Stories

I decided to take a few days off, and since people love stories, I thought it might be fun to repeat an oldie but goodie ...

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I have been hearing from more and more readers that they enjoy the old stories, so I thought I would write down a few, including names, at the risk of name-dropping, so my readers can identify them.

Shortly after I was born, I became part of the art world. When my parents arrived in this country in 1939, they were given a limited budget by the family firm and found an apartment at a prestigious address on Central Park South, but it was a one-bedroom in the back with a wall for a view. There was a living room, which served as the office, a kitchen they could eat in, and a bedroom with the bathroom off it. I was put in a crib in the living room at night, and in the morning, I was rolled into the bedroom in case a client came in. One time a member of the Rothschild family came, and he needed to use the loo. Heading, as instructed, through the bedroom, he tried to pull open one of the doors. It happened to be the closet which my mother, still not dressed, had jumped into and was pulling on the handle on the other side! I guess he got the hint … wrong door! 

J. Paul Getty was said to have frequently “gone shopping” with my uncle, Hans Stiebel, for French 18th-century furniture. The most famous piece was the double desk that had belonged to the Dukes of Argyle and was acquired from Sir Robert Abdy. I visited Getty twice at Sutton Place, his manor house near London. The first time was strictly business, though he was having tea with his current girlfriend and decorator, Penelope Kitson. I had been rehearsed by his advisor and his curator from his museum in Los Angeles. The only thing they forgot to remind me of was that Getty always had to bargain. Happily, a 10% reduction satisfied him. Thank goodness, since any more of a reduction and we would have taken a loss.

Regarding the parsimony of J. Paul, I did not see the pay phone that he was supposed to have had installed in his lobby, but when the new Getty expanded from just Greek and Roman art in the villa, his curators had to buy their own office supplies. When I went back to Sutton Place with my wife some years later, I asked if I could show her the model of the new Getty where the curators placed miniatures of the pieces that Getty could buy for the museum to show him how they would look in the rooms. Getty told us that he only heated half the house in the winter, so, not wanting to leave the heated section, he said, “You know the way, show Penelope”. I had been in the house once before, so we went wandering off until we found the model. We just followed the breadcrumbs back to the living room!

J. Paul Getty at Sutton Place

This past weekend we saw a snippet of a play where one of the characters was Henry Ford I. He was portrayed as the anti-Semite that he was. It reminded me of Henry Ford II, who we knew as a client. This man was definitely no anti-Semite, --he was just too nice to both my father and me. I remember one time he came in during the lunch hour. When I opened the door for him, he said, “I bet you were just eating lunch.” I replied in the affirmative, and he laughed, patting his tummy and saying, “This is how I diet”. He proceeded into the gallery and bought several pieces of turquoise Sèvres porcelain and paid the next day. Later, I approached him when I was raising funds for a dealer exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, under the auspices of The International Confederation of Art Dealers (C.I.N.O.A.). Most people gave a few hundred dollars or a thousand at the most; he contributed $5,000!

Henry Ford I

Anne and Henry Ford II

I had a couple of elderly lady clients that I adored. One was Miss Frick, who I have written about http://www.geraldstiebel.com/2010/11/miss-frick.html, and another was Anita Young. 

Mrs. Young was the widow of Robert R. Young, a financier and innovator of the railroad business. His only failure was the New York Central Railroad, which he took over in 1954. He had to suspend dividends the following year; the stock price fell and, scared they were headed towards bankruptcy, he committed suicide in 1958. His personal finances seemed to be in fine shape, however, and left his widow Anita with homes in New York, Newport and Palm Beach.

Anita and Robert Young

As a client, Anita Young knew what she wanted and told her decorator rather than asking for their advice, as so many of our clients did. She only bought French 18th-century furniture and furnishings from us. As the very old and very young get along well, one day I mustered the courage to tell her about our French 18th-century paintings which would go so well with her collection. We would take them out in the paintings viewing room, on request. Mrs. Young said, “I am quite happy with my sister’s paintings.” I first thought, oh dear, what have I gotten myself into! But then I thought, the lady has too much taste and flair to want a poor artist's work on her walls. So, I took the plunge. “Mrs. Young, who is your sister?” “Oh,” she responded, Georgia O’Keeffe”. 

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

If you haven’t heard of George Lucas, I know you have heard about his movies, such as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises.

Last month he opened his long-awaited $1 billion, 300,000-square-foot museum in Los Angeles. I was frustrated that it had not opened when we were in LA a few months ago. In case you are worried about his spending too much, his net worth is estimated at 5 billion, and when he is not working on his museum, he manages the George Lucas Family Foundation and the George Lucas Educational Foundation, dedicating billions to educational equity, childhood development, and cultural causes. I wish we had more billionaires interested in helping others as opposed to just themselves!

Ever since Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Guggenheim in New York, a museum building itself has become the first artwork that introduces us to the institution. One might guess that the first thing that goes through the mind of the architect selected would be the purpose of the museum, though that has not always been so. In the case of the Lucas, we know the founder’s purpose was storytelling, and he made sure his architect conveyed his sense of adventure and science fiction.

A recent New York Times article headline was, “The Lucas Museum Architect Wants to Help You Escape From Reality: Ma Yansong, China’s reigning starchitect, lets his buildings wrapped in nature do the shouting.” What could better set up could there be to our vision of George Lucas’ movies.

Jessica Gelt, writing in the Los Angeles Times, described the building, “Rising like a spaceship over Exhibition Park pairs Ma Yansong’s futuristic form with 11 acres parkland, Star Wars statues, a cooling waterfall and an outdoor amphitheater.” Here is a rendering of the building and its surroundings.

A brief tour of some of the 100,000 square feet of the exhibition space, which includes a library plus film archive and restaurant, and no doubt plenty of storage space for the museum’s founding collection of 40,000 works of art.

https://www.tiktok.com/@bbkiyoshi/video/7681349972867992845 is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc

Lucas has collected narrative art for the past 50 years, focusing on popular illustration, comic art, paintings, and cinematic history, all telling a story in visual terms. The better-known artists in the collection include Frida Kahlo, Jacob Lawrence, Charles White, Robert Colescott, Banksy, and Norman Rockwell. An emblematic work is Rockwell’s 1951 painting “Saying Grace” that Lucas acquired for $46 million dollars in 2013 at Sotheby’s.

My wife and I spend a lot of time discussing museum exhibitions and how they are organized since, as a curator, she has created so many. I like the Lucas Museum concept of arranging galleries by subject and story matter, as opposed to by artist, nationality, or other criteria.

Of course, there is a Star Wars exhibit, but there are many other stories represented from caveman to human myths and on throughout history, and I, for one, look forward to seeing the entire Lucas presentation.

Art and Tech

For once, let us be positive about how technology can help us understand and appreciate art. For decades, we have seen underpaintings revealed by X-rays. More recently, infrared reflectography and Raman Spectroscopy with laser beams have been used to supplement the microscope in restoration and authentication studies, identifying ingredients of paints and other materials and clarifying period practices. Now we have ultra-high-resolution digital photography.

In honor of the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi, a new digital platform has been launched dedicated to the preservation of the 13th-century Basilica in Assisi, Italy. Jo Lawson-Tancred has written an article for Artnet about the new website, called Preserving Assisi, that allows viewers to zoom in on its centuries-old frescoes. These important works of art on the walls and ceiling by Cimabue and Giotto have been recorded with the latest technology. On the website you can find details of the individual frescos.

Before you start, I know it is not the same as being in the Basilica itself and having the entire experience, but as we also know, art fades and deteriorates over time and through neglect. Treasured locations can be destroyed by fire, natural disasters, and worst of all, war. The Basilica is a case in point, as an earthquake in 1997 destroyed part of the frescoes on its upper walls. Photographs taken only hours before the quake served in the restoration process.

Years ago, you had images in color, but before that, only black-and-white photography, and before that, other people’s drawings or copies that are mere shadows of the original. Digital documentation can include 36-degree panoramas and 3D models recording spatial context as well as close-up details that even reveal brushwork.

This documentation does not have to exist in just a single location, as it can be replicated and saved in different places. It gives us possibilities on different levels, from an introductory visit to a scholarly study, even if the original work no longer exists. This new Assisi web platform exists in Italian, Spanish, German, and English for all to learn from and enjoy. 

https://preserving-assisi.haltadefinizione.com/

Let’s turn to the case of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, where there was a fire in 2019.

Notre Dame was started in 1163 and finished in 1345. Two medieval stained-glass rose windows survived the 2019 fire, along with those designed in the 19th century by Viollet-le-Duc; six of these are to be replaced by windows of contemporary design. With its cleaned stone walls and brightened interior, Notre Dame will not be what we remember, but that too represents modifications over the centuries.

Tag Christof for N.Y. Times

Times and tastes change, but how wonderful it is when technological advances can bring us close to knowing what originally existed. It changes history from a collection of documents into something that can sometimes be visually and spatially reconstructed.

The Della Robbia Family

From the social media posting by Judith Dobrzynski, a journalist and art critic whom I met when she was working at the New York Times, I learned of the exhibition, “Rediscovering Della Robbia”, taking place at the Metropolitan Museum. Since it had not received the usual hoopla that covers their major exhibitions, I had missed the announcement. It opened on August 10 of this year and will stay on view until January 17, 2028. You could almost call it a semi-permanent installation. The reason the show can be up for so long is that none of the works have to be returned to a lending institution, as all the works come from the Met’s collection.

The Met has assembled what they refer to as “the largest, most important della Robbia collection in the United States”. It covers three generations of the family: Luca, Andrea and Giovanni. Pater familias, Luca (1400-1482), invented a glazed terracotta technique which was so unique that products would be immediately associated with the family. Of course, the process was copied, but everyone knew who started and mastered it.

What the Met is additionally offering this time around is a deeper look into the scientific aspect of the technical advances. The installation gives pride of place to “The Assumption of the Virgin” by Andrea della Robbia, a massive piece, 10 by 7 feet. It was donated in 1882 by one of the founders of the museum, Henry G. Marquand, and is known as the Marquand Altarpiece. It consists of 66 individual panels. After that description, you might ask why, the Met admits, it has not been on view for the past 70 years. Who knows, maybe I saw it, but I would have been 12 at the time! The reason is that only half of the altarpiece is in the show, seen against a graphic rendering of the whole. It seems that while they have the entire object, due to damage caused over the years before the piece came to the Met, the conservation department has not been able to restore all the panels.

*The white ceramic is the original

If you like Renaissance sculpture, this seems a great opportunity to learn about a lesser-known aspect in a presentation one would think you could only see in Italy.

On a personal note, a photo I love of my son, Danny, shows him some 50 years ago at the Met. He was with my wife, Penelope, who was curator there at the time. He is peeking through the mock-up of the installation of the Lehman della Robbia, where it was going to be installed off the Great Hall.

The show also gives me an excuse to tell a story I told 16 years ago about the daughter of Henry Clay Frick, Helen, always referred to as “Miss Frick.” She lived for many years in an apartment over the Frick Art Reference Library. In fact, until her death, she insisted that in the library all women wear skirts and all men wear jackets, no matter the stifling heat in summer. In our time studying, there was no air conditioning! At the entrance to the Library there was a lunette by Andrea della Robbia.

Miss Frick came to the gallery one day and asked me to find another just like it. She wanted one that she could put in her museum, the Pittsburgh Frick. As luck would have it, I found the perfect piece almost immediately, very close in size and exemplary in provenance. It had belonged to the Vanderbilts in their house at the Breakers in Newport. I was really excited to have found just what she wanted so quickly. I was mystified when she turned it down. The religious subject was similar; it was the right format; it was just perfect! Finally, in frustration, I phoned her long-time secretary, Mrs. Egan, and said that I did not know where to look if she turned down the one I had found, so could she possibly enlighten me? “Well, Mr. Stiebel,” she said. “Frankly, Miss Frick is not going to buy anything that comes from the Vanderbilts”! I am sure therein lies another wonderful story. Eventually, I found Miss Frick another della Robbia which had been deaccessioned from the Met.

As they say, what goes around comes around!

"The Guys"

“The Guys” is a play telling the true story of a New York City Fire Captain who sought out a journalist to help him write eulogies for four of his command lost in their efforts to save lives in the attack on the World Trade Center. 9/11 is how we, in the U.S., refer to the 2001 event when the twin towers in New York were hit by the suicide mission of al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden. That journalist was Anne Nelson, who wrote the play, first produced shortly after the event off-off-Broadway. In 2002, she adapted it as a movie, starring Sigourney Weaver and Anthony LaPaglia. Subsequently, it has been produced in all 50 States as well as abroad.

The impetus for the play is not to recount the action but rather the reaction to the events of 9/11. Everything depends on the two actors. In the Ironweed production we just saw, local actors Karen Leigh as Joan and Scott Harrison as Nick were superb in their roles. The play was directed by Emily Rankin. Unfortunately, it ended its very short run yesterday. Here are the actors in Santa Fe as Nick remembers one of his men.

Photo by Carrie McCarthy

It is the epitome of the “slice of life”, a literary genre I remember learning about in high school, --two people bonding over a tragedy felt by both from different vantage points.

It is a universal story of compassion. Like the playwright, the lady sitting next to me in the Santa Fe theater had volunteered to help in the aftermath of 9/11. In fact, she was murmuring under her breath about how she related to the time and what she had done living near the firehouse that the play refers to. After the performance, we learned several others in the audience were in New York at the time, as were we.

That day in 2001 my wife was working on an exhibition for the Portland Art Museum titled “Stuff of Dreams” drawn from the collections of the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris. They were going to have a national press event in New York at the LVMH building on 57th Street. She was pouring over galleys for the catalog with the publisher in the garden at our house on 68th Street when the building crescendo of sirens indicated something was seriously wrong. The designer for the show, who was working on the venue for the press event, came breathlessly through our door to say the event was off. We looked at him as if he were mad. Then he explained that a plane had hit one of the Trade Towers. We did not yet know about the second one. Just as in the play, we assumed it was probably a small plane and was undoubtedly an accident. We soon learned otherwise.

The Director and curator of the Paris museum and the chairwoman of their board, as well as the Director of the Portland Museum and his wife, had come to New York for the event. The French insisted they would drive to Canada immediately, and my wife had to persuade them not to give up their hotel rooms, explaining the border would be closed.

We obviously had to do something for these people who travelled so far. Penelope told them all to come to our house for dinner, but when she went marketing, she found store shelves were already bare. All that she could find was a turkey, so my brilliant wife made a typical Thanksgiving Day dinner! It was at least a symbol of hope on such a tragic day.

Scott Harrison, who was one of the duo in the show, is the artistic director and founder of Ironweed Productions, which produced “The Guys” in Santa Fe. I asked him why he decided to do this play now. Referring to 9/11, he replied, “Although that time was a very difficult time, I miss the connection I felt with other people and the softer, kinder hearts toward others that I feel like the experience engendered for many of us.” What could be more appropriate than to refer to that connection that seems to be missing today?

Labor Day

There is always something new to learn. I did not realize how far back the celebration of Labor Day went. Oregon was the first state to pass a law recognizing Labor Day in February of 1887. That same year, four more states passed laws creating Labor Day a holiday. 

By 1894, 23 more states adopted the holiday, and by June of that year Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September a legal holiday. Like everything else in politics, there were contradictions. Right after President Grover Cleveland used Federal Troops to crush the violent Pullman railway strike, he signed the 1894 act!

Already in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists began to pay attention to hard work in their creations, and art contributes to changes in society’s thinking. As factories proliferated and the union movement progressed, American Realist painters began to depict grueling and dangerous work conditions.

Even though painters abroad had been depicting peasants for quite some time, in the United States artists were painting pictures of the wealthy elites, tradesmen, and military events since that was the market. Members of the servant class might be included to show the wealth or civic standing of the sitter, but scenes of active toil only came to the fore in the 19th century.

Here we have Thomas Mifflin. He is a successful merchant and starting out as a politician. His wife Sarah is demonstrating her domestic industriousness by weaving a decorative fringe. The portrait is by John Singleton Copley, painted in 1773.

With the First Industrial Revolution (1760-1840), work was increasingly done in factories with machines, like the mechanical power loom. Artists were paying more attention to workers who could not afford the benefits and conveniences offered by progress. Still seen as a proud individual in this painting by John B. Neagle in 1829. It is still a true portrait, and the subject’s name is known: Pat Lyon. He and his work are presented as noble.

With the second industrial revolution (1870-1914), mass production became possible. American artists focused on how grueling work had become, as in the workman’s short break illustrated in The Ironworker's Noontime by Thomas Pollock Anschutz (1880) in the De Young Museum.

In 1920, famed photographer Lewis Hine took this photo, Power House Mechanic Working on a Steam Pump. It is obviously carefully posed to convey the nobility of hard work.

Unemployment rose to an unprecedented 20% during the continuing Depression that followed the crash of 1929. President Franklyn D. Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935 to create jobs where there were none to be had. One of many artists who were looking for work, Martha Levy, received a WPA commission for a mural in a public building. She did one called Men Working in Slate Quarry (1939). Granville was a major slate-producing region along the New York/Vermont border. The mural was created for the local High School and is now displayed at the Slate Valley Museum in Granville, New York.

People at work fell out of fashion as a subject with the art movements of the late 20th and 21st centuries, but earlier depictions remind us of the reason for today’s national holiday.

Strange Museums

Incredible but true: as I was reading the online publication artsjournal.com, I came across a brief notice called “Behold America’s First-Ever Jellyfish Museum.” The museum in Pompano Beach, Florida, was founded by a Ukrainian couple who had a similar institution in Kyiv before immigrating to the U.S. 

This started me thinking about other unusual museums. I started to look online and was amazed at subjects that people have thought worthwhile for starting a museum and that people would want to visit. Seems there are many on both sides of that coin. Maybe when we plan a trip, instead of just going to the major museums which we usually think of as art museums, museums of natural history, or sports museums, we should save time for one unusual one. I did just that with the DATALAND museum on our recent trip to L.A. 

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2026/08/what-i-did-on-my-summer-vacation.html

I am sure that if you go online, which obviously you do, you have come across lists of best restaurants, best movies on Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu, etc., etc., etc. Looking for unusual museums, I expected 10 to 40 suggestions but found one such site with 1,214 listings. Never fear, I don’t plan on going through that list with you, but I thought I would select just a few in different states across the country.

If you like the macabre, I recommend the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. It is a medical museum, which may not be all that unusual. However, this one is not what I would have expected. It features a wall of 139 human skulls and over 2,300 foreign objects swallowed or inhaled by people and safely removed by a pioneering otolaryngologist (a specialist who diagnoses and treats conditions of the head and neck).

In Savannah, Georgia, you will find The American Prohibition Museum where, as their website states, you can “discover how the battle over booze changed the country forever … from antique cars and moonshine stills to unique flasks and flapper dresses.” If that doesn’t race your motor, maybe you will be more interested in their, for adults only, speakeasy tucked into the museum “with craft cocktails that capture the essence of the 1920’s”.

The Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, has over 1400 dummies used by ventriloquists to throw their voices, creating alter egos for the performers. These figures range from the 19th through the 21st century. There are also scripts, photographs, and playbills. The museum takes a serious approach to this slice of history with neither animation nor the voices of the dummies.

Passing through Vincennes, Indiana, you might want to have a laugh and visit the Red Skelton Museum of American Comedy. It turns out that Vincennes is the hometown of the vaudeville performer who became a movie star. As you would expect, the museum is devoted to the clown of many roles, with documents and films recording his life and contribution to American humor.

In Hastings, Nebraska, half a floor of their local museum is devoted to Kool-Aid. It seems that the small-town entrepreneur Edward Perkins came up with the drink in Hastings. Who knew?

There may even be a reason to visit the town of Gibsland, Louisiana, with its population of 773. It features the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum in the cafe where the outlaw couple ate their final meal, close to the road where they were finally ambushed. It features historical weapons, Clyde’s rifle and Bonnie’s hat!

The state of Idaho is best known for its potatoes, supplying 33% of those grown in this country. I guess it is not surprising that there is a museum devoted to this state’s primary export. The Idaho Potato Museum can be found in the town of Blackfoot. I doubt there are many museums where you can consume the product that they are exhibiting, but in this museum café, The Potato Station, you can “enjoy some wonderful potato treats created by our excellent café staff”.

When I was a kid, I loved the books about the defense lawyer Perry Mason as well as the TV series based on the character. The author was a lawyer, Erle Stanley Gardner, who lived on a ranch, Rancho del Paisano, in Temecula, California. Following my youthful enthusiasm, I visited the Temecula Valley Museum, which holds his archive and features a permanent exhibit about the author with objects that belonged to him installed in a recreation of his study.

Remind me to someday look at some of the odd museums in other parts of the world, such as The Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia!