Corralling the collectors

IT isn’t easy to build a significant art collection. But -- when the time comes -- it may be just as hard to figure out what to do with it. As thoughts of mortality lead to estate planning and troves of artworks outgrow their homes, serious collectors face tough choices.

First, there’s the question of whether to give the art away and take a tax deduction, consign it to a dealer or cash in at auction. If the decision is to find a place for it at a museum, the next question is: Where? Should the collection go to one institution or several? A big museum or a small one? An art-rich establishment or a needy upstart? Should the collector exemplify hometown loyalty or national vision? Stick with a longtime relationship or plunge into a new love affair?

In Southern California -- which can’t shake its reputation for losing great collections despite its abundance of art resources -- such questions are particularly pointed.

“There’s no simple answer,” said Eli Broad, 72, a Los Angeles philanthropist whose 1,200-piece collection of contemporary art is highly coveted. He has funded a new building for contemporary works at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, scheduled to open in late 2007 with an exhibition of about 200 pieces from his collection. Although Broad, a LACMA trustee, has repeatedly declared his intention to donate his collection to one or more institutions, he’s in no hurry to part with it. But he has given the matter plenty of thought.

“The first thing collectors want to know is that the director and curatorial staff of the museum appreciate the quality of the work and the amount of energy and effort involved in putting the collection together,” he said. “A collection is a legacy. Collectors want their collections to be appreciated and honored. They also want to know that their collections will be exhibited, to help educate a broad public and advance scholarship in an institution that gets a fair amount of traffic.

“When it comes to my collection,” Broad said, “I’ve got to feel comfortable with the financial condition of the institution, the governance and management, the director and curatorial staff. They have to be first-rate. I’m speaking for myself. Others may have other things in mind.”

They do.

“Strength goes to strength,” the late publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg said in 1991, explaining why he gave his collection of Impressionist and Postimpressionist art to the contender that needed it least, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Robert Halff, a longtime LACMA trustee who died in 2004, had a different idea. “These are things the museum should have bought but didn’t have the foresight or the money to buy,” he said in 1994, when he announced his intention to donate a big chunk of his modern and contemporary art collection to LACMA.

E. Blake Byrne, a trustee at L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art, made his landmark gift of 123 works to MOCA part of his 70th birthday celebration. “I love this city, and I want to say thanks for making my life so wonderful,” he said late last year, when the gift was announced. “I hope that sharing something that is important and intimate to me will create a desire for others to do the same.”

Major donors such as these are essential to museums that are actively building their art holdings. To collect collections or large parts of them, museums must collect collectors.

“The fundamental fact of American museums is that most of their collections are acquired by gift,” said MOCA director Jeremy Strick. “Ninety percent is a typical figure.” When it comes to gifts of collections, he said, “they usually result from long and close relationships between collectors and the institutions, supporters and staff.”

That’s true all across the country.

“You need to know who you are dealing with, how people feel about their collections,” said Earl A. Powell, director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and former director of LACMA. “It comes down to relationships.”

Late to the starting line

BUT Southern California’s art museums got a late start and still have to buck stiff competition.

“Nearly all the museums in Los Angeles were created in the last 40 years of the 20th century,” said Robert C. Ritchie, director of research at one of the notable exceptions, the 86-year-old Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. “During the great wave of collecting, from 1880 to 1930, when Europe was ailing financially, Americans used their wealth to buy up almost everything in sight. Whether it was porcelain or carpets or paintings or sculpture, it poured into America in an unprecedented way. In Southern California, we missed out on that. The collectors here are mostly creatures of the late 20th century. By that time, collecting in a lot of areas, particularly Old Masters, was getting very difficult.”

Despite its relative youth, Los Angeles is often criticized for losing homegrown collections and failing to forge lasting alliances with out-of-town collectors. L.A. real estate developer Edward R. Broida’s recent gift to the Museum of Modern Art in New York renewed a familiar lament that usually begins with the loss of Walter C. Arensberg’s stellar collection of modern and pre-Columbian art. He offered it to UCLA in 1944 but withdrew the offer when the university failed to provide a building for the art. Arensberg gave the collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1951.

Broida, who planned to build his own museum in New York in the 1980s, allied himself with MoMA from 1990 to ’96 as a member of its Drawings Committee. Over the years he approached several museums, including MoMA and LACMA, about a possible donation, but none was willing to take the entire collection and display it according to his wishes. Last summer, when Broida’s struggle with cancer made the matter more urgent, he called MoMA Director Glenn Lowry and offered the museum the pick of his 700-piece holding, except for a few items consigned to auction or promised to his children. After spending two months researching the collection, curators John Elderfield and Ann Temkin chose 174 pieces.

In situations such as this, it’s difficult for Southern California museums to compete with prestigious East Coast institutions that can cut better deals or simply seem more appealing.

“There’s nothing quite like being invited to the Metropolitan or the National Gallery to be wined and dined and think that your collection will end up being part of that,” Ritchie said. “It’s very flattering. For a lot of people, it can be quite blinding.”

Southern California successes

BUT if some important collections have been lost and others -- such as those of entertainment industry moguls David Geffen and Michael Ovitz -- are uncommitted, many more have taken up permanent residence in Southern California museums. Some, such as the Virginia Steele Scott collection of American paintings at the Huntington and the Edward W. and Hannah Carter collection of Dutch paintings at LACMA, were gifts. Others, including major holdings of illuminated manuscripts and photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Panza collection of Abstract Expressionist and Pop art at MOCA, were purchased. Still others, such as European paintings and sculptures at LACMA funded by the Ahmanson Foundation, have evolved from continuing commitments.

At the relatively small Long Beach Museum of Art, director Hal Nelson has been particularly successful at finding and wooing collectors of ceramics and contemporary decorative arts, fields in which he has little competition. One of his discoveries, the late Marie Forrest, was a postmistress in Highland, Riverside County, who collected French 18th century ceramics. She bequeathed 102 pieces and her library to the museum.

“I think Southern California has an immensely under-recognized resource of collectors,” Nelson said. “With each exhibition I have worked on, I have found collectors in outlying regions and central areas of Los Angeles that I hadn’t expected. When people are collecting in isolation, they are thrilled when someone from a museum shares their passion and validates their interest. We cultivate these relationships.”

Devra Breslow, a retired UCLA administrator who recently gave 20 pieces of contemporary glass to the Long Beach museum, said that finding the right home for each segment of her varied collection is part of being a responsible collector. She has discovered the joys of being a benefactor to a small museum while supporting institutions in places where she and her family have lived. It’s more satisfying to deal with a museum director than a bureaucracy, she said, and it’s fun to become part of a museum’s circle and see pieces from her collection exhibited.

“I’ve taken this pretty seriously,” she said, “but in the process, I’ve met some fabulous people. It’s very exciting for someone like me.”

A personal touch is required at all levels of museum collecting. At MOCA, members of the acquisitions and collections committee and the drawings committee, the museum’s major support groups, travel with director Strick and curators Paul Schimmel and Ann Goldstein, visiting exhibitions and artists’ studios in the U.S. and Europe.

“Being in conversation with collectors and seeing things together is important,” Strick said. “So is helping collectors envision their collections as a living entity. The way the museum displays its collection and mounts exhibitions helps them imagine potential gifts not as embalmed but as part of a museum that’s vital and creative, where their gifts will inspire other collectors and motivate artists.”

Whether their sales pitches are straightforward or subtle, each museum has its special argument. For Nancy Thomas, deputy director of LACMA, it’s the ability to present art to a huge audience at the biggest encyclopedic art museum in the Western states. For Jessica Smith, curator of the Huntington’s fledgling but rapidly growing American art collection, it’s the attraction of the new Lois and Robert F. Erburu Gallery.

“We have the space. We need the works, and we will show them,” she said. “That’s the message I am trying to send.”

But there’s no agreed-upon way to translate a museum’s message into gifts from collectors.

“There is no norm,” Powell said. “It’s probably just time and patience and attention to relationships. In most cases, collections do tend to stay at home. Except, of course, when they don’t.”

Contact Suzanne Muchnic at calendar.letters@latimes.com.

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Giving them the works

Some of the private collections that have come to art museums in Southern California:

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Huntington Library,

Art Collections and

Botanical Gardens

Henry E. Huntington collection of 1,200 British paintings, furniture, sculpture and decorative arts, donated in 1911

Edward Weston collection of 500 photographs, donated in 1940-44

Charles D. Seeberger collection of 1,500 prints, donated in early 1940s

Florence M. Quinn collection of

124 paintings and decorative arts, donated in 1944

Mr. and Mrs. James R. Page 100-piece collection of silver and rugs, donated in 1956-95

Mrs. W.B. Munro 400-piece collection of silver, donated in 1957-86

Gilbert Davis collection of 1,674 British watercolors and drawings, purchased in 1959

Bruce Ingram collection of 300 British drawings, purchased in 1963

Edward W. and Julia B. Bodman collection of more than 500 British, European and American prints and drawings, donated in 1972

Adele S. Browning memorial collection of 42 European paintings, eight portrait miniatures and 30 decorative objects, donated in 1978

Virginia Steele Scott collection of 53 American paintings, donated in 1979

Mrs. Homer D. Crotty collection of

157 American, European and British prints, donated in 1991

Maurice Bloch collection of 321 American prints and drawings, purchased in 1991

Russel Kully collection of more than 100 British prints, donated in 1994

Anthony and Edith Liu collection of 410 Edgar Dorsey Taylor drawings and prints, donated in 1994

Alexander Kruse collection of 66 paintings, drawings and prints, donated in 1996

Michael St. Clair collection of 74 drawings by John Frederic Kensett and John William Casilear, donated in 1996

Sanford and Helen Berger collection of 3,000 objects by British artist and designer William Morris and 2,000 related books, purchased in 1999

Marcia and Donald Yust collection of 123 Currier & Ives prints and 200 pieces of Steuben glass, donated in 2000-01

Miriam Maclaren Marble collection of 430 pieces of American silver, donated in 2001

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L.A. County Museum of Art

William Randolph Hearst collection of 700 pieces of decorative arts, ancient Islamic art and European painting and sculpture, donated in 1945-1951

David E. Bright collection of 23 modern paintings, donated in 1967

Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck collection of more than 2,700 works from India, Nepal, Tibet and other cultures, acquired in gifts and purchases in 1969-85

Ahmanson Foundation donation of funds to purchase 111 European paintings and sculptures and hundreds of works from other cultures, in 1972-2005

B. Gerald Cantor collection of 30 sculptures by Rodin and other 19th century French artists, donated in 1973; 118 other works donated over time

Hans and Varya Cohn 450-piece collection of ancient and European glass and European decorative arts and paintings, donated in 1982, ’88 and ’92

Joe and Etsuko Price collection of

161 Japanese screens and scrolls, promised in 1983

Ralph M. Parsons Foundation donation of funds to purchase 1,385 photographs, in 1983-2005

Constance McCormick Fearing collection of 570 pre-Columbian works, donated in 1983-2005

Robert Gore Rifkind collection of 8,000-plus German Expressionist works on paper and in books, acquired as gift/purchase in 1983

Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser collection of 51 contemporary glass works, donated

in 1984-1997

Edwin Binney III collection of 101 Turkish works, donated in 1985; bequest of 12 additional works in 1995

Proctor Stafford collection of 200 ancient artworks from western Mexico, purchased in 1986

Howard and Gwen Laurie Smits collection of 171 ceramic works, donated in 1987

Raymond and Frances Bushell collection of 883 Japanese netsuke, donated in 1988

Max Palevsky donations of 489 pieces of Arts and Crafts furniture, decorative arts and Japanese prints, from the 1980s to 2005

Audrey and Sydney Irmas collection of 153 photographic portraits, donated in 1992

Robert Halff collection of 54 modern and contemporary artworks, donated in 2005

Bernard and Edith Lewin collection of 1,800 Mexican artworks, acquired as gift/purchase in 1997

Eric and Leza Lidow collection of 75 ancient Chinese works, donated in 1998

Robert W. Moore collection of 228 Korean works, purchased in 1999

Peter and Eileen Norton collection of 30 contemporary works, donated in 2000

Maan Madina collection of 787 Islamic works, purchased in 2002

Edward W. and Hannah Carter collection of 12 Dutch paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries, donated in 2003

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J. Paul Getty Museum

Getty provided his museum with about 1,600 Greek and Roman antiquities, 17th and 18th century French decorative arts and Old Master paintings through gifts and acquisition funds from 1953-1976

Peter Ludwig collection of 192 illuminated manuscripts, purchased in 1983

A group of photography collections encompassing 18,000 individual works and about 50,000 objects in albums and books, purchased in 1984

Molly and Walter Bareiss collection of 970 Greek art objects, purchased in 1985-86

Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman collection of 299 pieces of ancient art, donated in 1966; 59 additional pieces purchased from Lawrence Fleischman that year

Erwin Oppenlander collection of 412 pieces of ancient glass, purchased in 2003-04

Ray and Fran Stark collection of 28 modern sculptures, donated in 2005

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Norton Simon Museum

Simon merged his 4,000 European and Asian artworks with the Pasadena Art Museum’s 7,000-piece contemporary art holding in 1974 and continued to build the collection

Galka E. Scheyer collection of about 450 works by the Blue Four group of modern artists, formerly entrusted to the Pasadena Art Museum, was transferred to the Simon in 1976

Ramesh and Urmil Kapoor collection of about 50 Rajput paintings, donated in 2004

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Museum of Contemporary Art

Giuseppe Panza di Biumo collection of 80 Abstract Expressionist and Pop artworks, purchased in 1984; the Panzas donated 70 works by L.A. artists in 1994

Philip and Beatrice Gersh donation of 13 works, in 1983-98

Barry Lowen collection of 68 Minimalist and Neo-Expressionist works, donated in 1985

Joel Wachs donation of 112 works, in 1985-2005

Taft and Rita Schreiber collection of 18 Abstract Expressionist works, donated in 1989

Max Yavno collection of 183 photographs, donated in 1989

Scott D.F. Spiegel collection 13 works, donated in 1991 with endowment for continuing acquisitions

Robert Freidus collection of 2,100 documentary photographs, purchased in 1995-2000

Joseph Cornell Memorial Foundation donation of 21 works by the artist, in 1996

Marcia Weisman collection of 83 works on paper, donated in 1996

Dean Valentine donation of 50 works, in 1996-2005

Lannan Foundation collection of 114 works, donated in 1997

Marsha Kleinman collection of 19 works, donated in 1998-99

Buddy Taub Foundation donation of 49 European works, in 2002-05

E. Blake Byrne collection of 123 works, donated in 2004

Robert Halff donation of 14 works, in 2005

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UCLA Hammer Museum

Armand Hammer collections of 200 Old Master, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings and 7,500 works by Honore Daumier, donated in 1990

UCLA’s Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts 45,000-piece collection moved to the Hammer in 1994, when the university took charge of the museum

Hal and Eunice David collection of 60 American and European drawings, donated in 2003

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Long Beach Museum of Art

Milton Wichner collection of

61 European Modernist works, donated in 1979

Al and Melba Langman collection of 40 contemporary ceramic works, donated in 2000

Roland and Wilma Duquette collection of 20th century art, predominantly Latin American, donated in 2002

Dr. and Mrs. Leslie Dornfeld collection of 125 English figurative ceramic works, donated in 2005

Marie Forrest collection of 102 works of 18th century French faience, donated in 2005

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Orange County Museum of Art

Avco Financial Services collection of 27 contemporary works, donated in 1971; four additional donations a few years later

Dr. and Mrs. Eugene Spiritus donations of 15 contemporary works, in 1977-96

Diana Zlotnick donations of 12 contemporary works, in 1977-78

Dr. and Mrs. Merle S. Glick donations of 11 contemporary works, in 1986-2003

Wells Fargo Bank collection of 38 works, donated in 1987

Dr. and Mrs. Arnold Chanin donations of 35 contemporary works, in 1994-2003

Mark and Hilarie Moore donations of 25 works of art, in 1991-99

Peter and Eileen Norton collection of 26 contemporary California works, donated in 2000; Peter Norton donated 25 others in 2000-01

Joel and Nancy Portnoy collection of 11 contemporary photographs, donated in 2004

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Laguna Art Museum

Virginia Steele Scott collection of 75 American works, donated in 1980

Carl S. Dentzel collection of 280 American works, donated in 1984

Frances Conden Brandriff Brooks collection of 43 works, donated in 1988

Dennis Hudson and Nancy Noble collection of 110 works, donated in 1991-94

Richard H. Mumper collection of 85 works, donated in 1994

Nancy Dustin Wall Moure collection of 62 works, donated in 1980-99; 26 additional works promised in 2004

Murray and Ruth Gribin collection of 26 modern and contemporary works, donated in 1984; 152 additional works donated in 2001

Stuart and Judy Spence collection of 110 California contemporary works, donated in 1999

Peter and Eileen Norton collection of 124 works by young California artists, donated in 2000

Peter Krasnow estate donation of 517 paintings and sculptures by the artist, in 2000

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The lost art

Private art collections that ultimately went to distant institutions or individuals instead of being donated to Southern California museums:

Walter C. Arensberg’s collection of 20th century and pre-Columbian art was offered to UCLA in 1944, on the condition that a building be provided for it within five years, but was withdrawn when that condition wasn’t fulfilled. Arensberg gave the collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1951.

Edward G. Robinson’s collection of Impressionist and Postimpressionist paintings was loaned to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1956 but sold to Greek shipping tycoon Stavros Niarchos for $3.5 million in 1957 as part of a divorce settlement.

Joseph H. Hirshhorn’s collection of modern and contemporary art was tentatively offered to the city of Beverly Hills in 1964, with a proposal that it be lodged at Greystone Mansion. In 1966, after exploring many possibilities, Hirshhorn gave his collection to the Smithsonian Institution, which built the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

Trustees of Hal B. Wallis’ foundation placed his collection of Impressionist paintings at LACMA in 1987, the year after the death of the film producer, who had been a trustee of the museum for 20 years. The arrangement was said to be a “permanent loan,” but the collection was sold at auction for $39.6 million in 1989. The museum filed suit and reached an out-of-court settlement, receiving an undisclosed sum to purchase 19th century French art.

The collection of Impressionist and modern paintings built in L.A. by film producer William Goetz and his wife, Edith Mayer Goetz, was sold at auction for $85 million in 1988.

L.A. real estate developer Edwin Janss’ collection of contemporary art was sold at auction for $16 million in 1989.

Film director and writer Billy Wilder’s L.A.-based collection of modern and contemporary art was sold at auction for $32.6 million in 1989.

The Harry A. Franklin family’s L.A.-based collection of African art was sold at auction for $7.1 million in 1990.

Actor Kirk Douglas’ L.A.-based collection of Impressionist and modern art was sold at auction for $5.9 million in 1990.

Walter Annenberg’s collection of Impressionist and Postimpressionist paintings was displayed at his winter home in Rancho Mirage and exhibited at LACMA in a 1990 national traveling show, raising hopes that it might come there permanently. But Annenberg, whose primary residence was in Philadelphia and who had served as a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, gave the collection to the Met in 1991.

Arthur and Rosalinde Gilbert’s collection of silver and mosaics was promised to LACMA but withdrawn when the museum refused Arthur Gilbert’s escalating demands for exhibition space. He gave the collection to Britain’s Department of National Heritage in 1996, for display at Somerset House in London.

Nathan and Marion Smooke’s collection of modern art was exhibited at LACMA and published in a museum-funded catalog in 1987. Nathan Smooke, who died in 1991, was a longtime LACMA trustee, and his son, Michael, succeeded him on the board. But the collection was sold at auction for $86 million in 2001.

Walt Disney Corp.’s collection of African art, founded by real estate developer Paul Tishman, was given to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., in 2005.

L.A. real estate developer Edward R. Broida’s collection of contemporary art was given to the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2005.