I didn't end up going to this Panel Discussion: On Collecting at the Walker Art Center but I wanted to so I looked up the people who are on the panel. They are three couples who are building the contemporary art department at the Dallas Museum of Art.
This is a picture of Hoffman with her late husband photographed in front of their Rothko painting that they sold to David Martinez for $17.6 million in private. The painting was loaned to the Dallas Museum of Art and sold in an auction after for $31.4 million. Hoffman sued for a violation of confidentiality. "Hoffman claimed she could have auctioned the painting and received a significantly higher price, but instead chose a less lucrative private sale in order to protect her privacy." Hoffman walked away with $1.2 million after many days of testimonies: “Obviously, I’m elated,” she said, “to be vindicated and to have a jury of my peers understand what happened and to bring back this verdict. I spent my whole life trying to stand up for little people and not let them get steamrolled. In this case, I stood up for myself.”
"We are talking here about Marguerite Hoffman, one of the wealthiest benefactors of the Dallas Museum of Art, who was suing international financier David Martinez and two New York City art dealers. Empanelled was a five-man, five-woman jury that would sit in the courtroom of Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater and hear almost two weeks’ worth of testimony. In other words, a blue-collar jury of working-class men and women from all over Dallas County would settle a squabble between multimillionaires who, for all we know, may be billionaires."
Cindy and Howard Rachofsky
Richard Meier designed this as their private home that they open to showcase their vast contemporary art collection. They host and sell-out an annual contemporary art auction called TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art that benefits the Dallas Museum of Art and the Foundation for AIDS Research. Their home is rentable for events and they started a space called the Warehouse that is used for public programs and programs for educators. The Rachofskys' are leaving their collection for the Dallas Museum of art.
Deedie and her husband, Rusty, live in this home designed by Antoine Pedrock.
Among her many masterpeices she also is an avid collector of jewelry.
Deedie explains, "Three couples—Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Marguerite and her late husband Robert Hoffman, and my husband and I—all irrevocably bequeathed our collections of contemporary art to the Dallas Museum of Art. We are all close friends and we have been involved for a long time at the Dallas Museum of Art. I think we all believe that art is transformative—that it can change your life, and that it’s certainly a way of lifelong learning. Because it’s so important in our lives, we wanted everybody to have access to it. We want our museum to be a great one, and this was part of that effort. Since we did that, other people have joined us, and that was the hope—to get people thinking that maybe they are just caretakers of their art and that they might ultimately give it to the DMA and to the public."
These couples are doing great things for art with their massive amounts of money. In Deedie's quote she talks about how they are meerly caretakers of the art which belongs in a space accessible to the public. I appreciate their willingness to donate all of this art to the public museum, but I cannot help but think about where else that money could have been used. I guess it is better than all of these artworks being auctioned off and sold for double what they where sold for last to a collector who never intends on sharing....
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