Brooklyn has never been short on personality, and the latest exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art exposes the diverse personalities among Brooklyn art collectors.

The show, "A Family Album: Brooklyn Collects" opens on Friday, March 2. It showcases the artwork, or collections, of 80 Brooklynites and those who, even if they don’t live here anymore, still consider Brooklyn home.

Though the idea of mounting a show of art owned by Brooklyn collectors - as opposed to one focusing on contemporary Brooklyn artists - may seem an arbitrary reason to have an art exhibit at a major museum, the genesis of the exhibit came from an emotional outpouring of hundreds of letters from Brooklynites and former Brooklynites, according to Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold Lehman, a Marine Park native.

Lehman said it all sprang from a New York Times article in 1997 that spread the news that he - a Brooklyn boy! - had been appointed to the museum’s top post.

"Some of my fondest memories of growing up were of coming to the museum and seeing the wonderful objects here," Lehman told GO Brooklyn. "I received hundreds of letters from current or former Brooklyn residents expressing the same memories and saying that the museum sparked their interest in art and collecting. That’s what gave us the impetus for this exhibition."

Though those letters won’t be on display, statements written by the collectors will be featured. These statements are peppered with colorful, fond memories of both Brooklyn and the museum.

Martin Segal, chairman emeritus of Lincoln Center, has loaned three paintings to "Brooklyn Collects." including Milton Avery’s "Bicyclist" and a watercolor by Edward Moran titled "Landscape."

Segal, who is also the founding president of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, was born in Russia, and came to Brooklyn in 1921.

"I lived in Brooklyn Heights for over 55 years, a lovely house on Columbia Heights," recalled Segal. "The building was older than I was - built in 1838." It was only because his wife had trouble managing the stairs that the couple moved from Brooklyn in 1996.

"My first visit to the Brooklyn Museum was when I was 11 years old, writing an article for my school magazine, PS 179’s The Kensington," Segal reminisced.

"It was about why people should visit the Brooklyn Museum. I later became one of the editors of the magazine," he said, laughing while adding that he wasn’t sure whether it was the success of his Brooklyn Museum story that propelled him to the magazine’s masthead. He was more sure of the merits of the museum’s collection.

"I do think all of the Brooklyn Museum collections are strong, but their collection of American painters is surely among the best in the world, if not the best," Segal said.

When Lehman came to the Brooklyn Museum, it was his goal to increase attendance and attract a diverse audience to the museum. Now he’s putting the Brooklynites on display through their collections.

"We wanted to broaden Brooklyn’s definition from a geographic place to a state of mind, a connective tissue that runs throughout the country," said Lehman.

"We have a new mission statement, that was drafted a year and a half ago," he said. "It focuses on personalizing the experience of visitors to the museum. Making it something that means as much as we possibly can put into it for someone coming here."

Lehman said every department of the museum has been involved in locating collectors and securing loans, and that the objects on display and the collector statements are "full of surprises." Elizabeth "Buffy" Easton, chair of the museum’s European Painting and Sculpture department, is the coordinator of the museum-wide effort.

 

Celebrities

The resulting array of ancient Egyptian art, photography, textiles, furniture, prints, drawings and contemporary art represents hundreds of years, and, of course, the diversity of taste of Brooklyn’s wealthy sons and daughters.

"If you know the person - some are celebrities and some are not known to the general public - you might very well be surprised by the kinds of things they collect and adore," said Lehman. "And others, once you see the object and the name, there’s a more natural connection."

"Brooklyn Collects" features works on loan from everyone from philanthropists to celebrities to the civic-minded. Among the collectors are playwright and actor Harvey Fierstein ("Torch Song Trilogy"), actor John Turturro ("O Brother Where Art Thou"), columnist Pete Hamill, artist Louise Bourgeois, actor Elliott Gould and the Brooklyn Public Library’s deputy director of external affairs, Evan Kingsley.

The objects are grouped by collector and are accompanied by the lender’s photo and statement when available.

"We’re pretty committed to contemporary art and Brooklyn as well," Kingsley said of the pastime he shares with his wife Dara. "We spend weekends looking at art, often in Brooklyn." He said Brooklyn has the space and affordable rents that artists need to live and work - making the borough ground zero for collectors who want to discover new talent.

"The reality of it is studio space is more affordable here. It gives the artists a community to show work and talk about work. That’s what happened in Williamsburg and recently in Bushwick, which has similar industrial-type spaces. There are a lot of hot new galleries and places to congregate."

Lehman agreed, saying, "Brooklyn has become - again - a real destination."

Kingsley said he and his wife have been buying art for at least 10 years with a modest budget, caring more about what the pieces meant to them than the possibility of their appreciation in value.

"It’s about collecting and making collections," he said.

"The great joy of this show for us is not the recognition the collectors get, but the artists get," said Kingsley, who is loaning three works to the Museum show - a Charles Spurrier installation, a painting by Amy Cutler and a painting by Deborah Kass, "2 Red Barbras (The Jewish Jackie Series)."

"What I like about this work," said Kingsley, "is that Barbra Streisand is also from Brooklyn."

Discovering that a famous personality has roots in our borough - and has fond memories of visiting the Brooklyn Museum - can certainly make one feel more connected or proud to be a part of it all. Playwright and collector Harvey Fierstein ("La Cage Aux Folles") was not only born in Brooklyn, but he was a founding member of Park Slope’s Gallery Players, which is celebrating its 35th anniversary next year.

Fierstein, who is also an actor, agreed to narrate the "Brooklyn Collects" audio tour. He is loaning his Lavern Kelley figurines - stylized works dating from 1938 to 1940 - as well as a whimsical collection of Coney Island game prizes, dating from 1926 to 1950.

In his statement, Fierstein writes, "A lifetime of attending art schools could not disinfect my aesthetic from a childhood infestation of Coney Island. My home was a seven-stop elevated train ride from the flashing lights, wax museum forms, sideshow colors and cacophonic promises of Steeplechase, Astroland, the boardwalk and Bowery of Coney. I ate it all.

"What did that childhood teach me?" Fierstein continues. "An object, collected, is a souvenir. Attach emotion and it becomes memorabilia. History transforms it into artifact, and appreciation deems it art. A natural progression to rationalize a child’s fancy into an adult’s obsession. (These equations work in either direction.) That’s what I learned in Coney Island."

"I can’t tell you how extraordinary he has been," Lehman said of Fierstein’s support of the exhibition. "He has just put his entire heart into it. He has an incredible collection and he is an incredible human being too. He sensed the nature of the concept behind the exhibition, and he volunteered to do the audio-guide. Like all of these people, it takes a lot of time to be a volunteer, and just every step of the way he’s been supportive."

Another celeb supporting the show with a loan is author and newspaperman Pete Hamill, whose book "Diego Rivera," about Mexico’s best-known muralist, was published by Harry Abrams in 1999.

Hamill has chosen to loan a work by Lucero Isaac. Describing her oeuvre, the Park Slope native writes, "They were like boxes of time: her time, Mexico’s time, and my own time.

"They indirectly provoked images from my own life," writes Hamill, who now divides his time between New York City and Cuernavaca, Mexico.

"[Isaac’s] work seemed driven by the same urges that create novels: the need to impose order on the chaos of time. They’re like novels made of objects instead of words. When I saw this piece ["Portrait of Proust"] in her workshop in Cuernavaca, it seemed to offer me a Proustian madeleine; I had to have it."

New Yorker illustrator Roz Chast has loaned several pen and ink drawings; choreographer Eliot Feld is loaning several works by Mexican artists; Susan and George Soros are loaning John Singer Sargent’s "Autumn on the River" (1889); Park Sloper Turturro is loaning two works by his uncle Dominic Turturro; and interior designer Elissa Cullman, whose family has owned the Peter Luger Steakhouse in Williamsburg since 1950, is loaning several American works including a charcoal-on-paper by Edward Hopper.

"The diversity of the lenders and of the objects of the borough - it’s all about the many, many, many people who are needed to make up the past and the present and the future of this institution," said Lehman. "It’s that idea of inclusiveness that is very important here. And always has been."

 

"A Family Album: Brooklyn Collects" will be on display from March 2 through July 1, 2001 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art [200 Eastern Parkway, (718) 638-5000]. Admission is $4, $2 students and seniors, free to children under 12. The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday.

©2001 Community Newspaper Group