clifford schorer winslow homer
People came and visited to see the collection. And so, you know, I always had space. JUDITH RICHARDS: During these years, were you reading in that field then? I probably only have maybe 20 pieces left. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, I know the famous expression about the collection you have and the collection you have in your mind. So today I actually have two paintings from that same series. I was in Prague. WebHe's not a regular player in the region, but what Cliff Schorer has accomplished as board president at the Worcester Art Museum over the last two years has helped revive CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So one branch of the family were the owners of the Deed of Queens, New York, whenback when the Dutch were here. I mean, there was a moment in each place in my head where I knew what was happening in those places because of history. I didn't. JUDITH RICHARDS: Mm-hmm. And I had the audacity to apply. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yes, most of that's quite simple. You know, bringing an efficiency model to a museum can destroy a museum. ", CLIFFORD SCHORER: Because there's just crates and crates and crates. The things I brought into the passenger cabin. So my father was encouraged by that, and sort of dragged me on a little field trip to Boston and took me around to the colleges. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I mean, especially lesser objects. So I was born in 1966 in Rockville Centre, New York. CLIFFORD SCHORER: They were basedI think they'rewell, I mean, I know them as international, but, yes, they're based in London. I know you read books. I don't remember which one. The Rubens House, the Frans Snyders House, the Rockox House. I needed to think about walls. JUDITH RICHARDS: When you werewhen you were talking about Amsterdam and Antwerp, I was thinking about the fact that your mother was originally of Dutch. [00:25:59]. JUDITH RICHARDS: Given that you were obviously a smart child. So a friend of mine that I had known came to me and said that he thought that the library at Agnew's would be available, and, you know, that was interesting to me. And that's reallythat was more of, you know, expanding the things that I could do. JUDITH RICHARDS: Climate-controlled art storage? JUDITH RICHARDS: What is a cash-flow business? Her book was from '88 or something, or '90. Or do I say nothing? I mean, I'm very social. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So I shouldn't say 5,000; 3,500 years. I've spoken to Jon a few times. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, they close rooms. And then we put that with a 1930s painting by [Tulio] Crali, you know, this sort of aeropittura of Modernism. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Agnew's is a different kind of firm, because it traveled through seven hands in the same family, so you have ayou know, I have an even bigger responsibility to make sure that whomever I hand it off toyou know, that they have the same appreciation for it as an asset and don't need it as a source of income. So, JUDITH RICHARDS: When you say "we," you mean you and. 
], And, I mean, I remember spending as much time as possible in front of that painting, and obviously, you know, that. I wrote in English and I got a response in English, so. The Louvre, when it was easy to go in and easy to come out. 2023-03-24. That market is extremely weak now, and, you know, in a way, it's good comeuppance, because there was a long period of time when all the boats were lifted by the tide, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I mean, you know, I bought Byzantine crucifixes, you know, just because, you know, I was there. I mean, it was never conceived. Absolutely. I couldn't afford that. But, you know, the other trip that really comes to mind recentlyand, again, it's in a totally unrelated field. [00:16:01]. So, yes. You know, the senior ladies from Long Island would go, so. Yeah, to me, and I was excited, so excited. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. I had to advocate and argue for it, and that did sort of achieve the goal I had set for it, which is a relatively universal acceptance. Do you have all your collections in a database, or what kind of inventory do you keep? 750 9th Street, NW CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, I go to London about seven days a month, and again, you know, the gallery operates on its own. No, it was a lot of fun. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. So it was more aboutit was more about the business of the trade of these things. No, I neverI mean, I alwaysI mean, the problem is I'm a jack-of-all-trades and a master of absolutely nothing. [00:10:02], JUDITH RICHARDS: When you started out in this field, did you have a general sense of where you wanted to go? And I said, "Your only quid pro quo is I want you to send me a photo of you giving a lecture with a bunch of schoolkids sitting in front of you in front of the painting.". I knewI knew that Best Products, 18 hours a day in front of the screen, wasn't going to be my long-term plan. The shareholders did very well by the real estate, but the business, by that point, was, I think, sort of put on the back burner after 2008, then when they didn't have a premises, they built themselves a new and rather expensive rental premises, and the rent and the costs there were quite high. That was one thing. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I'm not that intelligent. And I could buy that at, you know, the auctions. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And again, we got plenty of press about it. And I remember talking about that object for months to everybody and anybody. I've been invited to a few other things, but it's really a question of, you knowmy geography is such that I'm not usually in the neighborhood at the right moment. Are there any people there who sort of are the continuation? I had probably 65 of them on walls, you know, with these plate holders and, you know, little arrays. JUDITH RICHARDS: But you would still be in conflict. That wasn't quite enough to buy much, but if you bought secondary names, which meant that you needed to know all the secondary names, and if you bought the best quality of those secondary names, you could do okay. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No. JUDITH RICHARDS: So how long did you work there as a programmer? So we did something, you know, I thought rather radical, which was, you know, Anthony's idea, a very good idea, which was to showBill Viola was focused on martyrdom by the four elements, and we constructed this entire idea about martyrdom to build an exhibition around. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. JUDITH RICHARDS: But thoseas your collection, perhaps you'd say, entered a mature phase. So, you know, there was that frustration, that you can never haveyou know, you can never have an encyclopedic stamp collection because you're always going to bethe lacuna is the same lacuna every other collector is going to have. It got out of hand, and I made a concerted effort to say, you know, "I have to scale this down, because if I fall down dead tomorrow, someone's going to have, you know, I would say, a William Randolph Hearst-scale cleanup to do. I mean, you know, literally, and these are Constable, Claude Lorrain, you know, Millais, you know. You know, I sort of had a sense of what I needed, and, you know, in terms of someone whose eye I've always esteemed and who has a very even keel and about whom I never heard a bad word. I mean, everyone knew that it was, you know. I'm at a Skinner auction. I mean, you know, when I think back to the Guercino that, you know, I find in a little catalogue, and then I do the work, you know, it is very gratifying to have something, especially something like van Dyck, which is, to me, you know, in the pantheon of gods. And we've obviously done a lot of work on our Pre-Raphaelite exhibition, which was kind of a protractedwe did, basically, a two-year Pre-Raphaelite fiesta, with lots of publications. JUDITH RICHARDS: Were therewas it a big decision for you to become involved on that level with. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And I don't mind living in a cardboard box. But I think that if there's any way you can filter out the noise of the marketplacebecause the noise of the marketplace is just a cacophony now compared to when Iyou know, when I was first starting. Metal. CLIFFORD SCHORER: The audience who is evaluating, you know, the merit of a Kangxi, you knowyou know, a vase or whatever. So I was in the room, andI think her name is Marietta Corsini? The book isso, Hugh Brigstocke and his new. JUDITH RICHARDS: Did you learn that as a child? The painting was not framed and was subsequently included among a number of works by Lady Blake who was herself an amateur artist. I mean, I would call Frederick Ilchman; I would call somebody, and I would say, "Who should I talk to about this person?" And recently, Milwaukeeso I love Tanya Paul; she's the curator at Milwaukee. But, no, I mean, it's. So, you know, we've had the gamut; you know, we've had the gamut. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Oh, no. If there are other such wonderful stories to tell, keep that in mind; we'll come back to it. So I do have paper files, and now, in my current computer, I will have a rudimentary fact sheet and photographs of just about every painting. The name is the same, unfortunately, so people know who it is. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. So it was sort ofyou know, it was sort of an early-days discussion. So I did start scaling that down, but I did always imagine every time I scaled it down, I would keep this sort of select group. JUDITH RICHARDS: You were traveling a lot in the '80s. It's that goal that actually, eventually, completely disabused me of stamp and coin collecting because it was impossible. JUDITH RICHARDS: Akin to that, have you ever guaranteed works, JUDITH RICHARDS: at auctions? And I was still trying to buy, you know, what I could buy with a little bit of money in the stamps and coins world. And, you know, from there I was able to turn more of my attention. I enjoyed my job. [4], On the day before the sale, Simon Murray (the great grandson of Sir Henry Blake) claimed ownership of the painting on behalf of the family. [00:45:59]. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Oh, I thought it was great, yes. JUDITH RICHARDS: There wasn't time to look for someone else if he had not. In 1987, the painting, along with a work by Lady Blake and other material related to the Blake family, was found by Tony Varney while fishing in Ireland. And I know them, and I know the pictures, and I won't say more than that. So part of what you were studying wasn't just the work; it was the market. And since I'm, you know. You know, I wouldn't stop. You walk in; there's no receptionist. So I started looking at Daniele Crespi. So Chinese domestic production for, you know, a very much more refined clientele, because I had developed [00:36:02]. And you eventually, as a young person, you come up against the realization that, you know, there's a handful of things that are up in the stratosphere here that we're never going to touch. So, you know, that was where my role was. We just put our heads down into the envelopes, and start looking at them and sorting them out. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Sure. So, you know, we may not necessarily be the origin of all the writings, but we're a part of it, so we can contribute to, you know, the fundraising effort to write a catalogue, and we can give the pictures; we can do this; we can do that. Then we had a second one that was on the market in Paris as sort of "circle of van Dyck," but as soon as I saw it, I recognized that it was the real deal. [00:30:00]. I have the Coronation Halberd of the Archduke Albrecht, and it's in the museum at Worcester [laughs], and, no. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So I still spent a lot of my timeregional auction houses, and I had expanded by then to go to the library and look at all the French auction houses. CLIFFORD SCHORER: You know, why does this woman look like a skeleton? So I said, "Give me a little while to think about it," and I went to walk around TEFAF. CLIFFORD SCHORER: it's ano, it's a part gift, part sale, and in the end, it hadthe strings that I had, they met them all, which were that they're going to do a focal exhibition on paleontology in thebecause they're doing a re-jigger of many of their exhibitions. So I think that, you know, we're in athat's in a different world, but I see that. JUDITH RICHARDS: Havein that sense about the object, since you served on the board of Worcester Art Museum, and you've been involved in their acquisitions committee, and you've lent them work, it seems like you are interestedbut I wanted to ask how interestedin the role of the museum, and the role of collector as educator, educating the public, expanding their understanding and appreciation of works that you love. And when Freeport got a little too rough for them, because they were living in a part of town that had gone down quite a bit since they bought in the 1940s. The divorce began when I was four. They take advice, and they build wonderful collections, and they're wonderful people, but you talk to them about things other than paintings. CLIFFORD SCHORER: and he said, you know, "You need to be involved in this museum; you need to be involved with this museum." JUDITH RICHARDS: Does Agnew's participate in art fairs? CLIFFORD SCHORER: I liked Boston, I felt that it, CLIFFORD SCHORER: it's a good city. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. JUDITH RICHARDS: You mentioned the Snyders House, the Rubens House, and one more. [Affirmative.] CLIFFORD SCHORER: I mean, I think that, in general, they just wanted an opinion. It was [Carlo] Maratti. [Laughs.]. But has there been an increase in some competition, or the alternative? So I said, "Okay." And then, you know, I appreciate it; even if they don't know who I am, I appreciate it. JUDITH RICHARDS: Outside of the United States? CLIFFORD SCHORER: So I think of storage as storage, but just good climate control. JUDITH RICHARDS: So you describe the place you live in Boston as not as having one work of art, right now. I mean, you know, it's just, you knowI think the next time it comes through the marketplace, it'll say, you know, "We gratefully acknowledge Ms. Neilson, who said it's by Crespi." This is what I remember in their booth. So I bought the picture, took it to the Worcester Art Museum. I think the problem was it was the overlap between business and art that made it difficult for them to manage the institution. I mean, the number of those issues I've dealt with in only five years is astonishing. And, you know, we can cover a lot of ground. I had developed my eye to the extent that I also realized that all the export wares were crude Kraak wares that they were just, you know, flipping onto the boats to get rid of it. My father was absent because he was enjoined from being present. But the languages that I really learned and loved were French and the Slavic languages. JUDITH RICHARDS: Oh. [00:08:00]. So, I mean, I don't necessarily meet art connoisseurs. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I said, "No, that's good. A good city to. JUDITH RICHARDS: Oh, no, it's not that long. JUDITH RICHARDS: So have you been collecting in some other, noncompetitive area? Got straight Fs in every class for the next year. I mean, you know, obviously, I love the writing style of Simon Schama. JUDITH RICHARDS: So, that's the period of time, JUDITH RICHARDS: you were really developing. And they're like, "Come on, please," you know, "it's important people know that, you know, the board is giving." WebIhr Fachgeschft fr fussgerechtes Schuhwerk. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Whenever possible, I would go to a regional museum, too. During this period of time, the first decade of the century, were you coming across any preparatory drawings or other related material to these major works that you were studying and acquiring, or trying to acquire? You, 30 years ago. And then when they referred you to something else that was interesting, I would go look at that. To me, the Met is visiting friends, you know, visiting pictures that, you know, I know from [laughs]I look at the granular level of certain paintings because I know them very well. JUDITH RICHARDS: Well, let's remember to get back to that. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And that was talking to art historians, which is something. Their father was in the artwas sort of a discoverer. ", CLIFFORD SCHORER: It's interesting. And so we've certainlywe've done a very strong Pre-Raphaelite program; we've done a very strong early 20th-century program; we are not really. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. That's fun. So you have to have a different model. [00:34:00]. And I finally saidI said, "Look, how much is it going to cost me, and can I take you to lunch, or, you know, what is it going to take me to get in there?" But I did buy things that were interesting. So those areyou know, those are fun. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, no. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And, you know, there you have, you know, five occasions a year for some sort of a symposia where people are presenting their latest book, their latest article, their latest theory, and, you know, I love that world, because that world is filled with incredibly passionate people with very diverse opinions. Rita Albertson at the Worcester Art Museum did a phenomenal restoration. And we can coverbecause between the three of us going through a catalogue, we will isolate out the nine things worth sharing, and then we share those nine things, and then we comment on them, like attribution comments, back and forth. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And I neededI needed to. They just simply said, you know, "No mas." So I audited a few really interesting courses. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So, I mean, I rememberI remember those events. And so, in this case, weyou know, I really got ready for it, and I expected it to be, you know, the same price as the last time, and I was prepared for that. JUDITH RICHARDS: I see. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I think about a year. And in my new home in BostonI just got a small place to replace my big house because I needed a place to sleep when I'm in Boston. [Laughs.] And I could seethere was a sense that I had that Noortman was not long for the world. So I didn't want to ship it out on a common carrier, so I actually rented a truck and put it in the truck, and I drove 20 hours, with one quick stop for some junk food. CLIFFORD SCHORER: before that. I spoke to the auctioneers quite a bit. JUDITH RICHARDS: You talked about the label just saying, "Private Collector." CLIFFORD SCHORER: Think about selling? And you know, I'myou know, if you ask me to, I'll do the carpentry, the electrical, and the plumbing. 9:30 a.m.12:00 p.m. And Sotheby's purchased the company, and then Robert Noortman died literally, I think, six or nine months later, unexpectedly. JUDITH RICHARDS: Yeah. I was in London less so. And now, it's a city of, you know, 100,000 Ph.D.s, who all have good income, but they don't support institutions. There wereby the time, I mean, by the time Ithe irony of the story is that I then became a bankruptcy liquidator. [Laughs.] CLIFFORD SCHORER: in another city. At the core, CLIFFORD SCHORER: American and European. I remember these place names. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And there was a lecture going on in front of my painting, with a big group of people, and somebody talking about the Counter-Reformation. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, the story is, I would say, more humorous than anything else, because my thought was that someday, when I was an old lonely geezer, I would have an antique shop, or I would sell bric-a-brac. They invited my paleontological heroes, which they also did a wonderful job ofand I sat in the audience quietly, and then at the end of it, we came to an accommodation to create a permanent installation for the specimen, which is the largest specimen in the state. JUDITH RICHARDS: When you bought that first painting, did you very quickly continue buying paintings? 'M a jack-of-all-trades and a master of absolutely nothing them and sorting them out very much refined! Go in and easy to go in and easy to come out you learn that as a?... 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