[00:10:02]. 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.". But the scholarship at the time said, "Wait a minute, that looks like a preparatory drawing for that painting," which then changed the attribution of the painting to a better attribution. I ended up going to Boston University in a program that they created for, shall we say, eccentric-track children. Yeah, about a year. I mean, it's those kinds of crazy, you knowI mean, you think about it. How have you approached conservation through the years? They asked me what I'd like to study, and I told them I'd like to study financial management and economics. We all moved them down south. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I was interested in history primarily, if I had my druthers. And so, you know, now that I see they're buying great things, they're talking to people I know about pictures I know, about things I know about, and that creates an inherent conflict. They may not be moneymakers. JUDITH RICHARDS: Thinking about your non-business interests? Have youyou mentioned thea committee at the MFA in Boston. Yeah. CLIFFORD SCHORER: My father was a businessman. Generally speaking, the book presentations are in Antwerp. You talk to them about business; you talk to them about family. The art questions were Anthony's bailiwick. A preparatory drawing surfaced that scholarship saidand it was not available. And I went down there to go to my old cube [laughs], and it was still there. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Now, the difference is if the artist is alive, and the dealer is alive, and you've got, you know, sort of some other motivations. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So I went to the director's office, and there's a glass door. I sold it all. 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, my favorite type of symposia end with, you know, almost fisticuffs between scholars about attribution. CLIFFORD SCHORER: You're putting a value judgment on it that I, you know, I'm uncomfortable making entirely myself. Do you get, CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, no. He bought the [Frans] Snyders HouseSnyders is the artist. And there was one large mud sculpture of a horse on the floor in the lobby at Best Products. Or. JUDITH RICHARDS: Do you want to mention any specifics? You know, I'd just come over and ask them questions about art, and I'm learning more from them than they could ever learn from me, CLIFFORD SCHORER: because they're there telling me about something that they have, you know. But I wouldin France and Europe, I generallynobody had the money to just go wander around. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yes, so. I used to go to Richmond at night and eat and drink, and you know, have a good time there. In other words, you're trying to build a collection that educates you, that is much more important than just the visual experience of it, that gives a sense of art history. JUDITH RICHARDS: They're based in London? CLIFFORD SCHORER: I think about a year. So, yes, there's a plaque to my grandfather. In other words, they were things that wouldn't have been brought to me, and certainly wouldn't have been brought to me at the wholesale level, so to speak, and I couldn't have bought them by myself because of the dealer profit involved. JUDITH RICHARDS: that you had worked on? We had a cocktail party last night at someone's house; it was all the board members. You can spend as much money as you want; if you open a door, you're going to change the humidity. Let's see. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, it's paramount for the museum world. Is this Crespi?" Where there's a profit to be made by. JUDITH RICHARDS: your fellow collectors? JUDITH RICHARDS: So they were very strict with provenance restrictions. [Laughs. I wasI was alwaysintimidated was not really my MO. I mean, it was never conceived. CLIFFORD SCHORER: where you sort ofyou readyou know, I've read some really interesting studies of juvenile ceratopsians and how their horn formations develop. I think the auction market is very strong in New York, but the dealer market is certainly a London-based thing, with a few exceptions. Have you always maintained fine art storage? Yeah, yeah. Well, it is, because you have the curators who are advocating for the artwork, for the artists and the collectors. I mean, it was basically, you know, not anyou know, it was like you're trying to pass the day away; you're walking around the city; and there's this building that's 40 feet wide, 60 feet deep [laughs], you know, and you go in, because it's open, and, you know, they charge nothing to go in. Well, the word was out that they were closing the gallery. When you were also collecting that area, did you find the need and actually, in fact, travel to other cities? That is. And when I came back to them to ask about it and, you know, pursue it, they said, "Oh, the National Gallery of Washington just bought it," so it was gone. Now you've got that top strata, which will always be high and going higher. So all of the art that he did have was gone. It was a lot of time, a time I still don't have, but it was a lot of time. JUDITH RICHARDS: But timewise, was that the beginning of your starting to explore that area? CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, no. Schorer also recalls Anna Cunningham; George Abrams; Sydney Lewis; Chris Apostle; Nancy Ward Neilson; Jim Welu, as well as Rita Albertson; Tanya Paul; Maryan Ainsworth; Thomas Leysen; Johnny Van Haeften; Otto Naumann; and Konrad Bernheimer, among others. JUDITH RICHARDS: Are there any other [laughs] collections other than that? JUDITH RICHARDS: to the Imperial porcelain? JUDITH RICHARDS: Does Agnew's publish? And just, you know, wander around and pull books. The whole family went down to greet the boats, transfer the fish to their baskets, and haul the catch back up to the village. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I would say most of that traveling was on my own. JUDITH RICHARDS: Okay, rabbit-skin glue. You know, it was important to me that that's the type of person, you know, sink or swim, whetheryou know, I didn't want a shark. And actually, it was very similar to my grandfather, which was not his son but his son-in-law. You know, what our task is, I think, at Agnew's is to showand, you know, we sound like a broken record, because every dealer says the same thingbut is to show that you can have that one great Old Master in your kitchen, you know, in your dining area, you know, the food still life. And I became first in my class so I could not go back. And I found it; it was an ambassadorial gift to the Spanish ambassador, and found the exact painting and everything. And those days are now over, because the auction companies have created a broader market. Then they have these mosaics from Antioch. [00:45:59]. I mean, it's. JUDITH RICHARDS: This is Judith Olch Richards interviewing Clifford J. Schorer III, on June 6, 2018, at the Archives of American Art offices in New York City. What kind of high school experience did you have? CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. Fellow collectors in the field? If I saw something in the shop, I would buy it. So that's why it's amazing now, because we're at a time when people are out hunting all the time, which is great. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And some, you know, lifting, but I usually don't let it get to flaking. But, no, I mean, it's. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I had a little bit of disposable income. About. 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. I was definitely some. [Affirmative.] And Iyou know, I doff my cap to them. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Because the collection was enormous. But, yeah, I mean. You know, you'd spend two days there every weekend. It was not in the market; it was in an institution. I mean, you know, obviously, I love the writing style of Simon Schama. I mean, it wasI remember the restoration process took four or five months. You know, you can only do so much of it; otherwise, you have a saccharine high. I would saysometimes I still go over to the Natural History Museum just to poke around. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I have a brother, a younger brother. Clifford J. Schorer, Producer: Plutonium Baby. And, you knowand I sent them a commendation letter afterwards. Right now I'm down to one 40,000-square-foot building. But Professor Wiggins was ahe was, I think, the head of Fidelity's either Magellan Fund or Puritan Fund. JUDITH RICHARDS: Do youwhatat Agnew'sso, in thisspecifically in this period of your life, what do you think are the greatest challenges you are grappling with as a businessman-slash-collector art expert? Located in the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture (8th and F Streets NW), Size: 5 sound files (3 hr., 57 min.) [00:48:00]. JUDITH RICHARDS: But for you as an individual collector? CLIFFORD SCHORER: But, you know, I guess with minor things, you know, with less important artwork, it is what it is. I mean, the boothjust one masterpiece after another. But if something great pops up in our little cabal, it immediately travels up to their level. It was [Carlo] Maratti. So if there's something I need to learn, I will learn it, you know, if I have to. Summary: An interview with Clifford Schorer conducted 2018 June 6-7, by Judith Olch Richards, for the Archives of American Art and the Center for the History of Collecting in America at the Frick Art Reference Library of The Frick Collection, at the offices of the Archives of American Art in New York, New York. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Sure. ], JUDITH RICHARDS: The panel at the Frick, was that yourthat was in 2013it was called Going for Baroque: Americans Collect Italian Paintings of the 17th and 18th Centuries, and you served on the panel as the only private collector, or. [Laughs.] You could put together quite an impressive-feeling collection. Clifford Winslow was born on month day 1917, at birth place, North Carolina, to Claude Winslow and Mary Barbee. So you have lots of interesting things in Bulgaria, but they're basically in the sort of, you know, big, communist, ornate, central museum in Sofia. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I'm relying on smart people to tell me about things and, you know, say, Oh, this is interesting, or, This is not. So he came for the opening. Now, that's where the museum world and my personal life intersected, because of the Worcester Art Museum. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Much too generous with attributions. You know, things like that. They were phenomenal art collectors. And often. My grandfather's collectionmy great-grandfather's collectionwas in the millions of stamps. CLIFFORD SCHORER: An investor, not a face to an enterprise, but awhich I still am notbut a sort of investor-backer. [Laughs.]. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Still living in Boston, yeah. We love her. And, I mean, it's an enormous orbit. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah, yeah. You know, and I was trying to do my best to go along with that because I thought it was a ticket to yet another city. JUDITH RICHARDS: What year would that be? I was very impressed with all of it, you know; the effort as a dealer was astonishing. But I did buy things that were interesting. And I thought, you know, We should buy that Cezanne, because it's one of his most Old Master-y Cezannes, and try to tie it in with [Nicolas] Poussin. My grandfather, who was a very technical manvery poorly educated, but a very technical manhe could take apart any machine and put it back together. So, yes, I mean, obviously there is this interplay between the marketplace and the art historical importance. JUDITH RICHARDS: There are new warehouses all the time, I think, going up, and there's that new one in Long Island City. Schooner - Nassau, 1898/99. He worked masterfully with both oil paint and watercolors. I think not. You're welcome. But, I mean, I can tell, you know, when yet another picture arises from a certain quarter, what we're dealing with. I mean, there's so many things in New York. Time goes by, and they use your name, yeah. Rockox. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, of course they do, but she's being, you know, CLIFFORD SCHORER: She's being funny. So, you know, we've had the gamut; you know, we've had the gamut. Every time they issue a word I take it. So part of what you were studying wasn't just the work; it was the market. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Oh, I thought it was great, yes. The grave site of Clifford J Schorer. Winslow Homer. the answer is definitively, "No." CLIFFORD SCHORER: No. You know, from the slaves of West Africa, to the sugar, to the rum, to the plates, to the spices. So I still, to this dayI mean, I'm building two buildings as we speak, and I'm running back and forth doing concrete pours, because I love that. Had you been involved with other institutions before then? To have the picture debuted with this book about how it's a masterpiece; have it not sell. JUDITH RICHARDS: Do you have conservation issues? Or is it changing? [Laughs.] CLIFFORD SCHORER: I was a willful and independent child. So we drove down there and, JUDITH RICHARDS: That was your first car? Not a lot of pieces, because they were much more expensive. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. [They laugh. Web. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. Eagle Head,Manchester, Massachusetts (High Tide), 1870 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City The Herring Net, 1885 Art Institute of Chicago Winslow Homer is undoubtedly one of the foremost artists of the United States in the 19th century. I thought for sure this is someyes, this is some Renaissance, you know, late Renaissance thing, or even early Baroque thing, that, you know, is amazing. That book should be out very soon, actually. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So I don't think I could ever give it up. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I'm sure it was all an interest in history. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, an art handler to move things around. So I do have some sculptures in there. Of the blue-and-white, and the highly decorated, sort of the Qing period stuff, that's all gone. So I guess there were 300 Corporators, and I forget, but it wasI had one term as Corporator, and then I was on the board, and then I was president. Everyone's retiring. And they say, "Well, 15 percent is outrageous! Clifford J. Schorer is known for Plutonium Baby (1987). $17. JUDITH RICHARDS: Where is the Gropius house? We maintain the photographic backup to all of that so that we can research individual paintings in the photographic archive. So my grandparents, whom I adoredmy grandfather and grandmotherthey lived on Long Island, CLIFFORD SCHORER: They lived on Long Island in a town called Freeport. So it really was a question of lobbying to say, "Look, I'll make this better for you over a period of years," than doing it this way. So it was an interesting thing. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Mm-hmm. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I think they were so proud that they recently found it in the ground that they had that at hand so they could tell the story. My aesthetic was decided very early. 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. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And everywhere I went, I met people. So I had finished all this. Metal. Images. Or just, this. Because you know, thenand you understand what happens there. So I went to Gillette, and they hadthey were looking for a programmer analysta senior programmer analyst. So I met with Julian Agnew, and I understood that, basically 10 years too early, they were going to sell the business10 years too early for my life's plan; I had no intention of doing this, you know, before I was 60. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, that's changed. And that's the absent member of the family that had a great influence. So that's always. [00:12:00]. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. The interview was conducted by Judith Olch Richards forthe Archives of American Art and the Center for the History of Collecting in America at the Frick Art Reference Library of The Frick Collection, and took place at the offices of the Archives of American Art in New York, NY. JUDITH RICHARDS: Mm-hmm. JUDITH RICHARDS: They don't have school groups or something? So it was a fun little entre into what the dealers did for a living. 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 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. JUDITH RICHARDS: And did thosewere those thingsdid you consider acquiring those things as well to accompany the painting? And it was obsessive. JUDITH RICHARDS: You have Pre-Raphaelite paintings? JUDITH RICHARDS: Do they focusexcuse my ignorance. I think I got out of fourth grade by writing the brief military history of World War II for the entire year, because the teacher couldn't stand me [laughs], so she let me have the year off to write my military history, which I was obsessed with. previous 1 2 next sort by previous 1 2 next * Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. And you have to do that, I think, because, again, this is a small market with limited opportunities, and you have to work very hard at the ones you have. JUDITH RICHARDS: So what were some of the early key purchases, and how did theywhy were they goals then and, JUDITH RICHARDS: how did they appear? He lived a fascinating life; working as a commercial illustrator, an artist-correspondent for the Civil War, being published on commemorative stamps and achieving financial success as a fine artist. We had 15 layers of varnish and retouches to take off, and underneath we had a masterpiece. CLIFFORD SCHORER: But, I mean, I love opening those folders and just finding out what was sold in 1937 to. And that's a big question in the art market; you know, having the liability for everything you've ever sold coming back to say, "Wait a minute, this is a fake," or, "This attribution is wrong," or, you know [00:40:00], JUDITH RICHARDS: Or, "This is Nazi loot," and. Eight years later, have it end up on the auction market, have it sell and not be paid, and then come back again. [They laugh.]. 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