We might know what inspired an artist to create a masterpiece, but do we know why a collector purchased it or what experiences strengthened the bond between the art and its collector?
Twenty-five local art collectors share rarely told stories “behind the art” along with works from their private collections in “Napa Valley Collects,” on exhibit at the Napa Valley Museum in Yountville, from April 4-June 15.
The show opens with a preview party on Thursday, April 3, from 6-9 p.m. Tickets are $60 or $50 for museum members, and can be purchased through the museum at 707-944-0500 or online at NapaValleyCollects.com. The preview party is a benefit for Napa Valley Museum and Arts Council Napa Valley.
The 35 artists in the show include Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Alexander Rodchenko and Joan Brown
“Napa Valley Collects is a kick-off of Arts in April,” said Napa Valley Museum director Kristie Shepherd. “It shows what amazing art is in the valley.”
Curator Meagan Doud discovered a number of intriguing stories while visiting private art collectors to select the art for the show. One of the most compelling is that of Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker.
“Meagan had no way of knowing that the two prints she chose from my home for this exhibit happened to be the very first and the last prints I ever purchased or how meaningful they are to me,” Rindskopf Parker said.
In 1968, she married Peter Rindskopf, who shared his love of art with her. Shortly after their marriage, her mother became terminally ill and for three months Rindskopf Parker made frequent trips from Atlanta to Boston to visit her mother. In Boston, she purchased prints from Hudson Art Gallery to take home to her husband
“Peter was an avid art lover, and he exerted quite an influence on me. He introduced me to abstract art,” she said. “The ‘Touch of Zen’ print by Helen Frankenthaler was the first art I ever bought for my husband.”
In 1971, a year after her mother’s death, her husband was killed in an auto accident. Rindskopf Parker was left a 28-year-old widow with a 9-month old daughter, a mortgage and an insurance policy for $5,000.
The prints she bought for her husband during their brief time together evoke “lovely memories” of her late husband and her mother.
“We had planned as if we were immortal,” she said. “The money seemed so unimportant to my life then. I was a practicing legal aid attorney at the time and realized I would always have to work. Rather than fritter the $5,000 insurance money away on daily necessities, I decided to use the money to buy a picture for the Atlanta High Museum of Art.”
She purchased a Romare Bearden, one of her husband’s favorites, for the museum and another for herself.
“Looking back on all of this, I now wonder at what I did,” she said. “I was not rich — far from it.”
She has no regrets about spending her money on art as a young woman. Instead, she said she is grateful to have those two pictures now rather than to have used the money for “something less lasting.”
Many years later, an art historian friend from Atlanta, who had seen her ‘personal’ Bearden, sent her a post card. On it the friend wrote: ‘This is a wonderful show which you should not miss. But yours is better.’
“I looked at the card, turning it over several times,” she said. “It meant nothing to me until I saw printed on the back edge: ‘Romare Bearden, ‘Noah: Third Day,’ a gift in honor of Peter E. Rindskopf. You can imagine the impact, I am sure. But what touches me most was how the picture impacted my mother-in-law.
“The museum had made the picture its ‘flagship’ and it appeared on postcards, boxes, and little address books, which I still have,” she said. “When the show arrived in Washington, D.C., just 21 years after my husband’s death, my mother-in-law was overwhelmed.”
Rindskopf Parker’s love of art and passion for collecting has grown over the years. She admitted that her “wall space has almost been exhausted” but she is a firm believer that ‘where there is room in the heart, there is room in the house’ so she has not “rung down the curtain on purchasing paintings yet.”
Rindskopf Parker she is happy to be part of “Napa Valley Collects.” “Napa has been so very kind to my husband Bob and me, relative new-comers,” she said. “It is a pleasure – an honor really – to be able to offer something small in return.”
Comments are closed.