One night only-Herb and Dorothy!

Wednesday, July 21st at 6:30 pm • Tickets $8.00
Followed by a talkback discussion with Deborah Ronnen (Deborah Ronnen Fine Art) and Douglas Dreishpoon (Chief Curator, Albright Knox Art Gallery). The Little Talkback Series is made possible through support from the New York State Council on the Arts.

About the film

HERB and DOROTHY tells the extraordinary story of Herbert Vogel, a postal clerk, and Dorothy Vogel, a librarian, who managed to build one of the most important contemporary art collections in history with very modest means. In the early 1960s, when very little attention was paid to Minimalist and Conceptual Art, Herb and Dorothy Vogel quietly began purchasing the works of unknown artists. Devoting all of Herb's salary to purchase art they liked, and living on Dorothy's paycheck alone, they continued collecting artworks guided by two rules: the piece had to be affordable, and it had to be small enough to fit in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. Within these limitations, they proved themselves curatorial visionaries; most of those they supported and befriended went on to become world-renowned artists including Sol LeWitt, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Richard Tuttle, Chuck Close, Robert Mangold, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Lynda Benglis, Pat Steir, Robert Barry, Lucio Pozzi, and Lawrence Weiner.

After thirty years of meticulous collecting and buying, the Vogels managed to accumulate over 2,000 pieces, filling every corner of their tiny one bedroom apartment. "Not even a toothpick could be squeezed into the apartment," recalls Dorothy. In 1992, the Vogels decided to move their entire collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The vast majority of their collection was given as a gift to the institution. Many of the works they acquired appreciated so significantly over the years that their collection today is worth millions of dollars. Still, the Vogels never sold a single piece. Today Herb and Dorothy still live in the same apartment in New York with 19 turtles, lots of fish, and one cat. They've refilled it with piles of new art they've acquired.

HERB and DOROTHY is directed by first time filmmaker Megumi Sasaki. The film received the Golden Starfish Award for the Best Documentary Film and Audience Award from the 2008 Hamptons International Film Festival. It has also received Audience Awards from the 2008 SILVERDOCS Film Festival and the 2009 Philadelphia Cinefest. Palm Springs International Film Festival named HERB and DOROTHY one of their "Best of Fest" films in 2009.

Watch a PBS clip as Herb and Dorothy Vogel travel the festival circuit with filmmaker Megumi Sasaki, sharing their passion for art and the story of their extraordinary lives. At museums and theaters across the country they are feted by crowds of artists, collectors and admirers.

Take the Collector Challenge at PBS.

Bios.
Deborah Ronnen is a private art dealer and curator,focusing on modern and contemporary art ,with special expertise in fine art print-making, and contemporary photography. Through Deborah Ronnen Fine Art, she has curated exhibitions of work by Pablo Picasso,Vik Muniz , Alison Saar, Robert Motherwell and Jasper Johns, to name just a few.

She is a Trustee of the Albright Knox Art Gallery where she serves on the Acquisition Committee, and a past Trustee of the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, where she also served on its art committtee.

She is a Member of the New York State Council on the Arts, and Chair of its Visual Arts Committtee. She also serves as a Member of the Empire State Plaza Art Commission.

Douglas Dreishpoon is Chief Curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. He has worked in museums for more than nineteen years, as curator of collections at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 1995 to 1998, and as curator of contemporary art at the Tampa Museum of Art in Florida from 1991 to 1995. His essays, interviews, and reviews have been published in numerous catalogues, magazines and journals, including Art in America, Art Journal, Art News, and Sculpture. His essay, “Sculptors and Critics, Arenas and Complaints,” was published in Action/Abstraction: Pollock, De Kooning, and American Art, 1940 – 1976 (Yale University Press, 2008). Other recent publications include The Panza Collection: An Experience of Color and Light (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 2007) and Petah Coyne: Above and Beneath the Skin (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 2005). In 2009 he organized for the Albright Knox Robert Mangold: Beyond the Line, Paintings and Project 2000-2008.
He also organized the currently traveling exhibition: Everything: Guillermo Kuitca, Paintings and Works on Paper, 1980 – 2008 (Miami Art Museum, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Walker Art Center, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2009-2011) . A former board member of the American Section of the International Association of Art Critics, Dreishpoon holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of the City University of New York