Weisman: Hometown Boy Makes Very Good : L.A.’s Patron Saint of Art Considers His Philanthropy as He Travels Home to See New Museum

All four Frederick R. Weismans took a trip to Minneapolis over the weekend.

The first Weisman, a Los Angeles-based patron saint of art and social services, took off to see a new addition to his $20-million philanthropic program--the Frederick R. Weisman Museum, scheduled to open in late November in a flamboyant building designed by architect Frank O. Gehry at the University of Minnesota.

The second Weisman, a mega-collector who has amassed thousands of contemporary artworks and given away hundreds of them, traveled east to see the future home of about 50 pieces from his collection that he plans to loan to the new museum and donate at his death.

The third Weisman, a wildly successful entrepreneur who became a multimillionaire by risking $100,000 in 1970 on a 20-year franchise for Mid-Atlantic Toyota Distributors Inc., enjoyed a junket on Toyota’s elegantly appointed Gulfstream jet, offered as a gesture of friendship three years after he sold his franchise back to Toyota, in accordance with a long-standing agreement.

And the fourth Weisman, the son of Russian immigrants William Weisman of Minneapolis and Mary Zekman of St. Paul, made a sentimental journey to his hometown and alma mater.

It was the fourth Weisman who emerged in private moments. “I wish my father and mother could be there,” he confided while riding to Minneapolis in airborne luxury. “This is a dream come true. What could be better than having a museum with your name on it in your hometown, at your alma mater, right in the center of the campus?”

At 81 and finally feeling better after a long spell of ill health that he prefers not to discuss, Weisman is thinking about what he has done with his wealth and how he will be remembered. The death in 1991 of his former wife, art collector Marcia Weisman, along with the recent demise of his younger brother, retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Steven Weisman, and of Marcia’s brother, industrialist and art collector Norton Simon, appears to have intensified Weisman’s focus on his own philanthropic goals and the future of his art collection.

Despite donating or promising large groups of artworks to several museums, he still owns at least 700 pieces of contemporary art. Throughout the past decade, as he has made unsuccessful attempts to establish his own museum at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills and other locations, the fate of his collection has been a frequent subject of inquiry.

Speaking publicly for the first time about his intentions, Weisman confirmed what has been whispered for the past couple of years--that he means to maintain the core of the collection in perpetuity in its present environment at Carolwood Place, a Mediterranean-style villa in Holmby Hills, where he lived from 1982 through 1992.

“Carolwood is not going to change,” Weisman said. “The art will remain in the setting of a lived-in house, with family pictures and furniture. It will be run just like it is now, without disturbing the neighbors. We get about 100 tours a year, but they all come by appointment, they never stay more than an hour and a half and there are never more than 30 or 35 people at a time.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “We never run an ad. We never send out letters. It’s all word of mouth, but we get requests to visit from all over the world.”

Weisman is famous for buying art spontaneously on his travels, for mixing works by unknown artists with those of celebrated masters and for constantly rearranging works at Carolwood Place as he tries to squeeze in more and more pieces. He has filled in windows to make more hanging space, installed paintings by Ed Ruscha, Kenneth Noland and James Rosenquist on ceilings and built an annex to accommodate his collection.

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“Light doesn’t stand still, business doesn’t stand still and art doesn’t stand still,” he said. “I got involved with contemporary art because it is always changing, and if you move it around you see it in new ways.” But the days of rotating displays at Carolwood Place are over, he said. The house is as he wants it and he will bequeath his art foundation with sufficient funds to maintain the building and the collection exactly as they are. “When I die, Carolwood will be well endowed. I think I can rest easy,” he said.

Donations to museums also have brought him satisfaction, he said. Along with the Minneapolis museum, which was founded with a gift of $3.3 million, through the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, several other institutions have benefited from his fortune. Another art museum named after Weisman popped up last year at Pepperdine University in Malibu, after the foundation made a gift of $1.5 million and a long-term loan of about $3-million worth of contemporary art. Weisman also has made large gifts of money and artworks to the San Diego Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Though Weisman is a longtime member of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Board of Trustees, he has no plans to donate any part of his collection to the museum. Past Weisman gifts to museums have included intact collections and stipulations that they be exhibited as such in dedicated galleries.

Another charitable organization, the Frederick R. Weisman Philanthropic Foundation, supports his non-art related projects. “I’m doing more with the homeless now,” he said. “That really moves me.” His philanthropic foundation gave a $500,000 challenge grant to the Venice Family Clinic to establish a $1-million endowment for the Venice facility that provides free medical care to more than 10,000 working poor and homeless patients a year. An additional $500,000 gift from the foundation allowed the clinic to purchase adjacent property and establish a center for psycho-social services, which will be dedicated on Thursday and ready for use next year.

“I did very well, thanks to Toyota,” Weisman said. “And I didn’t want to put my money in the bank or buy treasury bonds and watch television. I wanted to show my appreciation. That’s how I got involved with so many different projects.”

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Among them, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles have received gifts of $1 million each and he has donated $1.25 million to the Devereux Foundation in Devon, Pa. (Two of his and Marcia Weisman’s grown children, Nancy and Daniel, are residents of the Devereux facilities, which conduct research and provide care for the physically, mentally and emotionally handicapped.)

When the plane touched down in Minneapolis, Weisman’s thoughts abruptly returned to the new museum. And not a minute too soon for the local press.

It was Weisman the philanthropist and legendary collector that reporters came to see. “What do you think of the building?” they asked as he and his wife, art conservator Billie Milam Weisman, stepped out of a long, black limousine and he got his first look at the stainless steel-clad structure.

“It’s breathtaking,” Weisman said. “The size of it. And the way the forms catch the light, it takes on a whole new character from every angle. I’ve seen pictures of it, but there’s no substitute for the real thing. This is overwhelming.”

A postcard published by the museum bears a photograph of the building and a Gehry quote: “They told me not to build another brick lump.” The Los Angeles-based architect has certainly fulfilled that objective. Known as “the exploding artichoke” or “that big shiny building by the river,” the museum seems to be the talk of Minneapolis.

Inside the building, Weisman’s excitement seemed to grow. “It even smells new,” he said, walking through galleries whose soaring white walls ascend to a series of diagonal cut-outs and curved spaces beneath skylights.

When museum director Lyndel King explained that 10,000 students pass by the building on a typical school day and that she hopes the museum will be “a drop-in kind of place,” Weisman beamed. “I’ve always believed strongly that schools should offer more than the chance to be bookworms,” he said. As a member of the university’s class of ‘32, Weisman couldn’t afford to attend school long enough to graduate, but he takes special pleasure in putting art in educational institutions.

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Inspecting all the museum’s bells and whistles, he looked at the freight elevator, underground parking, storage facilities, offices, catering kitchen and seminar and study rooms. Strolling out on a deck that offers a stunning view of the city, Weisman the hometown boy recalled that he had given himself a middle name, Rand, after the Rand Tower, the tallest building in Minneapolis when he attended the university.

Back inside, Weisman the collector took charge. “When are you going to start hanging the art?” he asked King, who rolled her eyes and cheerfully reminded him that she was still in the throes of moving the museum from the “temporary” facility it had occupied for 60 years. All five galleries of the new museum will be filled with Weisman art for the inaugural show. Thereafter, works from the $2.5-million group of works he has loaned to the museum will occupy two of the galleries, while temporary exhibitions and work from the permanent collection fill the others.

Among the pieces to be donated to the new museum, “Pedicord Apartments,” Edward Kienholz’s 16-by-35-foot re-creation of a flophouse, is of particular concern to Weisman. “I think the students will really like the Kienholz,” he said. “I want it to be where they will see it.”

Another worry is the placement of his parents. His parents? Has he lost his senses? Has this trip been too much of an emotional strain?

On the contrary. Weisman knows that his father, whom he describes as “a real entrepreneur who was always on the telephone,” died many years ago and can’t appear at the museum in person. Neither can his devoted mother, who insisted on the best education for her three Jewish boys, even if that meant enrolling them in Catholic girls’ schools during trips to California.

So Frederick R. Weisman, philanthropist, art collector, businessman and hometown success story, did the next best thing. He commissioned hyper-realist sculptor Duane Hanson to create life-size bronze likenesses of the couple. The sculpture of William is finished and awaiting a spot in the new museum; Mary will be ready for the opening.

“I want them to be here,” Weisman said.