This Boston Masonic chair
of 1765-1790 was on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from
Joe Kindig Jr. and Son Antiques. The Kaufmans bought it, lent
it, and in the past year made their gift to the museum
official. Courtesy National Gallery.
As Beauty
Does:
By Laura Beach
WINTERTHUR, DEL. - Since the early 1970s, when the world first
became aware that a pair of Norfolk, Va., collectors were
assembling antique American furniture in a spectacular way, the
name Kaufman has appeared in more footnotes than anyone can
remember. Whether embedded in catalog entries or exhibition
monographs, affixed to promising new research or a scholar's
magnum opus, the name has signified unsurpassed excellence in a
variety of endeavors.
That excellence will be formally acknowledged on January 16, when
Winterthur Museum, Gardens and Library presents the Henry Francis
du Pont Award for Decorative Arts and Architecture to Linda H.
Kaufman and the late George M. Kaufman, collectors and
philanthropists, at a dinner at Sotheby's. Mrs Kaufman will
accept the prize on behalf of her husband, who passed away on
November 1, having learned last March that he was to be honored.
The Kaufmans are only the tenth recipients of the Du Pont Award,
established in 1984. The prize is bestowed only when a committee
headed by Morrison H. Heckscher, chairman of the American Wing at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, believes it is truly deserved.
Past recipients include two editors, Alice Winchester and Wendell
Garrett; educators and museum builders Frank Horton, Clement
Conger and Abbott Lowell Cummings; the dealers Harold, Albert and
Robert Sack; and the private collectors Bert and Nina Fletcher
Little, Ralph Carpenter, and Pamela Cunningham Copeland.
Friends and colleagues recall George Kaufman as a man of great
passion and immoderate ambition.
"He did everything in the biggest and best way possible, and
delighted in the finest that life has to offer. I'll never forget
the almost all-night sessions we had looking at objects under
consideration. We had a very good time," Heckscher remembers.
Kaufman's passions were ecumenical, ranging from the perfect rose
to his own homemade brownies.
From left to right: Barry Tracy, late curator of the American
Wing, Metropolitan Museum of Art; collector Martin Wunsch; and
the late George M. Kaufman. Courtesy National Gallery of Art.
"He savored everything," says Wendy A. Cooper, Winterthur's
senior furniture curator, a longtime friend and "kindred spirit"
who will present the award. "He loved life, beauty, the chase and
the quest."
George Mansbach Kaufman was born May 6, 1932, in Norfolk, the son
of a prominent local attorney who built up one of the area's most
successful practices. The future collector attended private
school near Philadelphia before studying at the University of
Virginia, where he earned a master's degree in business
administration in 1959.
After a brief stint on Wall Street and work at a local bank,
George Kaufman formed a small brokerage firm, Kaufman Brothers
Co., Inc, with his brother, Charles, Jr. Before long, he struck
out on his own, as a developer of apartment buildings in Virginia
and neighboring North Carolina. By 1972, Kaufman had converted an
Atlanta apartment complex into an all-suite hotel, an innovation
that, expanded into the Guest Quarters group, made him wealthy.
In 1958, Kaufman married Linda Hofheimer, a Norfolk native who
had grown up with fine antique furniture and ceramics, acquired
by her parents from New York dealers such as Ginsburg & Levy
and Israel Sack, Inc. The Hofheimers' exquisite collection of
Worcester porcelain, 360 pieces in all, is now installed in two
dedicated galleries at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk.
Visit to I. Sack
Before long, the newlyweds were collecting, too. In an engaging
article published in The Magazine Antiques in 1986,
Kaufman puts the date of his rebirth as a collector to May 1958,
when he wandered into Israel Sack, Inc, to escape the rain.
"By the time the skies had cleared, I owned a flat-topped
Massachusetts high chest of drawers of about 1750, and we were on
our way - although we didn't know it at the time."
George and Linda set about creating a beautiful home. "They made
all their buying decisions together, and they cared about having
the very best," says Cooper. "They lived with things and
appreciated them. Their home was never a museum," recalls New
York dealer Bernard Levy.
Far from New York and its great public collections and galleries,
they educated themselves about antiques by poring over books and
catalogs.
"They understood the importance of a good library," says Cooper,
who believes the couple's own thirst for knowledge had everything
to do with their unstinting support of scholarly publishing
projects in the years to come.
Their support has continued. Most recently, the Kaufmans agreed
to underwrite the cost of publishing the book that will accompany
"An American Vision: Henry du Pont's Winterthur Museum," the show
opening at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., on
May 5, as part of Winterthur's 50th anniversary celebrations.
"Their major activity as collectors began more or less in the
American Wing around 1969 or 1970," says Morrison Heckscher. "I
saw a great deal of them. There was this enormous enthusiasm,
constant trips to New York, all very exciting."
This vigorous phase culminated in 1986, when the Kaufman
collection was unveiled at the National Gallery in Washington,
D.C. At the time, New York dealer Harold Sack, whose firm had
sold 70 of the 101 pieces on view, told the Washington
Post that his clients were among "that small group of
collectors who started in the 1960s in a relatively modest manner
and achieved a great collection." The common denominator of these
collectors, he said, was an "an appreciation of the work of the
craftsman as an artist. They approach the study of furniture as
one of aesthetics, and bring it to the level of fine arts."
Though the couple bought many pieces with impressive pedigrees,
Kaufman was only incidentally interested in provenance.
"It is sufficient for me that an object is American and that I
like its design and the skill with which it was made. In all
candor, I'd rather have an American antique desk that appeals to
me because of its proportions, craftsmanship and overall beauty
than an ugly desk used by George Washington," he wrote.
"Their taste was our taste," Albert Sack recently observed. "The
concept is very clear as I look back on it. My father always
sought out the genius of the American craftsman. Ordinary people
and ordinary antiques were all right, but they didn't interest
him. The common theme of the Kaufman collection was excellence.
The range was great and the results were incredible."
Through the 1970s and into the 1980s, the Kaufmans made one
important acquisition after the next. In 1973, they purchased,
from Israel Sack, Inc, a remarkable Boston gaming table whose
checkerboard top slides open to reveal a backgammon board. In
1974, they formed a partnership with Colonial Williamsburg, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and another private collector to buy a
set of five hairy-paw foot chairs at Sotheby's. And in 1975 they
acquired, from Bernard & S. Dean Levy a Philadelphia
desk-and-bookcase of such virtuosity that even the experts were
for a time mystified by it.
Secretary's Capture
Bernard Levy delights in retelling the story of the secretary's
capture. In 1971, The Magazine Antiques published Robert
C. Smith's article, "Finial Busts on Eighteenth Century
Philadelphia Furniture." Subsequently, the author received a
photograph of such a bust from a California family. He referred
the photograph to Levy, who inquired if there was perhaps more to
see. Indeed there was. Dealer and scholar flew to California,
where they found the bookcase in a hallway of the family home and
the desk in the adjacent living room.
"Years later, the owners got in touch. They wanted to sell, but
only to a museum," Levy remembers. Meanwhile, a museum client was
skeptical that such a high-style item could be American. Levy's
English colleagues, on the other hand, found the work provincial.
After curators got a first-hand look, they concluded that not
only was the desk-and-bookcase American, it was the most
elaborate and ambitious piece to be derived from Thomas
Chippendale's Director, made in Philadelphia between 1755
and 1765. Still, when no institution could come up with the
funds, the Kaufmans quickly seized the opportunity, purchasing
the piece in 1975.
That same year, the Kaufmans bought two rare examples of Boston
japanned furniture, a flattop high chest of drawers attributed to
John Scottow and a dressing table, the only known American
William and Mary example of the form. The circa 1700-1730 pieces
had been acquired by Nathan Liverant & Son of Colchester,
Conn., from descendants of the Cogswell-Dixon family of
Massachusetts.
Zeke Liverant offered them to his friend Albert Sack. Recalled
George Kaufman, "Linda and I immediately flew to New York City.
By the time we arrived, two major Eastern museums were trying to
raise funds to buy them. I asked Harold Sack to give me 24 hours
to make up my mind; we purchased them the following day." Years
afterwards, Israel Sack, Inc, bought the high chest back for more
than $1 million, more than ten times what the collectors had paid
for it, reselling it to the Virginia Museum of Art.
The Kaufmans purchased a Classical lyre-based card table from
Garrison, N.Y., dealer Ronald DeSilva in 1977. The following year
they bought, from Joe Kindig III, a flamboyant Boston Masonic
chair of circa 1765-90 that had been on loan to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. When Berry Tracy, the late curator of the American
Wing, told the Kaufmans that he wanted the chair to stay at the
Met, the Kaufmans "agreed to buy the chair and lend it to the
museum with the understanding that we would someday donate it
outright." The gift was made final just this past year. In 1980,
on a visit to Kindig's York, Penn., shop, the Kaufmans acquired a
Philadelphia card table, the mate to one at Colonial
Williamsburg; a Philadelphia high chest of drawers and matching
dressing table; a hairy paw-foot pole screen; and a Philadelphia
tea table.
In 1980, the Kaufmans met J. Michael Flanigan, now a private
dealer in American furniture in Baltimore, Md. He became the
couple's curator - "chief cook and bottle washer," as he modestly
puts it -in 1984, remaining in the position for three years.
"It was the most incredible experience working for these two
connoisseurs," says Flanigan, whose admiration and affection is
undimmed by the years. "People would ask me, 'What are they
buying?' I would always say, 'the best.' That's a high standard
to maintain. When you get to 150 objects, the 151st has to be as
good as the others, as well as something you don't already have."
National Gallery Debut
"The Kaufmans' commitment to making their collection available
was unique," continues Flanigan, who for much of his time was
engaged in cataloging objects in anticipation of the 1986-87
National Gallery exhibition. He produced a book, American
Furniture from the Kaufman Collection, which includes essays
by Cooper, Heckscher and Gregory R. Weidman.
The show was installed by the late Gill Ravenel and Mark
Leithauser, National Gallery designers who were renowned for "The
Treasure Houses of Britain," a sumptuous loan show of objects
from England's National Trust, mounted in 1985 at the height of
Charles and Diana-inspired Anglophilia in the United States.
Like "Treasure Houses," "American Furniture from the Kaufman
Collection" was, for the National Gallery, a rare foray into the
decorative arts and the museum's first exhibition of furniture
from a single owner. Then director J. Carter Brown argued
persuasively that the Kaufman stash represented "one of the
largest and most refined collections of early American furniture
in private hands."
Writing for the Washington Post, Sarah Booth Conroy
described "American Furniture from the Kaufman Collection," which
opened in October 1986 and continued through April 1987, as a
departure from the "lush period settings" of "Treasure Houses."
The designers, she noted, "rightly have chosen to show the
furniture with dramatic but austere architectural technique: a
few arches, some borders, a bit of molding."
Organized chronologically and geographically into the Colonial,
Federal and Empire periods, dramatically lit furniture was shown
on platforms of staggered height as "domestic-scale sculpture" or
"movable architecture." The point, as the Post's antiques
columnist Heidi Berry observed, was to "show each piece as a work
of art, and, at the same time, evoke a room setting that one can
almost imagine living in." Berry said of the Kaufmans, "The
results of their discerning taste and relentless pursuit of
quality are abundantly clear..."
"We were absolutely astounded by attendance, and we sold so many
books that we had to reprint them," Flanigan recalls. At the
Kaufmans' insistence, copies were mailed to "all the major
institutions that had libraries. We got the most amazing thank
you letters. Again, it was like George to want to make the
collection available in every way."
New Directions
The Kaufmans collected at a slower pace after 1986. Their
stunning home was full to bursting, few gaps in their assemblage
remained to be filled, and prices at auction had escalated
dramatically by the close of the decade, discouraging even the
most aggressive buyers. The couple became more interested in late
Classical design, a taste first stimulated by Berry Tracy and
invigorated by Wendy Cooper, whose landmark show, "Classical
Taste In America," opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1993.
The couple's many purchases included a handsome Baltimore painted
window bench, circa 1820-40, acquired from Milly McGehee and
Stiles Colwill in 1989 and included in Cooper's exhibit. The
Kaufmans also developed a keen eye for Southern furniture,
relying on the advice of the late John Bivins, Jr, a furniture
scholar formerly associated with the Museum of Early Southern
Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, N.C., where the couple had been
actively involved.
"We've sold them several really landmark pieces of American
Neoclassical furniture," acknowledges Stuart Feld, president of
Hirschl & Adler Galleries in New York. "One is a Boston pier
table made for Nathan Appleton. Another is a Quervelle center
table, the mate to one at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Both
pieces have extraordinary specimen marble tops. Years ago we sold
them something that was a modest acquisition, but, in typical
Kaufman fashion, it was the best of the best. The Kaufmans really
had a wonderful sense of scale, design and proportion that led
them to buy beautiful things."
The elegant ensemble was completed with Dutch landscape
paintings, and American and French watercolors.
"Over the years, George also had a keen interest in brass," adds
Cooper. That interest was almost certainly encouraged by their
friend Charles Montgomery, a passionate advocate for base-metals
artifacts of all kinds and Yale University's charismatic
professor of American decorative arts through most of the 1970s.
"George was a founding chairman of the Friends of American Arts
at Yale, a position he held for about five years," Yale curator
David Barquist relates. "He was very much interested in
supporting scholarship, and Yale was a place where that was an
immediate part of what was going on. The Kaufmans were lenders to
exhibitions here, including 'Toward Independence' in 1976 and
'The Work of Many Hands' in 1982. They partially funded
American Tables and Looking Glasses in the Mabel Brady Garvan
and Other Collections at Yale University, which we published
in 1992."
The Kaufmans repeated their patronage at institutions around the
country, awarding grants in support of exhibitions and
publications and arranging loans of objects through the Kaufman
Americana Foundation, established by the couple in 1977.
Their gifts have been especially thoughtful, often answering a
specific need or presented with a particular person in mind.
After Montgomery died in 1978, for instance, the Kaufmans gave
Yale an important American iron and brass candleholder in their
mentor's name. In 2001, for Yale's Tercentennial, they gave the
art gallery a marble-topped New York pier table with gilt mounts
fashioned as Robinson Crusoe and Friday.
At the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, says MESDA vice
president Paula Locklair, the Kaufmans underwrote a year's worth
of research in England for staff member Brad Rauschenberg, who is
completing the major set of books on Charleston furniture that he
began with John Bivins, who had been MESDA's director of
publications. The couple also gave the museum objects, including
a Portsmouth, Va., area side table and a cabinet-on-chest from
Charleston.
Norfolk Treasures
Perhaps no institution has benefited more handsomely than the
Chrysler Museum of Art, where Linda Kaufman has been a trustee
since 1975.
"She has chaired our collections committee, is a founder of our
collectors' group, and has endowed a flower fund to beautify our
building. She is a never-ending source of extraordinarily
creative ideas," says museum director William Hennessey.
Moreover, for the past decade a representative assortment of
American furniture from the Kaufman collection has been on loan
to the museum, whose holdings in that area are otherwise spotty,
leading to unconfirmed speculation that the Chrysler Museum might
one day be the collection's permanent home.
"My favorite object was the great kidney-shaped Philadelphia
satinwood card table," says J. Michael Flanigan, who was
curator of the Kaufman collection from 1984-87. Courtesy
National Gallery of Art.
Meanwhile, much of the couple's legacy has already been bestowed
in the form of books and exhibitions. "George didn't wait until
the next generation," says Flanigan. "He made the funds and his
collection available during his lifetime."
Among other projects, the Kaufmans helped fund "American Rococo,
1750-1775: Elegance in Ornament," co-curated by Morrison
Heckscher and Leslie Greene Bowman for the Metropolitan Museum of
Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1992. The
Kaufmans also underwrote the Met's Eighteenth Century American
furniture catalog, published in 1985, and gave two galleries in
their name.
"I can't think of anyone who was more clearly focused on the need
for scholarship," says Heckscher, recalling that the Kaufmans
even set up a fund at Winterthur to help students buy books.
George Kaufman's life was far from untroubled. His real estate
concerns were especially hard hit in the recession of the early
1990s. The collector rebounded from his financial difficulties
but his health suffered. He underwent a heart transplant in 1995.
Two years later, the couple endowed the Kaufman Center for Heart
Failure at the Cleveland Clinic with a multimillion dollar gift.
It was generous gesture in a life filled with them.
To the end, George Kaufman's enthusiasm for antiques was
boundless. Days before he died, the couple invited friends
touring Norfolk with the Decorative Arts Trust to visit them at
home. Says Flanigan, "George and Linda were devoted to quality,
to scholarship, and to making beautiful objects available to the
public. They deserve this award." Adds Cooper, "Over the past
quarter century I've witnessed the rewards of George's and
Linda's striving for perfection, not just in collecting American
furniture, but in every aspect of their lives."
