On their honeymoon, Herb and Dorothy Vogel, a couple from New York City, toured the National Gallery in Washington. Herb was already fascinated by art history and studied the subject in his off hours. For Dorothy, it was a new experience, setting the course for the rest of her life.
Director Megumi Sasaki tells their story in his documentary Herb & Dorothy (out Dec. 15 on DVD). Whats interesting about them is that their devotion to accumulating art resulted in one of the most significant collections of Minimalism and Conceptualism in private hands anywhere. Remarkably, they accomplished this with middle class salaries, not the trust funds and capital gains of the rich. Herb was a postal worker and Dorothy a librarian.
Time was in their favor. When the Vogels began buying in earnest during the mid-60s, there was no market for the beyond-the-fringe art they collected. In those days they could pick up work cheap and they seemed to relish hunting for bargains. As for what the Vogels decided to purchase, they limited themselves to what they could carry to their modest apartment on the subway or fit into a cab. Beyond that came the intangibles of subjective taste. Its just beautiful, thats all, and beauty is enjoyable, as Herb explains.
