Love story: The librarian, the postal worker and their art

Oct 25, 2008 (The Miami Herald - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- TIVO | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Art takes up all the air in Herb and Dorothy Vogel's cramped one-bedroom on the Upper East Side. Minimalist and conceptual works cover every inch of wall and dangle from the ceiling. Because there is no other place for it, a Richard Tuttle painting clings to the inside of a louvered door that leads to the tiny kitchen. Other pieces crowd shelves and table tops.

And the Vogels, who are giving the Miami Art Museum and 49 other institutions around the country gifts of 50 artworks each and are subjects of a documentary that will screen in December during Art Basel Miami Beach, say there is plenty more under the bed and jammed into the closets of this modest, rent-stabilized space they have called home since 1963.

"I don't know why we did it. It was fun," Dorothy, 73, who does most of the talking, says of their compulsive, lifelong hunt for art.

They are something of an art installation themselves: Dorothy the librarian and Herb the postal worker may have been small (she stands about five feet; he's shorter). They may have earned small paychecks. They may have bought mostly small pieces that fit in their small home.

But they are leaving a tremendous legacy.

"They personify the adventure that collecting really is," says Mera Rubell, one of Miami's biggest contemporary-art collectors.

"They were engaging early with highly conceptual work, and every piece they collected was about embracing a new and exciting idea. Their mission was big. Their hearts were big. Their imaginations were big. And now the Vogel name will forever be connected with contemporary art in America. That's a big deal."

The Vogels, who amassed a fortune in contemporary art but never dreamed of selling anything along the way, gave 832 important works to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in the early 1990s, with a promise of 268 more.

In April, the National Gallery announced that another 2,500 pieces will go to museums across the country through The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States. MAM's pieces -- by Richard Tuttle, Will Barnet, Joel Fisher, Donald Sultan and others -- will be exhibited next spring. On Dec. 5, the documentary Herb and Dorothy will be screened at Art Basel's Art Loves Film night.

"They are legendary," says MAM director Terry Riley. "I was recently in their apartment, and I was pleased to see that the pieces being offered to us are a microcosm of their collection and the way they collect. They focused on modest works -- a lot of works on paper -- but works with great integrity. And what increases that integrity is assiduous collecting of the same artists. They have them in depth. They really came to understand their work."

Dorothy's salary paid the bills. Herb's bought art.

"A lot of people live on one salary," Dorothy says. "They don't have somebody else. But if you have two salaries, you can do something with that."

Herb, 86, sits silently and pets Archie, the big, fluffy Flame Point Himalayan cat plopped in the middle of the cluttered little dining table near the front door.

To get to the table, you have to squeeze past so many things. It isn't just the art that overwhelms -- Pat Steirs, Merrill Wagners, Sol LeWitts, Julian Schnabels -- some of the works shrouded by dish towels and tablecloths to protect them from the light. There are also stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes filled with clippings, gallery-opening invitations, catalogs and other documentation for a collection that had got so out of hand by the early 1990s that the National Gallery had to send five moving trucks to haul it all away. There was literally no elbow room left. "There are a lot of works we never got to see again, but we knew they were there. About 2,000 works were transported to the National Gallery -- some gifts, some they're just holding for us," Dorothy says.

"When everything was out, we painted. It was nice to have blank walls for a while. It was refreshing. But then we slowly started building again," she says, unrepentant.

In retirement, the Vogels employ the same strategy they always did: Her pension goes to living expenses; his, at least in part, goes to art. "But we haven't bought anything in a while," Dorothy says.

The National Gallery paid the Vogels an undisclosed sum -- "It's not that much," Dorothy says -- for the works that are now part of its collection. But the figure is small compared to the value of the gift, museum officials say.

"We did hold some pieces in case one of us needs long-term nursing care," Dorothy says. "I mean, we're not stupid. We realize we might need something at some point. I wouldn't jeopardize my husband getting good care."

Wouldn't they have enjoyed spending on something else? A fancier apartment, maybe?

"This isn't a bad place," Herb pipes up.

"We think we live very well," Dorothy says.

They never noticed the sacrifices they were making.

"We never liked resorts. We don't eat out at expensive places, and we don't buy expensive clothes. But I have a TiVo and a television set," says Dorothy, pointing to the small flat-screen set they recently purchased. "We live near a bookstore, and I can buy any book I want. We take cabs. I'm not deprived."

"Within the art world, they are celebrities," says Marc Spiegler, co-director of Art Basel. "They collected with their eyes, not their ears. They pounded the pavement. They went into strange neighborhoods. They became friends with so many artists who were just starting out, and they followed their careers for decades. They're like an art-world fairy tale."

The Vogels had no children but at one time shared their apartment and their art with six or seven cats, 20 turtles and a bunch of fish (they're down to one cat and 15 turtles).

They met at a dance in 1960, a reunion of people who had gone to Tamiment, a resort in the Poconos.

"He never went to the resort, but he went to the reunion. He wanted to meet a girl," Dorothy says. "He didn't dance. But we talked. He took me out to dinner afterwards, and it started from there."

She had been born in Elmira, N.Y., the daughter of a stationery-store owner. Herb, a tailor's son, had grown up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood on the far Upper East Side.

When they met, he was sorting mail full time, taking courses at the New York Institute of Fine Arts and dabbling at painting. They married in 1962 and honeymooned in Washington, D.C.

"The first place we went was the National Gallery, and that's when he started teaching me about art," says Dorothy, who by then was working as a research librarian in Brooklyn. She quickly caught the art bug, and, in those first few years, they both painted and got to know more and more people in the art scene.

"All of the paintings on the walls were either his or mine, but we started taking them down as we started collecting other people's art," Dorothy says. "We stopped painting when we realized everybody was better than we were. We were better at collecting."

Their first purchase was a small sculpture by John Chamberlain, best known for working with car metal and other car parts, giving three dimensions to the abstract expressionist painting style.

"We felt euphoric," says Dorothy, who gives her husband a lot of credit for building their collection. "I never took a course in art history, but I lived through it. I picked up things by talking to artists, going to panel discussions, getting to know people."

In Herb and Dorothy, famed artist Chuck Close describes the Vogels as "mascots of the art world." And indeed, they popped up everywhere in New York, from studios in seedy neighborhoods to parties at glamorous galleries to big museum events to street-corner happenings.

They would fall hard for artists and works that perhaps no one else had noticed yet, and, although they haggled fiercely, crafted payment plans and sometimes persuaded artists to sell them an early draft instead of the work itself, the Vogels thrilled many struggling artists when they walked in the door.

"When they followed something, they followed it very closely," Pat Steir, A-list abstract painter and printmaker, says from Rome. 'You could have a whole table full of drawings, and Herbie would look at them for a whole day, grouping them, rearranging them. Then, after looking at everything, he would say, 'What else do you have? Can I look in the back?' "

At first, Steir sold works to them for whatever they offered -- they were offering when no one else was.

"When my works became more expensive, I would reduce the prices for them," she says. "They couldn't buy at dealer prices, but they would come in with an envelope of cash, and you knew to be prepared to trade. Eventually, I started giving them works as gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, the way I give gifts to my family."

Christo and wife Jeanne-Claude, who also became close friends, once gave the Vogels a preparatory work for Valley Curtain in exchange for some cat-sitting.

"You'd sell them work for nothing," Close says in the documentary, "not only because they were cute and funny and passionate and enthusiastic when no one else was interested in what we were doing but also because they came cash in hand."

Some in the art world have criticized the Vogels for sidestepping galleries and sometimes buying directly from the artists with whom they had become close. And there were artists who bridled at the Vogels' hard bargaining. But Dorothy and Herb always had a clear mission.

"The artists realized that our intentions were honorable," Dorothy says. "We proved it by giving the collection to the National Gallery and all the other museums."

"Did they negotiate hard? Of course they did," Rubell says. "Any collector who says they don't negotiate hard is not a collector."

Among those whom the Vogels have inspired over the years is Megumi Sasaki, director of Herb and Dorothy, who worked on the film for more than four years and in the process wound up spending her savings, taking out a home-equity loan and maxing out her credit cards.

"They had a limited amount of money. They had limited space, but because of these restrictions, they created a very unique art collection," says Sasaki, who is expected to appear with the Vogels at the Art Basel screening. "When I thought about it, I realized the same rule applied to me in terms of making films. Sometimes you don't have the access to footage or people or whatever else you need. But those limitations make you more creative. It pushes you, it turns out."

What do the Vogels say has been the most rewarding aspect of a life consumed by art?

"I enjoyed the search, I guess," Dorothy says. "The looking and the finding. When you go to a store, and you're searching for your size, don't you get satisfaction when you find it?"

"The art itself," Herb says. And then he goes back to petting Archie.

Also coming Sunday:

The skyjacking suspect next door

College dreams dissolve in economic meltdown

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