ASPEN ART MUSEUM Aspen People
MAGAZINE
22
regarded as part of the Global South. We have works by artists from Jamaica, Morocco, the Philippines, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Chile, Romania, Cuba. I think it’s interesting that while things we’ve done from a philanthropic angle have been very intentional, when it comes to diversity and access, this level of diversity in our own collection has come organically. XC Yes, I know that you endowed a curatorial position at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York which is focused on Latinx art. JR That’s been super successful, and was very intentional and was about access and diversity. But for me, there’s something very satisfying about seeing that the collection we’ve built organically over the years also reects diversity, even if that wasn’t what we set out to do. XC Are there pieces that are just Jen, and pieces that are just Stewart, shall we say? JR Yes, but it all seems to work together. If I really don’t like something, or if Stewart really doesn’t like some- thing, it ends up in our respective oces. We each have our own taste, and we gravitate to dierent things, but when it comes to a major purchase or acquisi- tion, we both have to love it. Actually, it’s really nice that through each other, we discover things that we might not engage with otherwise. XC In what way are the works that you both gravitate toward a reection of your individual personalities? JR We like very dierent types of art, but I think what’s been interesting is that the themes are pretty much the same. For example, Stewart recently bought an 18th-century portrait of a father and his son at home. And I recently bought a Carrie Mae Weems photograph—a super tender, provocative image of a husband and wife from the “Kitchen Table Series.” And somehow, they just go together. In fact, we were looking at all these dier- ent themes that have emerged in our collection and there are nearly 100 works that have to do with relationships within the home and family. XC With the span of your collection, historically, it must be fascinating to nd the through line that connects someone like Jan Brueghel the Elder with Lucas Arruda, for example. How do you make connections between some of the surrealists you collect and artists like Vija Celmins? What unites those works? JR We have a work from Vija Celmins’s “Blackboard” series in which she recreates blackboards she nds—the wood, the nails that connect the frame, the chalkboard marks. It’s installed inside a lit vitrine, at the end of the hallway in our house in Aspen, and every single person who comes to our house stands in front of it for an uncomfort- ably long amount of time trying to guess which one is the original and which is the copy. It’s the same experience you’ll have looking at a René Magritte painting. Or works by Gertrude Abercrombie. These works all disorient you in some way. XC Do you play around with juxtapo- sitions when you are installing works in your home? JR We try to live with every single piece, so we rotate works a lot. Ultimately, I think all of the right things start to nd their way to each other. We have a Rauschenberg collage from 1964, and when you put that next to a Beatriz Milhazes work from 2022, it just works. We have a Joan Mitchell triptych next to a Richard Prince “Cowboy” painting, and it works.
Above Works by Vija Celmins (front wall), Alexander Calder (suspended from the ceiling) and Robert Rauschenberg (right wall) Opposite, top Works by Nan Goldin (left) and Sanford Biggers (right) Opposite, bottom Work by Camille Henrot
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online