass, Dale Chihuly, Gregory Grenon, Karen LaMonte, Flora Mace and Joey Kirkpatrick, Paul Marioni and Ann Troutner, Dante Marioni, Richard Marquis, William Morris, Jay Musler, Tom Patti, Martin Rosol, Ginny Ruffner, Joyce Scott, Steven Weinberg and Toots Zynsky. In clay, Meg Ford, David Gilhooly, Doug Jeck, Michael Lucero and Akio Takamori. And in fiber, Carol Eckert. The photography and glass go particularly well together, sharing a propensity for luscious color and technical intensity. The layers of meaning in the photographs encourage me to examine the sculpture more closely. The impression is of a carefully tended, very personal collection. The Andersons insist on not storing art away-they must live with what they own. And as they acquire, they give away. "There was a moment, particularly with glass, when things were happening fast and I was buying a lot," Dale recalls. "Doug would say, 'Where are you going to put it?' And I would answer, 'I don't know, someplace.' He finally told me, 'You know what? We can't see anything anymore. Besides, the point of doing all this is that it is not just for us to have, it is really for other people to see.' I got it. And I told him he was absolutely right. So, when we finally made the decision to give art away, the decision was to give the pieces we liked, that were really good. Not the stuff in a closet that no one wants, but work that makes a difference." "Our motto," says Doug, "is 'Give 'til it hurts.'" Giving art to museums provides the opportunity for advocacy as well as for pruning. The Andersons' relationship with the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach is one example. "We view the Norton as a strategic place," says Doug. "You have part-time residents from all over the country who are very involved with the museum, and who have great influence in their own communities. If sculpture in glass and other media is validated here, it goes back. Say you have a guy who's on the board of the Norton, but who's from Chicago, and on the board of the Art Institute. What he learns there, he takes home." The Andersons do not want to build the most comprehensive collection, only the one that is best for them, the variable being that their definition of "best" is constantly changing. "Part of our collecting is about influencing people, about letting them look at art so that they are challenged but not confronted," says Dale. "If they see Doug and me living with art, they are less threatened by it-it's not art with a capital A. We talk about it, they look and ask questions, and all of a sudden something connects and a dialogue begins." Tina Oldknow is Curator of Modern Glass at the Coming Museum of Glass and the author of Pilchuck: A Glass School (1996) and other books, including Richard Marquis Objects (1997) and Dante Marioni: Blown Glass (2000).
|
