They just would not be the most prominent? CLIFFORD SCHORER: So I like the fact that that we're talking more about an accumulation of scholarship, diverse scholarship, that contributes over centuries to an artist's reputation. But, of course, the ones who did press me in a different wayand I can names, but I won'tthe ones who kind of tried to sort of turn that conversation into a purchasing experience or get lost, they were out of my book before the 15 minutes was by, because I knew they were charlatans. I probably only have maybe 20 pieces left. That [01:00:00]. Not a lot of pieces, because they were much more expensive. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. Just one. CLIFFORD SCHORER: But, you know, I guess with minor things, you know, with less important artwork, it is what it is. CLIFFORD SCHORER: The MFA. No, no. It wasit was a vestige of youth. You know, sure, there is an accumulation of thinking, but the goalmy goal sort of long-termhas always been to find better and better and better things. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yes. You know, it was a million square feet of office furniture and miscellaneous things. So, JUDITH RICHARDS: [Laughs.] CLIFFORD SCHORER: They were doing that anyway. Just because there was more material in the market. This is a Renaissance object. So, you know, that's why it's useful to have, you know, after you've made the emotional decision to handle something, to have a bit of a business meeting. So when I finally got a big house in BostonI bought a townhouse and renovated it. It's oftenit's often not of the period. So there was another one, and that ended upI ended up personally selling that withthrough Agnew's to the Antwerp Museum as their only first period van Dyck sketch. CLIFFORD SCHORER: It was 20 hours a week at the beginning. And you know, I got to know him less and less during that period. Skinner had a published catalogue that had, you know, a paragraph of text on the better objects. [Laughs.]. JUDITH RICHARDS: But for you as an individual collector? And so, yeah, I mean, there were a number of things, a number of hats that I had to shed to sort of, I think, stay within what. There's a lot of blue hair. JUDITH RICHARDS: Do you see yourself spending more and more time in London? CLIFFORD SCHORER: we made everything. [00:46:01]. So what we had to focus on was, Were they 20th-century, or 19th-century with apocryphal marks? During this period of time, the first decade of the century, were you coming across any preparatory drawings or other related material to these major works that you were studying and acquiring, or trying to acquire? He seems really smart." And I said, "Well, whatever your normal process is, just do your normal process. JUDITH RICHARDS: It sounds likegone through all the money. Do you have all your collections in a database, or what kind of inventory do you keep? So they had had merger discussions in the '70s to merge the institutions, and the Higgins finally ran out of runway. I mean, I'm not writing 400-page tomes on, you know, theyou know, the Old Testament series of Rubens. Someone who was the inheritor of this property was in the room as well at the back of the room. And I tried for one of them, but it wasyou know, it was because it was terribly underestimated, but of course, the marketplace knew how to make it 700 percent of its high estimate. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I, you know, I'll let, CLIFFORD SCHORER: I'll let posterity decide that. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah, that's like $100,000 to half a million, and that's not the weakest. And often that's not a message that's simple enough for people to understand. Of course, I think the Old Master market is tremendously undervalued, but my rationale for that is not your sort of usual rationale, which is that, basically, the prices are cheap for things that are 400 years old, and why are they so cheap, et cetera. I mean, sure. But really, this house sort of speaks for itself as a kind of singular work of art, as Gropius so often said. The subjects that they were trying to make that were attractive to the audience. I mean, beyond generous with attributions. Wikimedia Commons. JUDITH RICHARDS: I mean, was there a dollar figure, or just call you "Chairman's Circle"? And I had to take it into various pieces. And then I would see that they would bid up to a record price, and then the next week you'd see a very similar one. He would run around to continental auctions back before the internet, and now the kids and I do a lot. JUDITH RICHARDS: And you spent four years there? CLIFFORD SCHORER: That's very funny. Like, the Ladies' Club would go, and she would bring me on the bus. I think they also probably were in New York at that point. And how the Chinese merchants were trying to sell you back what you wanted to see. Is your name Jim?" They didn't understand what the crucifixion scene was on some of these plates. And then if I found older ones, I'd be very excited. And I could buy that at, you know, the auctions. So I wrote to her several times and said, you know, "Is this Crespi? You know, if it rises to that levelI mean, there's an old joke about the museum world is nothing but one big conflict of interest. JUDITH RICHARDS: So there's strategy meetings with Anthony. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I've always enjoyed symposia, you know, of one type or another. I went from, you know, the Gustave Moreau museum to theor well, pre-d'Orsay, right? [00:58:12], CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. You know, it's ait's a story of ruination. I lived in Montreal off and on. Oh, no. Images. I mean, it just didn'tI just didn't understand the narrative. The Army of the PotomacA Sharp-Shooter on Picket Duty, published November 15, 1862. Winslow Homer (1836 - 1910) was a remarkable American painter who mastered several mediums, including oils and watercolors. That I was. JUDITH RICHARDS: Mm-hmm. You know, we saywe say that probably a little tongue in cheek because we know, of course, they would've loved to sell them as archaic objects, even when they weren't. Thank you for supporting the National Gallery of Art National Gallery of Art Custom Prints; About National Gallery of Art Custom Prints; So a couple months go by, and I get this photo, and I open it up, and it's really wonderful. And heby the time I knew him, he had retired as, I think, the 50- or 60-year chief engineer of Grumman Aerospace, sofor their plants, not for their aircraft manufacturing. And just, you know, wander around and pull books. I would go to HtelDrouot and spend the entire day, day after day after day. I think we're right-sized for the moment for the market. [Laughs.]. So those areyou know, those are fun. This is my private photography archive of the gallery that's in theit's in the gallery. It was about [00:52:00]. Carrie Coon, actress. And you wouldn't have enduring liabilities for all the things that you've sold in the past because the company would cease to exist. He had eyelashes; he had glass eyes. I'd probably be better off. JUDITH RICHARDS: I imagine you wanted to preserve the goodwill of the name of Agnew's. [00:02:00]. It was very early. JUDITH RICHARDS: You were spending more and more time involved with art as a business and as a passion. Sometimes they're inverted, but almost universally they're. 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. But I didn't buy it with much of a focus on the painting itself. It was 2007 or '08. JUDITH RICHARDS: Did you read art magazines? Completed College. You know, it was this incredibly complex. Richard Davis, jazz-bassist, recording artist, professor/educator at University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was a very beautiful, 18th-century French frame on this Italian, Neapolitan, somewhat good 17th-century painting. You know. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. These are salient works in, you know, in the catalogue, and these are works that the gallery had a historical involvement with in the 19th century. But let's just say that there were reactions to what was going on after it happened. That is a harder issue for the contemporary world, I think. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, the stated goal has always been to die with one painting, the best painting I've ever owned. CLIFFORD SCHORER: by someone who possessed it. And then, you know, I appreciate it; even if they don't know who I am, I appreciate it. I had to advocate and argue for it, and that did sort of achieve the goal I had set for it, which is a relatively universal acceptance. They have no idea. And it was an area I didn't know, and you know. I went to a boarding school in New Hampshire called Kimball Union Academy, that was not in and of itself a bad high school experience. It was amazing. [Laughs.]. I mean, I think it was a natural evolution. So, no, I didn't look to the collection to fund the next wave of the collection. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Absolutely. CLIFFORD SCHORER: We will have a viewing space in New York, but that's all. ], JUDITH RICHARDS: That's okay. clifford schorer winslow homer. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah, it's the Art of Europe. CLIFFORD SCHORER: But still, it was him doing a kind of an Egyptian Fayum portrait, which was really wonderful. There were definitelyit would definitelyI mean, there are still major goals that are unachieved thatyou know, there's a whole list, yes, and there are some with highlighting, some without, some that are possible, some that are not. And there's no further I can go. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Meaning, I bought a company. So we're changingone by one, we're changing the buildings. Now, that's where the museum world and my personal life intersected, because of the Worcester Art Museum. That part of your life expand that way? [00:32:01]. And my rooms were, you know, burgundy, and you know, very, very deep colors. And I got to the point whereand again, I'll beI'll stand corrected on this, because I know a collector in Boston who has a very strong opinion on what I'm about to saybut I ended my venture in Chinese export porcelain to my satisfaction, meaning that I couldn't go any further in that particular collecting area, other than to buy more expensive, singular examples of the same thing. I mean, it's not a viewing area; it's not a formalI mean, it, you know. And the angels that were attending Marythe detail that got me was they had a sunburn, but the straps of their sandals had fallen down, and you could see the outline of the sunburn where their sandal straps were. If I quit my day job, then I would put an extraordinary amount of undue pressure on the gallery to be earning period by period, and I think that would be to the detriment of the galley. JUDITH RICHARDS: Or acquire specifically in conversation with a museum curator for the institution. ], JUDITH RICHARDS: You don't recall anyone educating you about how to look? And my great-grandfather, the folklore iswhether true or not, and I tend to believe itis that he jumped a ship in New York Harbor and swam into Brooklyn, went to a church and got a birth certificate, and became an American. It has a lot of history; it has a lot of business that it's done. Winslow Homer. I collect Dutch still lifes; I collect," you know, fill in the blank. Because, you know, there was the idea that 550 objects could just be chucked into auction; you know, you could have a publicized sale and get rid of the company, and, you know, the library could go to the nation, and the archive could go to the National Gallery, and, you know, wash your hands with it. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Because the collection was enormous. So, you know, those are the kinds of things that happen more frequently, which is that one finds a hand in a Carlo Maratti painting, and one then goes and finds that the Albertina has that hand in a sketchbook that is known to have been by [Andrea] Sacchi or Maratti. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And I audited it at that, JUDITH RICHARDS: Was your father living in Boston, and that's why he showed you. CLIFFORD SCHORER: so, there weren't purpose-specific stamp and coin auctions in Boston, really. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Eggoh, it was worse than that. [00:10:02], JUDITH RICHARDS: When you started out in this field, did you have a general sense of where you wanted to go? CLIFFORD SCHORER: The family, yeah. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, the Met, number one, of course. I guessI guess I felt a bit insecure about the fact that I needed their help to learn something. JUDITH RICHARDS: to the Imperial porcelain? We do TEFAF New York, TEFAF Maastricht, Masterpiece. It was a kind of seeding operation, where they would send objects all over the United States. You know, they had the large office. I'm also sendingwherever there is some scholarly interest, I'm sending them out to museums, so that somebody puts a new mind on them, puts a new eyeball on them. JUDITH RICHARDS: Did you ever buy them in the mail, like kids did? And they let me bring that on the plane. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I enjoyI don't know. So, it's the, CLIFFORD SCHORER: it's the hunt, the pursuit, the discovery, the investigation, the scholarship, the writing. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, there was a dollar figure, a level. I don't know if, CLIFFORD SCHORER: I don't know if I would say collecting books. JUDITH RICHARDS: An investor rather than a conductor. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I get my screw gun and I open whatever I want to open whenever I want to look at it, so, yes. JUDITH RICHARDS: Does Agnew's participate in art fairs?