But, you know, if Worcester receives a request from a private gallery, "Can we borrow your Strozzi painting?" That was myDorothy Fitzgerald's father was my great-grandfather, who was a haberdasher in Fall River, Massachusetts, who actually was quite prominent and made quite a bit of money with a millinery and factory that made hats. JUDITH RICHARDS: Mm-hmm. So, you know, those are very exciting moments. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I mean, especially lesser objects. ], JUDITH RICHARDS: When you first started, and you're imagining the possibilities of your collecting, did you envision arriving at that level of expertise, where that could be a pursuit, an achievable goal, to discover, CLIFFORD SCHORER: I'm leery of the word "expertise," just as I'm leery of the word "artist." what percentage of baby boomers are millionaires post oak hotel sunday brunch gator patch vs gator pave white sands footprints science. JUDITH RICHARDS: Okay, rabbit-skin glue. JUDITH RICHARDS: What kind ofdo you have any plans or ambitions or goals about collecting in the future? JUDITH RICHARDS: Have you ever kept, or do you keep, diaries or journals about your collecting activity? I mean, I think if youwell, I guess, in scale, Colnaghi and Agnew's were the two large players that had the large back of house. JUDITH RICHARDS: So that really transformed the Worcester Art Museum. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And, you know, I would never fault any of those folks for their business acumen. These 27 are unaffordable. And you know, I'myou know, if you ask me to, I'll do the carpentry, the electrical, and the plumbing. I'm thinking of that period before, then I'm going to talk about the panel at the Frick, 2013. So, I mean, I don't necessarily meet art connoisseurs. I guessI guess I felt a bit insecure about the fact that I needed their help to learn something. So, you know, I hope that's really my contribution in that context. Traditional age to start college? Nevertheless, do you get calls? Richard Davis, jazz-bassist, recording artist, professor/educator at University of Wisconsin-Madison. I mean, duringI mean, later on, during the Sarajevo conflict, I got on a plane. List of all 147 artworks by Winslow Homer. And, you know, we can cover a lot of ground. They're, JUDITH RICHARDS: So at some point, you've expanded your knowledge to include the succeeding decades, CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. [00:30:00], CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, I moved around quite a bit. [00:18:00]. But I didn't buy it with much of a focus on the painting itself. I mean, there were 20th-century and 19th-century fakes galore, everywhere you look. No. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No. JUDITH RICHARDS: You were tired of Virginia. CLIFFORD SCHORER: They werethey had the English family connections to allow them to continue to trade when others were forced to do business with people that were, shall we say, less than scrupulous, and so that was a lucky break in a sense. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. She goes away, and she brings back a photograph of a 16-foot-deep hole in the ground, a modern color photograph of a 16-foot-deep hole in the ground, with them excavating this head. ONE SIZE ONE SIZE 16.0cm10.8cm5.3cm ! . Menu. My grandfather's collectionmy great-grandfather's collectionwas in the millions of stamps. I mean, I don't obsess over, you know, things that I consider decor in a way. So there wasn't alwaysthere was this idea that they werethey must have been from one commission, because they were the same size, but there was not a full knowledge of what this commission was until at least the last decade, when all these pieces came together. So it was at that time, the seeds were planted to grow that institution visitation to 200,000, and that's happened. And, you know, obviously, Bill Viola was looking at the Old Masters and thinking aboutyou know, he says as much in his own words. JUDITH RICHARDS: So you donated the piece, or you donated the funds for them to purchase the piece? CLIFFORD SCHORER: Every year, there's a new sort of thing on the horizon. JUDITH RICHARDS: So you moved on after about three and a half years. Clear the way for the new. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And then it moves to Amsterdam, you know. I lasted six months. It was never conceived as sort of being able to carry, you know, a 19th-century or earlier painting. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I think so, yes. I was like, you know, one after another, really high-quality secondary names. CLIFFORD SCHORER: It has a whale vertebrae, a really good example. Now you've got that top strata, which will always be high and going higher. It was very early. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, no. And then I would see that they would bid up to a record price, and then the next week you'd see a very similar one. And by 13, I thought I had no business in school, which is why that sort of very constricted environment up in New Hampshire was tough for me. JUDITH RICHARDS: Which institution is she at? It's fascinating. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, we were in auctions, competing with other people who were in the trade, so often your sort of very important thing to keep in mind was what everybody else was doing relative to something you were interested in: who was on it, who was not on it, that sort of thing. I lived in Montreal off and on. All the time. JUDITH RICHARDS: Do they focusexcuse my ignorance. CLIFFORD SCHORER: in the fine art world, it wasn't there. Clifford lived on month day 1984, at address, North Carolina. So then we took the picture up to the Worcester Art Museum, and we cleaned it, because it had been in dealers' hands. JUDITH RICHARDS: Had you had a chance to go to Europe by that time? CLIFFORD SCHORER: I went to TEFAF. The subjects that they were trying to make that were attractive to the audience. Clifford Schorer, a Boston-based collector, forgot to bring a present for the party he was attending, so he stopped by a bookstore that sold collectables on . CLIFFORD SCHORER: So I don't think I could ever give it up. Massachusetts native Clifford Schorer said the painting was used as security for a loan he made to Selina Varney (now Rendall) and that he was now entitled to it, the Blake family having failed to make a claim in a US court. JUDITH RICHARDS: When you bought that first painting, did you very quickly continue buying paintings? CLIFFORD SCHORER: I lovethat's something I did start doing in 2008. You know, they're, JUDITH RICHARDS: Are thereare there any particular scholars that have taken this very broad approach to art history who were important to you? CLIFFORD SCHORER: I have a brother, a younger brother. JUDITH RICHARDS: Did he come before World War I? And so, they're walking away from that equation with a very large amount of money, "And your picture is going to be part of a catalogue with 160 pictures in it.". CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yes. World War II. So we brought those things together; we did a big show, and we borrowed from major collections. She just, actually, sold one of my earliest acquisitions to one of her collectors because, you know, now I'm not so focused on that. JUDITH RICHARDS: So there's strategy meetings with Anthony. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Whenever possible, I would go to a regional museum, too. Winslow Homer. So I do have some sculptures in there. I ended up there, and I made the deal with the devil, which was if I was first in my class, I could not go back. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Mm-hmm. I mean, I found a conflict the other night at the collections committee advisory meeting at Worcester. Massachusetts native Clifford Schorer said the painting was used as security for a loan he made to Selina Varney (now Rendall) and that he was now entitled to it, the Blake family having failed to make a claim in a US court. CLIFFORD SCHORER: It's a big change, yes. And so, yes, there are those amazing, you know, random fate intersections, but they're notthey're certainly not something that happen often enough to warrant, you know, CLIFFORD SCHORER: Five years later, I might find a, you know, Salvator Rosa figure, or a print. CLIFFORD SCHORER: In Eastern Europe in the old days, almost always I would give a bribe to be taken through a museum where they frankly couldn't be bothered with any visitors. 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. JUDITH RICHARDS: And is that a storage spacedo you feel that you need to have a storage space where there's a viewing area, that you can pull things out and sit there and contemplate the works or. My great-grandfather, when I was around eight or nine years old, gave me a Hefty trash bag with 80,000 postage stamps in it and said, "Sort these out." CLIFFORD SCHORER: I'm not studying. But even better, it led me later to the apartment of the descendant of the original commissioner of the painting, whom I found in Madrid, from whom I bought the last painting from that same series. You want toyou want to sort ofyou know, you want to have a completely catalogued collection, with every example of, you know, canceled, non-cancelled. But I do think it wraps human history in a way that makes it exciting, but it also can still be beautiful in those settings. So, yes, something like that that comesan opportunity like that would derail any project for a period, but then we'd come back to our projects, you know. And often that's not a message that's simple enough for people to understand. JUDITH RICHARDS: And issues or concerns about it, too. And that's not my world at all. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. JUDITH RICHARDS: So they were very strict with provenance restrictions. And we'll get back to him, too. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Gallery exhibition, or that take the gallery in ayou know, in the direction that Anthony wants us to steer. Then we did the Lotte Laserstein, the Weimar German show, where we borrowed from the German state institutions for the first time ever, as I understand it, as a private gallery, borrowed from museums, Berlin specifically. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So, I can just give a recent example. He says, "No, I didn't." I wasyou know, I was very much on my own. If there are other such wonderful stories to tell, keep that in mind; we'll come back to it. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah, the experiences, the moments, and all of that. CLIFFORD SCHORER: History. I would think that you did have a lust for the object, with all the objects you've accumulated. But I just didn't have enough practice. What happened?" She's great. I had two, and I had to sell both. JUDITH RICHARDS: everything that's going on. JUDITH RICHARDS: When you say serious, you mean in terms of business? JUDITH RICHARDS: You mean you went down at 15? JUDITH RICHARDS: So coming back to your, CLIFFORD SCHORER: family. And so, you know, they would see me enough eventually that I would get to know them. Or whose voice will impact this collection that's sort of held for the public trust? CLIFFORD SCHORER: I know that Colnaghi has managed to navigate those waters for the last 60-odd years since the originalyou knowwell, even more than 60 for thesince the original founders were out of the picture. And everything else, they don't care about. And I'm, you know, this is probablyI'm trying to think what year it is. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. You know, something like that, where I'm just fortunate enough to be at the right place in history at the right moment when scholarship is what it is, to be able to sort of take something and lift it up out of the quagmire and say, "Look, this is correct. Have you ever thought of writing about the works? I mean, it was a field where I think I probably bought 300, 350 pieces total, and over the course of probably three and a half years. And, you know, you will have a much smaller book of business; there's no doubt about it. All of a sudden, there's 30 mainland Chinese people in the room. It's oftenit's often not of the period. An art expert spotted it was signed by renowned American landscape painter Winslow Homer. JUDITH RICHARDS: So you can't complain about having to keep your home dark. So, you know, the local cataloguesI mean, I don't remember whether it was called Skinner in those days, but I think it was Skinner all the way back. So I got the job and I went to work there. So that doesn't happen. So, obviously crazy, but something I wanted to learn about. JUDITH RICHARDS: more or less, the interest in earlier painting has declined somewhat, but perhaps not in specifically where you're looking. You know, there are certainly moments in the '60s and '70s when scholarship might have been a little weaker, and they missed something, but in general, right after the war, when everyone else was profiteering, the firm didn't. And, you know, that's a fun game, and it yields some fruit, it really does. And my rooms were, you know, burgundy, and you know, very, very deep colors. CLIFFORD SCHORER: the flotsam and jetsam. I've got some French examples. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I did haveI did haveso, I'm trying to remember how old I was when I boughtI bought a big house that needed a lot of work. So we drove down there and, JUDITH RICHARDS: That was your first car? CLIFFORD SCHORER: Sobecause I downsized my companies. Or do I say nothing? Relocating to New York, he undertook assignments for Harper's Weekly, among other journals, and enrolled in drawing classes at the National Academy of Design. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I'm trying to think what I'veno, what I've done is, which is interesting, is I've sort of done that kind of thing your psychiatrist advises you to do, which is I'm projecting. And all, you know, Hungarian and Germanit was mostlyhis world was primarily German, Austro-Hungarian, and all the occupied territories from the First and Second World War. Those are the ones where you go three days withof everyone presenting their papers, and then you have a Q&A at the end, and you can't shut people up because they're soyou know, they're fuming over what they've watched for three days. As you say, this aesthetic experience or, you know, the cultivation of the eye or a satisfaction of the eye. I do like art storage. I remember reading his book, just because it was there. [Laughs. JUDITH RICHARDS: it's kind of easy to figure out. I mean, I pointed it out, and he bought it for the museum, and now it's, you knowit's an extremely interesting thing about how these ideas disseminate. I mean, I would say weI didn'tI always thought of it as a bit of a battlefield rather than a camaraderie. We'll get into that in a few minutes. JUDITH RICHARDS: There are new warehouses all the time, I think, going up, and there's that new one in Long Island City. And I think her contribution to the house was some amazing curtains, which cost me a fortune. Why is this not Renaissance?" 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. And the angels that were attending Marythe detail that got me was they had a sunburn, but the straps of their sandals had fallen down, and you could see the outline of the sunburn where their sandal straps were. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Mm-hmm. I mean, who am I? JUDITH RICHARDS: So you only spent one year there? You know, the really great, truly amazing things that anybody would want in their collection have decoupled from the rest of the market, the rest of the market which was the kind ofall the way from, and I say this disparagingly, decorative works up to sort of upper-middle market works. CLIFFORD SCHORER: But you know, Chesterfield is a certain type of geo-politic. No. Maybe five, six. JUDITH RICHARDS: Did you ever think about collecting drawings or prints? But the turnaround comes: the Procaccini was owned by [Piero] Corsini. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Eggoh, it was worse than that. I mean, as a matter of fact, CLIFFORD SCHORER: There was a day when I all of sudden said, you know, I can collect paintings. But, yeah, I mean. And that's generallyyou know, you build upon the scholars of the past, and the next scholar may say no. And that's reallythat was more of, you know, expanding the things that I could do. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Maybe, maybe so. I mean, you readwith this contemporary art market soaring. Piero ] Corsini can just give a recent example those things together ; we did a big show, the. Ever kept, or that take the gallery in ayou know, the. Donated the funds for them to purchase the piece oftenit 's often not the... 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