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Bound for LACMA: Jennifer Steinkamp's Jimmy Carter.
2007 COLLECTORS COMMITTEE
Making History—And Then Some
The 2007 Collectors Committee made history at its annual gala dinner, held April 14 at the Beverly Hills Hotel, when all nine works of art presented by LACMA's curators for possible acquisition were purchased. Never in the twenty-two years of the Collectors Committee has every piece been acquired.
After viewing the art and hearing individual curator presentations at the museum in the afternoon, the committee members arrived at the Beverly Hills Hotel for the gala event. Using their pooled membership funds of $1 million—the largest amount ever raised for this event—the Collectors Committee set to voting on which of the nine pieces, collectively valued at $1,381,600, LACMA would add to its permanent collection.
First to be acquired was Jennifer Steinkamp's computer-animated installation Jimmy Carter. Named for the Nobel Peace Prize-winning former president, Steinkamp's piece is a luminous video projection of hanging garlands swaying in a gentle breeze, each flower in the room-sized installation hand-drawn by the artist. Destined for the soon-to-be completed Broad Contemporary Art Museum, Jimmy Carter is the first work by this influential new media artist to be added to LACMA's collection.
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Agnes Martin print from On a Clear Day,
fourteenth-century Elephant.
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Before the second ballot could be cast, Agnes Martin's series of thirty prints, On a Clear Day, was purchased for the museum by Bobby and Nina Kotick in honor of Lynda and Stewart Resnick, allowing the committee to devote its pooled funds to the remaining seven pieces. Such generosity was to become a theme for the evening, as Marc and Eva Stern would later purchase a Kamakura-period (c. 1300) Elephant for the Department of Japanese Art as a promised gift.
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| Clockwise from upper left: Four-piece Tea Set by Josef Hoffmann, Gustave Surand's St. George and the Monster, Samurai-Class Woman's Formal Robe, Maya Pendant, Message by Mathias Goeritz. |
Next to be purchased was an elegant art deco tea set designed by the Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann in the early 1920s, followed by Gustave Surand's dramatic painting St. George and the Monster and Mathias Goeritz's meditative plaque of punched metal on wood, Message. As the night went on a Maya jadeite pendant from the first century AD and a woman's Samurai-class robe from nineteenth-century Japan were also acquired.
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Cabinet, India.
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At the conclusion of voting the Collectors Committee had just $46,000 remaining—not enough to purchase an exquisitely crafted cabinet from seventeenth-century India. But thanks to the combined generosity of Jane and Marc Nathanson, Bill and Dee Grinnell, and Marilyn and Calvin Gross, LACMA was able to round out the night with the purchase of each and every work of art presented.
The night was made even more remarkable, however, when Michael Govan took the stage for an unexpected appeal on behalf of one of LACMA's most prized possessions, Shakyamuni (Shijiamouni), the Historical Buddha. The carved marble statue from the middle-Tang dynasty (c. 700-800) has been part of the museum's collection for nearly sixty years, but LACMA has never owned it outright.
In a thrilling flurry of activity, each table began pooling new funds and within minutes the Collectors Committee raised $360,000 toward the statue. The amount provides a healthy springboard for the museum to raise the remaining funds needed in order to retain the sculpture as a hallmark of the collection. In all, it was an unprecedented night, one that will have a lasting impact on the museum's collections.
Artworks, from top:
Jennifer Steinkamp (United States, b. 1958), Jimmy Carter, 2006, computer-animated video projection, dimensions variable.
Agnes Martin (Canada, active United States, 1912-2004), On a Clear Day, 1973, thirty screenprints printed in gray on cream Japan paper, mounted in window mats, in black leather-faced cardboard box, 15 x 15 in. (each sheet).
Elephant, Kamakura period (1185–1333), c. 1300, wood, metal, crystal, and pigments, 8 1/2 x 18 x 7 1/4 in.
Josef Hoffmann (Austria, 1870–1956) for the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna, 1903–1932), Four-piece Tea Set, designed 1922, completed 1923, silver and ivory.
Gustave Surand (France, 1860–1937) St. George and the Monster, 1888, oil on canvas, 58 1/8 x 75 1/8 in.
Mathias Goeritz (b. Germany, active Mexico, 1915–1990), Message (Mensaje), 1967, wood, steel sheet, and gilding, 27 1/2 x 27 1/2 in.
Pendant, Guatemala, Maya, 250–450 AD, jadeite, 2 1/2 x 1 7/8 in.
Samurai-class Woman's Formal Robe (Koshimaki), Japan, late Edo period (1615–1868), nineteenth century, silk and gold metallic thread embroidery on silk plain weave (nerinuki), center back length: 68 in.
Cabinet, India, Gujarat, c. 1650–1670, rosewood inlaid with ivory; brass fittings, 15 1/8 x 21 1/16 x 151/8 in.
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 See the LA Times story "Fun and funds with LACMA's Collectors Committee."
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