ART NOTES : A Personal Collection Goes Public

London art dealer Cyril Humphris is one of the art world’s most enduring behind-the-scenes players. For the past 30 years or so he has advised leading collectors of European sculpture and helped to build the holdings of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, the Mellon Center at Yale University, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu and the Huntington Library, Art Galleries and Botanical Gardens in San Marino.

Essentially a private dealer who has catered to a few high-profile clients, Humphris has conducted his business quietly--but not without trauma.

“Suicide definitely was an option,” he says of the period after his 1989 purchase of Adrien de Vries’ “Dancing Faun” sculpture for a record $10.7 million. He was left holding the bag when his client backed out, and a year went by before the Getty Museum bought the sculpture, Humphris says, noting that he was charged $8,000 interest a day in the interim.

While such dramas evolved in his dealership, Humphris himself became a collector--amassing sculptures and other artworks he particularly liked or couldn’t sell, as well as “mystery” pieces that required extensive study. Bronze busts and plaques, ivories, majolica, enamels and old master paintings found their way to his inner sanctum.

“I look for quality,” he says, adding that he prefers works with human interest that tell a story.

Humphris’ personal collecting has been every bit as private as his business, but it is going public at a Sotheby’s New York sale on Jan. 10-11. The auction house is offering his entire collection of 331 objects, including “Adonis With His Hound,” a life-size marble sculpture by 16th-Century Florentine artist Giovanni Bandini, which is expected to fetch more than $2 million.

“I’ve been living with some of these things for 25 or 30 years, but this is a moment to let go,” he says, adding that a collection is a big responsibility and he wants to devote more time to research and writing. After spending two years contemplating the sale, he finally decided to let the whole thing go.

“If I held out some pieces, people would say that I kept the best things,” he says.

As for transforming himself from a recluse to a public figure who traveled with Sotheby’s preview exhibitions in November and December and who talks at length about his collection, Humphris says he loves it: “I have spent all of my life breathing in. Now I can breathe out.”

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MOORE FUND: A campaign to endow a $750,000 fund at UCLA in honor of the late architect Charles W. Moore has been launched with $300,000 in pledges from Los Angeles developer Robert F. Maguire and his wife, Susan, and architects Buzz Yudell and John Ruble. Moore, who headed UCLA’s architecture program in the 1970s, is known for such projects as the Sea Ranch condominiums in Northern California, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and the Beverly Hills Civic Center. The Charles W. Moore Endowment for the Study of Place will be used to support educational programs related to Moore’s teaching and practice.

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VODOU, NOT VOODOO: A four-year effort, backed by a $100,000 planning grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and $484,686 from the National Endowment for the Humanities, will come to fruition on Sept. 17 when UCLA’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History is scheduled to open a major exhibition of religious art from Haiti. “The Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou” will present about 500 objects, including sequined flags, beaded rattles, dolls, paintings, musical instruments and a temple containing four altars.

Vodou (Haitian Creole for sacred ) is Haiti’s predominant religion. The faith--generally known in the United States as voodoo and defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “a primitive religion based on a belief in sorcery and in the power of charms (and) fetishes”--evolved as a blend of African tradition (transported across the Atlantic by slaves) and Roman Catholic ritual.

The show is intended to alleviate misunderstandings about the religion and to celebrate the beauty of Vodou art. It is being organized by Donald Cosentino, associate professor of African and Caribbean folklore and mythology at UCLA, and Marilyn Houlberg, professor of art and anthropology at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After closing on March 10, 1996, at the Fowler, the exhibition will travel to New York’s American Museum of Natural History, Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History and Miami’s Center for the Fine Arts.