Sharing it out
Louise Nicholson meets Herbert and Dorothy Vogel at home in Manhattan to talk about their extraordinary gift of 2,500 modern drawings to 50 museums across the US. Portrait by Lanola Stone.
Louise Nicholson, Sunday, 29th June 2008
‘We don’t collect any more. We’re in another phase of life’, announces Dorothy Vogel when I arrive at her New York apartment. Fortunately, given minimum encouragement, she then talks eloquently and with total recall about the way that she and her husband, Herbert, have spent 40 years chasing cutting-edge art – as one observer remarked, ‘collecting as if they were starving, like alcoholics’. As she sits straight-backed at the table, sipping lemonade, her translucent skin folds into soft smiles and her bespectacled eyes twinkle as she remembers moments with the young artists they befriended – Richard Tuttle, Sol LeWitt, Chuck Close and many more. Her husband sits beside her, in awe of her precision memory. Nearby, clambering turtles occasionally thud down onto the floor of their aquarium; Archie the cat sleeps.
Mr and Mrs Vogel are now in the final stage of collecting: the disbursing of some 4,000 works of art – ‘another phase of life’, she says. Mixing philanthropy with imaginative flair, they began donating to the National Gallery in Washington, DC, in 1991. ‘It does not deaccess and it is free’, explains Mrs Vogel succinctly. She expands her beliefs in a documentary film, ‘Herb and Dorothy’, directed by Megumi Sasaki, to be premiered this July: ‘We both worked for the government, so it’s giving it back to the government, to the people.’ This year, following further gifts, they gave another 2,500 pieces by 170 artists for distribution through the National Gallery to 50 museums, each in a different US state. The project is called ‘The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States’. She sums up: ‘It is 50 different entities but still our collection, brought together by a website.’
‘There’s been nothing like it before’, explains Ruth Fine, Curator of Special Projects in Modern Art at the National Gallery. ‘We are blending public and private skills to create a long-lasting country-wide gift.’ About half the museums, such as Indianapolis, have been chosen because the Vogels have lectured there or lent their works for shows; the rest because they do not have such collections. So far, 10 museums have been contacted.
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