Speaker 1 (00:00):
Coming up on Art Palace, 

Speaker 2 (00:03):
How do you guess it? How do you guess it? And how can you possibly say what you're going to collect is going to fit some kind of popular image 10, 20 years from now? 

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host, Russell iig. Here at the Art Palace, we meet cool people and then talk to them about art. Today's cool people are collectors, Wess Coen, Theodore Ganz, and Todd Swarmed. The following was recorded live as a part of our in conversation series on May 18th, 2017. I apologize that the sound quality is not quite up to our usual quality because it was recorded live, but honestly, I sound the worst and I barely speak. 

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Well, welcome everyone. My name is Russell eig. I am the assistant Director of interpretive programming here at the Cincinnati Art Museum. And welcome to In Conversation, the Art of Collecting. My guests tonight are Wess Coen, Theodore Gantz, and Todd Swarmed. Wes Coen is the Principal auctioneer and executive chairman of Cowans Auctions of Cincinnati As the largest fine arts auction house in Ohio, Cowans has been recognized by the influential, oh, now I'm not going to say that, 

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Right. Blue and Art info, 

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Thank you. As one of the top 250 auction houses in the world from their Cincinnati base. Cowans holds more than 40 auctions annually, featuring fine art and antiques and collectibles. Wes holds a PhD in anthropology and oversees a staff of 40 with offices in Cincinnati, Cleveland and Denver. Theodore Ganz is a sculptor who has worked as a commission artist in Cincinnati since the 1960s. He has been collecting art antiquities and books since college. He attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati in the 1960s and was introduced to collecting by the museum curators who also taught art history. In the 1970s, he obtained a master's in art history with a specialty in the decorative arts. And today his home is furnished with antiques and sculptures with a focus on the sculpture, Hiram Powers and his contemporaries. Todd Swarmed is the founder of the American Sign Museum and currently serves as its executive director. 

Speaker 3 (02:35):
Before that, he was the vice president slash new product development for St. Media Group International, recognized as the premier educator authority and voice for the visual communications markets. He served as publisher of the company's six trade publications and book division from 1992 to 1999, and was editor of the company's flagship publication. Signs of the magazine was the editor of the First Issue of the Monthly Signs of the Time Magazine from May, 1906. So welcome everybody. So this is going to be very casual, obviously, and so feel free to just if you get ideas, take you places. But I thought we would just start by going down the line and hearing a little bit about what you collect specifically and how that started. So you want to start? 

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Sure. I started collecting when I was in school, and slowly I spent a great deal of time in Italy, and so I started buying particularly there and furniture things that interested me. I had a very limited budget, and over the years as I acquired household furnishings, mostly antique 19th century Empire Meyer, that style, I became more and more focused on an interest in sculpture, which I am a working sculptor. I work as a commission artist. And so I slowly started buying sculpture, became more and more aware. But I've also been very interested in doing fundamental research on everything that I've found. So as an art historian, I enjoy ferreting out things that really aren't identified. I don't go to dealers and taught acquirer at the top of the market. I'm interested in finding the things. And over the last 30 years, American sculpture has not been until maybe 10 years ago there was more interest in collecting it. There was a lot of material just floating around through secondhand sources, and you could pick up very interesting things, often unknown. And it was interesting for me to do to sort of figure out where it came from, what its history was often bought, things that I didn't know who the artist was, and was able to sort of track down who those individuals were and build a fundamental folio on each item in terms of what it is. 

Speaker 3 (05:25):
And Wess, do you want to give us a 

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Rundown? Well, I've always been a collector. 

Speaker 4 (05:32):
I guess I'm genetically 

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Predisposed 

Speaker 4 (05:35):
To be a collector. My grandfather lived in Manhattan, owned a advertising agency or public relations agency in Manhattan. And he apparently went to Park BNE every week 

Speaker 2 (05:49):
And was 

Speaker 4 (05:49):
Buying constantly. I never knew him that well, but apparently whatever he had genetically, I got part of I from a very young age was collecting fossils or natural history specimens or arrowheads. And as a child growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, that was my first passion discovering prehistoric artifacts. And that led me to going to antique shops all up and down Bardstown Road in Louisville where I lived. And I would ride my bike and was asking these antique dealers for prehistoric artifacts if they had any. And I would buy them when I could because they were not very expensive. And I used my allowance money to do it. And then I started buying Bavarian hand-painted China when I was a kid. Don't ask me why. It was like the craziest thing. And all the antique dealers saw this kid coming, and so they would give me special deals. 

Speaker 4 (07:03):
By the time I got to college, I really was, I was more focused on academia and really stopped collecting antiques, although I still had some. But by the time I graduated with my BA and ma and I was working on my dissertation at the University of Michigan, and I tell this story over and over again, like many people who are writing their dissertations, I was looking for an excuse not to write my dissertation. And I started going to antique shops in southeastern Michigan, and I discovered 19th century photography at the time in the late seventies, antique dealers had no idea what this stuff was, and you could go in and there'd be a basket of old photographs in their shop. And so I was buying these incredibly great, or at least I thought windows into American history, these vernacular photographs for relatively small amounts of money, a dollar, $5. And one day I had been in a shop and there was a guy or a couple guys in there sort of watching me go through a bin of photographs and I paid for my purchase and walked out, and they followed me out. And one of the guys said, I saw the photograph that you bought, would you sell it to me for $50? And I said, sure, here it is. I'd paid like a dollar for it. So I said, this is terrific. 

Speaker 4 (08:38):
And that led me to really start focusing on 19th century photography. And by the time I started teaching at Ohio State in Columbus, I had a pretty nice little sideline selling 19th and early 20th century photography. I was very quickly drawn from the antique shops. I started going to shows where dealers were setting up and specialized in 19th century photography and got a pretty serious Jones for collecting 19th century three D stereo view cards. And I collected those pretty hard for about 15 years. And then realized that as my auction business grew, I started seeing more and more great three dimensional objects that I became pretty attracted to. And the stereo view hobby went by the wayside because I realized that these were just in a drawer all the time. And I 

Speaker 5 (09:44):
Never really, 

Speaker 4 (09:46):
I'd open a drawer up every few weeks and take 'em out and put 'em in a viewer and look at 'em, but they weren't things 

Speaker 5 (09:52):
That I was living with. 

Speaker 4 (09:53):
And so the stereo view hobby collecting went by the wayside about, I don't know, about 15 years ago. And my wife and I began collecting 19th century and early 20th century folk art with a, we're trying to focus on Ohio and the Midwest, and that's what we still collect today. So the stereo use we're sold two years ago, and the Bavarian China was sold many, many, many years ago. So I'm just left with folk art now. 

Speaker 5 (10:35):
Okay. And Todd? Yeah, I'm with Wess. I think that there's a psychology to collectors. I think whatever it is that makes you a collector is could be a subject of study, of 

Speaker 4 (10:52):
Research. 

Speaker 5 (10:53):
We need to dissect your brain. Yes. For better or worse, I don't know what it is, but when you were asking the question, I was trying to think back. I collected pop bottles back in the day for the 2 cents that they were worth. But a friend and I would go out on our bikes with backpacks and collect these pop bottles, and you couldn't cash them in at a pony keg for money, but you could give 'em to your mom who took 'em to Kroger's and they would give 'em 2 cents. So we took all that money and we would save the money and we would buy postage stamps for our postage stamp collections. So we turned one collection, one habit into another habit. It was a collection. And we did the usual, I mean, I collected coins a little bit, but mostly stamps and trying to trace my collections as Wes was doing, how you move and you get tired of that and you move on to something else. 

Speaker 5 (11:55):
I went and went to school, liberal arts school and took a lot of history. Ended up at the family business, which was trade magazines and the flagship magazine being assigned magazine worked there probably a little more than a quarter century, remember 25, 28 years. And there wasn't a sign museum anywhere. And I'd spent a lot of time in sign shops. I had an appreciation of the craft of making signs, whether it was neon or hand painted or gold leaf or whatever. And I had this history, Ben, I had taken a lot of history and I got the idea one night to start a sign museum. There were some things going on at the family business as there are in family businesses. And I was looking for other avenues. And I called up some mentors of mine, some in sign history, some knot. One in particular was Steve Eisner, very famous architect out of Ventura. 

Speaker 5 (12:59):
Scott Brown wrote a very famous book, learning from Las Vegas, called him up and got some other guys involved. And they said, sounds like a great idea. Why don't you start it? And so I did, went to my family, they provided some seed money to get started, and I guess 18 years later we have a museum. And we wasn't, my collection turned into a museum would be a logical conclusion, but they are all my babies. I collected them. I feel like I own 'em. I don't, we're a 5 0 1 c three and people come and think. They don't always understand 5 0 1 c threes that I don't own these, but I think it was meant to be for me because I was that collector and I had an interest in history and there was this void or a niche that was untapped and just kind of went for it. And I still enjoyed doing it. And 

Speaker 4 (14:04):
So did you know once you started accumulating these signs and restoring them and looking at, then, did your heart start to go to pitter-patter when you saw a new sign or somebody sent you a picture and you said, oh man, I got to have that. We got to get that for the museum? 

Speaker 5 (14:25):
Well, I didn't really know what I was doing starting a museum, quite honestly. The way I learned is I just jumped in and started doing it basically. And then I went to the a m Annual Conference, American Association Museums, and tried to learn. I knew I needed a database or something to manage the collection. I didn't know it was called collection management. I called it cataloging, same thing. And was looking for software, do that. And there is that sense, which all three of us probably have of finding that piece. Mine happens to be sometimes pretty large and heavy and sometimes, sometimes not. But I don't know what that thrill is. That's a part of that psychology I was talking about of the collector. I don't know what it is, but I know when people have it, three of us. It's just something that, 

Speaker 4 (15:21):
Well, I think that if you talk to, and maybe you'd agree, but you love to research things and I do too, but many collectors, it's the thrill of a hunt 

Speaker 5 (15:34):
And 

Speaker 4 (15:34):
Acquiring the thing that they get the biggest charge from. And I see this of course in my business, in the auction business, it's you get this and you bring it home and you put it on a shelf or you hang it up or whatever, and then it's onto the 

Speaker 5 (15:51):
Next thing. 

Speaker 4 (15:52):
And that's sort of 

Speaker 5 (15:53):
The classic definition of the crazed collector. But I find that having the object is one thing, but I think all three of us are saying the story behind that object, the personal story for us in science, it's the family business that's been around for generations in some little town in New York. And the business is gone pushed out by franchises, but the history of the family business can remain through that sign. That becomes an icon for that family's history. But it's always interesting to, it's just an object without the history behind it. And I find when people come to the museum, they pick up on that too. They want to hear the story. So it's not just us collectors, 

Speaker 5 (16:43):
It translates to the general public that may or may not be that collector type. I'm kind wondering, if you didn't have that sort of family background with the magazine in that particular subject matter, do you think you would've stumbled into that or would it be something else? Would you have started some other museum? Do you think those are interesting questions, but does it matter? I really believe that it was the path that was meant to be. There was this, there was no sign museum and all this history was going away, and then I just happened to be in that position that could pull it off. So I'm lucky. We're all lucky that we have a pursuit like this that talks about history and we will, we'll go on for centuries. 

Speaker 4 (17:38):
Well, Ted, I would assume that you probably see this as much as anyone, and this is what you alluded to with these signs, that the stories behind the signs In my business, I see so many objects that they all have stories, but they're all gone. They're all lost. They're really orphans. They're material orphans in terms of their historical stories that they could tell. And it's pretty tragic. And I see this accelerating now. And surely 

Speaker 2 (18:19):
A number of the things, a lot of the sculpture 

Speaker 4 (18:21):
That you've seen is just sort of lost. And 

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Indeed, and in some cases I'm able to construct a history. But one of the particular pieces that, two pieces that I have that are Hyrum Powers was a sculptor that came out of Cincinnati in the 1820s, went to Italy and in the 1840s did a piece of sculpture called the Greek Slave, which made him an 1850, the most famous sculptor in the world, in the world. He comes from Cincinnati. He was always interesting to me. And he settled in Florence, Italy where he died in the 1870s. And I have spent a great deal of my life in Florence. And one day I was in the flea market and there was a booth that was locked, but in the window were these two busts, which were bodily painted to look like decorative marble. But I looked at them and I said, I know what this is. 

Speaker 2 (19:29):
And in the house in Florence, I had Hyrum Powers catalog resume with all the photographs of everything, went back, went home that evening back to, and looked in the book, and there it was was Annie Sentin Taft. It was the plaster working model for the marble piece that set the Taft Museum. And so you can imagine I spent the evening worrying when the shop was going to open and I would be able to afford it and all of those sorts of things. What did the dealer know? I mean, it's a flea market. Went back the next day and still wasn't open. I inquired a few of the people next to him and oh, he's over in some block or two away went over, oh yes, they're for sale. They were five or $600 a piece. I bought them, brought them back. The plaster is now in the plaster is at the Taft Museum. 

Speaker 2 (20:27):
They have the only museum that has the original plaster and the original marble of Ahy room powers. But what was interesting was then trying to put together why it was there. And then you spend years sort of studying to figure out what happened to his estate. Part of it we about, but there were parts of it they can account for maybe half of the estate. The rest of it sort of disappeared and various stories. So that becomes interesting. I also own pym Power's first piece of sculpture that everyone thought was in the collection of the Miami University Art Museum at Oxford, Ohio. And it appeared in an auction about 10 years ago. A piece appeared in an auction 10 years ago, small auction house in the south of Manhattan in significant auction house. And I looked at it and I kept thinking, it shouldn't be what it is, but it's this piece of sculpture that's at Miami University Museum that wasn't good enough to put in the Hyrum Power Show because the curators thought there was something wrong with it. 

Speaker 2 (21:44):
And so I bought it. Nobody bid against me. And then the curator, Julie Aronson from the museum, we took the piece up to Miami, put the two together and compared them. And obviously the one I had bought was the original. And through a series of researches, we discovered that the family who owned it, that this was a portrait of the first president of Miami University, that the board had come to Cincinnati in 1830, commissioned the piece of sculpture. It had been in the university up until the 1870s when the university closed for several years because of financial difficulties. The family took it to their possession, made a copy, put the copy in the university library, kept the original in their home. There was a photograph of it taken in the hallway of their house just about the time of the First World War. You could date it by what was there. And the difference was that the base that the piece of sculpture sat on this sole, the piece that was at the university wasn't right. And it was never right. That's why it didn't end up in the museum show. The one that I had was the right sole period wise end of sole that appeared in the photograph. So you do all this kind of work and you've tried to figure this out. And that's, for me, that's the fun part as much as finding it. Absolutely. Yeah. 

Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah. When you were telling that story, I sort of started to think about the way your personal connections with the strange happenstance of the locations maybe made it feel more exciting to you as well, that you felt a personal connection with hiring powers because you're both from Cincinnati and this connection. Do you think that plays into it and the pieces have a sort of personal resonance with you? 

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Well, 

Speaker 4 (23:47):
Yes. 

Speaker 2 (23:48):
The Hyron powers has been of interest because I've lectured on the subject and I've spent a lot of time working with him. But there was a whole school of artists around him that also came through Cincinnati. Many of them also went to Florence. So there's been a group that I've pursued. 

Speaker 3 (24:04):
I was just kind of interested in those reasons why you get into those particular veins. 

Speaker 2 (24:13):
It's a curious thing because when I was a student at the art academy in the sixties, I actually wrote a paper on Pel long before I ever went because the Historical Society had the original letters. And when I was doing a paper, I went over and I researched this. And so I don't know if it's serendipitous or what it is that sort of leads you through these various steps. 

Speaker 4 (24:38):
Well, a few years ago, and I come to a lot of what I do because in my past career as a museum curator and an archeologist, I did a lot of research. And so it comes very naturally to me, and it's fun to do this research, I'm sure when you're researching the family businesses, are you researching this artist? And how did this piece end up where a couple years ago, I got a call from a professor over at Miami University who was a direct descendant of Merriweather Lewis, of Lewis and Clark. And I said, well, it's great to talk to a direct Senate. Why are you calling me? And he said, well, our family owns Merriweather Lewis's Pipe Tomahawk that was exhibited for the sesquicentennial exhibition of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. And that's the only time that it ever left the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers in Tuka Alabama. Tuka Alabama. He said, yes, long story. But the real story was that his maiden aunt had died, the family's maiden aunt had died, and it was the end of the land. And they had this amazing artifact that the family decided for various reasons, you can't break it up, you can't cut it up into three pieces. They decided that they wanted to sell it. So they approached me to sell the tomahawk, and that launched me on the most amazing 

Speaker 3 (26:24):
Expedition 

Speaker 4 (26:25):
Of my own, trying to find out who made it, did he likely carry it on the expedition up the Missouri River and back, and how did it end up in the family? And it was sort of a similar story of the plaster busts of the sentence that ended up in some 

Speaker 5 (26:47):
Flea market 

Speaker 4 (26:47):
Booth in Florence. And it was, to me, we ended up selling it privately for a lot of money. But to me, the journey of trying to find out 

Speaker 5 (27:03):
How did it get to Alabama? 

Speaker 4 (27:06):
Did he probably carry this thing up the Missouri River? How do I find out who made it? That to me was almost as exciting as selling it or maybe more exciting than selling it. 

Speaker 3 (27:22):
Todd, when you were talking a little bit about the unique challenges of your collection, I was just thinking about that of any odd stories or anything that comes from just the sheer size of some of the things you collect and sort of the lengths you've had to go to get some of these things to your museum. 

Speaker 5 (27:43):
Well, I would say our largest item is a McDonald's sign from 1963, Huntsville, Alabama. It weighs almost two tons. It's just short of, it's 3,900 pounds. 

Speaker 5 (28:00):
So yeah, we deal with some pretty big stuff. And I guess I have to tell the story. At first, I was hesitant to even haul a trailer and I bought a little 10 foot trailer, and that was, I should have bought a 16 foot one as soon as I mastered backing up that trailer that I took on a 16 foot trailer. But for signs like that, it was my contacts in the sign industry because I'd worked on the magazine, I knew sign companies all over the country. If they didn't know me specifically, then they certainly knew the magazine. That was my leverage, my foot in the door. So I have access to crane trucks, which are the big trucks, to pick up the signs all across the country. I can make a phone call. And again, I leveraged the heck out of that to so I could acquire some of these big items. That particular McDonald's, I don't know if it's a fun story or not, it was fun to me. 

Speaker 5 (29:00):
The sign was an icon in Huntsville, Alabama. The guy wanted to expand his restaurant. He was landlocked. The only thing to do was to move the sign forward toward the street. The town fathers wouldn't allow that. Once you move a sign, it's now subject to current sign code. So it was too large for any sign code that existed, but they wouldn't, so they wouldn't allow a variance. So I tried to buy the sign and the guy said, well, I'm going to try to save it and put it in a park. About a year and a half later, I get this call from the guy, the same guy on a Friday, about four o'clock. He goes, are you still interested in that sign? I said, oh, yes. He said, same price. I go, yeah, we were buying it for, I think it was $12,000, something like that, maybe 10. But he said, okay, well, I want to sell it. He said, well, good. He said, the only trick is you have to get it down by Tuesday. 

Speaker 5 (29:56):
And I said, I mean, four days from now. So it's four o'clock on a Friday, and by the time our conversation's over, it's four 30. So I call a major sign company I know in the southeast, and he answers the phone, said, I'd be happy to help you, but you got to wait a couple months. My trucks are doing a bank change over. They're changing the signs all across the southeast. He goes, that's not going to work. And I'm just frantically calling people. So it's now like six o'clock on a Friday, and I'm leaving messages, obviously no one's answering the phone. So I'm like, I don't know. What am I going to do? So I get a call about six 15 from this guy, and he says, oh yeah, I know the sign. I put it up and I said, well, can you get it down? And he said, sure. And I said, but I need it down by Tuesday. He changed everything around so he could get that signed down on Tuesday. And there was a crowd. The news were there because this was an icon in that town. It had been there 50 years, and there was a crowd out there, and it was quite an event to get this signed down. But that's one of those stories where it was meant to be because I was like, it's not going to happen. 

Speaker 4 (31:24):
Do you find that, for want of a better word, I don't know what you call 'em, sign guys, sign people that are in the sand business, get it what you're doing and appreciate what you're doing? Or do they just say it's just 

Speaker 5 (31:46):
One of the things that happened has happened? I guess with Antique Roadshow and American Pickers, there is certainly an interest in old signs. What I could have got for free in the seventies, I now have to pay for. And whereas the value on fine art, we were talking a little bit earlier about how that's dropping. The value of signs is going up, and it has been for three to five years. And I think it's a pop culture thing. And I've been asked why, and I can talk around it, I can't pinpoint it, but certainly the media, antique Roadshow and those kind of shows have every, it is an approachable art. We call it commercial art. There's fine art and there's commercial art, but the old line sign companies, the sign companies that started up after the war, those guys are gone. And the people that are entering the sign industry now are coming from other industries, and they don't have that emotional attachment to the sign 

Speaker 4 (32:55):
Industry. 

Speaker 5 (32:56):
So we are, we're not abandoning the sign industry as far as support, financial and in kind, but it's not our main source of donations of financial support and in kind support because things have changed. The sign industry has changed. So the old school, yes, the new school, no. 

Speaker 4 (33:23):
Yeah. 

Speaker 5 (33:24):
Long answer to your question, but 

Speaker 3 (33:27):
Yeah, when you were talking about the way signs are increasing in value, I even immediately thought, I wonder if just the popularity of a TV show like Mad Men or something 

Speaker 5 (33:37):
Would 

Speaker 3 (33:38):
Contribute to that popular sort of interest in advertisements. 

Speaker 5 (33:43):
I think it's a lot of things. I think it's a reaction to this present attitude of planned obsolescence of consumer products. People want things right now. I think it's a natal thing. It's a walk down memory lane. It's an appreciation of craftsmanship. Wes' interest in folk art, for example. I think his appreciation of that is the same thing when the world that we're in now is a computer image that's here and gone. It's not really real. It's just an image. These are three dimensional things that you can touch and feel in your sculpture too. It's something you can touch and feel. It's real. It's a reaction to what else is going on in the world, our cyber world, however you want to pinpoint that. And it's also a time when there was an appreciation of craftsmanship, but now that's, there's a whole movement now I hear this thing, this movement of makers, I didn't hear that term a year ago now, maybe I'm out of touch, but people that fabric, I call 'em fabricators, but it's called makers now. There's this new interest in makers and maker labs because people are actually producing something that you can touch, feel graphed, and as opposed to images that are, again in cyberspace. I think there's a lot of things. There's a lot of things that you can point to. Again, I can talk around it. I can't pinpoint it. 

Speaker 4 (35:19):
Well, it's interesting that you mentioned that the signs from your perspective, they're increasing in value when a lot of the advertising that was made for the inside of the building as either countertop display or a wall display, that material had a huge runup in price, like most collectibles in the antiques in the eighties and nineties. And now that material is softened up again, but except at the very top. So a great 10 lithograph sign that would've hung on the wall or a paper standup advertising countertop sign that would've sold for $5,000 10 years ago, which would've been sort of in the middle of the market now sells for 2000. But the $20,000 sign, and the one that comes to mind is there was a marvelous pressed steel sign made by the Campbell's Tomato Soup Company, and this was a sign that was pressed steel in the shape of an American flag, and it incorporated just cans of tomato soup. And that sign, which was always sort of the icon to 

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Collect 

Speaker 4 (36:54):
For an advertising sign, now that's a 40,000 or $50,000 sign versus a 20,000 sign. So to hear you say that this is one thing that's increasing in value is very interesting. 

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah. I think as a type of collection, like signs or whatever it is, ashtrays with graphics on 'em, whatever, as people start collecting that and it becomes a pop kind of pop thing, the best pieces, they always will go up in value, always rise to the top. That's what we were talking about earlier. The best pieces are always going to be the best, and the other stuff is going to drop. And anybody can collect that at $20 a piece. I would suggest that anybody who collects, who thinks they're investing is out of their minds and collect what you like, collect what you like and what you want to live with. But if you think you're buying something that you, in 30, 10 years, 30 years, I mean the history of collecting, whether it's the pre 1930s passion for portraiture, which was rabidly collected by many important collectors. And when in 1930s the bottom fell out of that market, it has never recovered. I 

Speaker 4 (38:25):
Mean, people spent 

Speaker 2 (38:26):
Lots of money for gainesboro and things of that sort. They've never regained where they were. I mean, you can follow somebody like Booga who was the most highly paid living artist of his day, and by 1960s you could give them away. Now there may be that painting you would've bought in the 1960s for five or 600, maybe a thousand dollars is probably worth a million. But how do you guess it? How do you guess it and how can you possibly say what you're going to collect is going to fit some kind of popular image 10, 20 years from now? 

Speaker 4 (39:07):
That's a great point. And the idea that it is possible to buy and make money in 

Speaker 2 (39:18):
This 

Speaker 4 (39:18):
Business if you collect, but you have to collect at the very, 

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Very top. 

Speaker 4 (39:25):
Because I think that when you collect at the very top, the chances are much better that if you're spending a million dollars for a bore for a great bore, that in 10 years that bore is going to be worth $1.3 million. But most of us who are collectors can't collect like that. 

Speaker 2 (39:50):
We don't have the money 

Speaker 4 (39:51):
To do it. 

Speaker 2 (39:52):
That's very true. 

Speaker 4 (39:53):
And I find in my business today particularly because in my mind, the collecting in America is by and large a post-World War II phenomenon. I think that it began with the greatest generation and then was accelerated by the baby boomers. Well, the greatest generation, they're almost gone. And now the baby boomers who really were driving the collecting, and it's across every collecting market. The baby boomers are retiring and downsizing, and they're coughing up all this stuff that 

Speaker 2 (40:39):
They collected 

Speaker 4 (40:40):
Throughout the seventies, eighties, and particularly in the nineties when they really started driving prices up. I find, and my staff finds that we spend more time managing people's expectations about what their stuff is worth than I ever possibly thought that we could. What do you mean? I paid $20,000 for this Queen Anne? Hi, boy. And you're telling me that it's worth 3000. Yeah, it's what it's worth today. People don't want it. 

Speaker 2 (41:15):
But at the other side of it is I don't feel, particularly in the household furniture, I've bought things that I enjoy being around. I don't see much of it in the market that I feel like I could go out and replace it. I mean, I see it 

Speaker 5 (41:32):
Sporadically in the market, but I don't have the feeling that I see it with the quantity that I did in the seventies or eighties or 

Speaker 4 (41:41):
Nineties. 

Speaker 5 (41:43):
I think you have two things going on. If we're going back to the psychology of collecting and whatever that is that drives people to collect and investing in collecting are two completely separate things. They're not even tied together. I mean, one's emotional and one's rational. And whenever you try to explain an emotional thing with a rational reason or vice versa, it's not going to happen. So I mean, I think that's what's going on. So again, like you said, collect what you like. 

Speaker 4 (42:17):
Well, I think that there are plenty of irrational collectors with a lot of money, and 

Speaker 5 (42:24):
That's a lot of ego stuff. 

Speaker 4 (42:25):
They become, and they become very passionate about what they collect, and they're able to afford to collect just about anything. And those are the handful of people who are breathing the ether at or breathing the oxygen at the very top who really drive the market and really make the headlines when their objects sell in New York or in Cincinnati for a lot of money. But those people are just as passionate about what they collect. They just have deeper pockets. 

Speaker 5 (43:09):
Well, what's the connection on the ego and collecting? I paid my little realm of pop art, what commercial art I hear, yeah, I paid this amount for that. And they're bragging that they're paying this amount for that. 

Speaker 4 (43:25):
I think, listen, I agree, and I think that you've probably seen plenty of these people too, that at least in my mind, there's a range of variability along the line of people that buy things and acquire things from people who I refer to as accumulators who really have no sense of what they're doing. They're just buying willy-nilly to people who are very focused collectors who have the one trait that the accumulator doesn't. And that's discipline to say, here's a great deal, but I don't collect that. I collect maps of the Mississippi West that were made between 1820 and 1840, 

Speaker 5 (44:15):
And I don't 

Speaker 4 (44:15):
Collect anything else. But within that narrow range, I'm going to buy the best and 

Speaker 5 (44:20):
Everything 

Speaker 4 (44:20):
That I can find to people who have a lot of money at the opposite extreme who view these objects as great trophies. And then at that same end, there are people who have a lot of money, who in particular, I see this in, I think in the contemporary art market, people who are buying this stuff because they have a lot of money and they think that it's going to be a good investment. So they're rolling the dice and they've got the money to roll, but there are plenty of people that have to have something because it's a trophy. 

Speaker 2 (45:01):
I think that's a perfect, that's what I was talking about. And 

Speaker 4 (45:03):
They have no soul. They have, I 

Speaker 2 (45:04):
Wasn't able to come up with that word, but that's exactly what that is. It's a trophy and it got this price tag. 

Speaker 4 (45:10):
Yeah, 

Speaker 2 (45:12):
I mean, a good friend of mine, Charles 

Speaker 4 (45:14):
Flashman 

Speaker 2 (45:15):
And his collections mostly came to the art museum. And his philosophy of collecting was that he lived a wealthy man, lived in a house with beautiful furniture paintings and things like that. He collected portrait miniatures, and that was his collection. The other stuff were simply furnishings. Some of it was very good. But that portrait miniature collection, which is here in this art museum, was carefully curated by him. It was bought, it was vetted by, he wouldn't admit it, but he had an enormously great eye. One of the, he knew the field probably better than most of the experts, but he relied on experts also. And they would go through and he would sell by and sell because he would trade it up to get to the level that he wanted. And the reason that he bought portrait miniatures, he told me was because when he started collecting, he could afford them. If he wanted to buy old masters, he couldn't have afforded it, but this was something that he could collect, that he could have enjoy, and he could get the best of what was there. 

Speaker 4 (46:24):
And Skip was very, very focused. 

Speaker 2 (46:29):
Absolutely. And 

Speaker 4 (46:29):
Had great discipline. 

Speaker 2 (46:30):
Absolutely. 

Speaker 6 (46:32):
Well, we do 

Speaker 7 (46:34):
Have some time 

Speaker 2 (46:34):
For questions from the audience. 

Speaker 6 (46:41):
So you mentioned collect what you love as kind of a rule to follow. Are there any other rules or recommendations that you would make for people who aspire to become a collector? 

Speaker 4 (46:58):
Well, the other half of that used to be collect what you love and collect what the best that you can afford. And I suppose that that rule still holds. One of the things we haven't talked about is the time that we live in now. There are more choices for people to buy things now at great prices. And so the adage of buy what you can afford is sort of, it's a moving target now and it's not going up. Great things can be purchased for really modest sums now relative to where they were 10 years ago. But I think that the other thing that I would advise any collector is before you jump into any collecting area, find out as much as you can about what you're buying, what you're interested in, visit museums, talk to people, go to shows where they're knowledgeable dealers that can serve as a mentor to you and find out all you can about what you really like. Then write your check. 

Speaker 8 (48:25):
Do each of you have a piece that got away that you just are like, I would've loved to have had that. 

Speaker 5 (48:34):
I was at a flea market antique show in Indianapolis, and plastic signs are not particularly collectible. People want neon and porcelain enamel neon. And I saw this plastic sign, and it was late forties in really good shape, hard to find. And I saw, I said, oh, there's not going to be anyone that's going to want that sign. I'll come back. And I came back 10 minutes later and it was gone. So I have this, I learned the hard way, which is the only way I learn. I'm not sure about anybody else, but if you see something and that's what you want, then don't then seal the deal right now. I learned that. I've actually found that sign again, but only one side of the silence in good condition. And I went ahead and bought it hoping to find the other side of the sign sometime. So I think you were talking about lessons learned. I've learned lessons on the hard way, and that was one I learned. 

Speaker 8 (49:37):
Hopefully it doesn't 

Speaker 5 (49:38):
Seize the moment, I guess. 

Speaker 8 (49:41):
Hopefully it doesn't still haunt you too much. 

Speaker 5 (49:43):
I remembered it. I still remember it. Yeah, you recalled that very quickly. 

Speaker 4 (49:50):
Over the years, I've had many heart breaks, and there's not one in particular that I can point to that I just say, it just breaks my heart that I didn't get that thing. But let's face it, I'm in a business where I see thousands, we sell 15,000 things on an annual basis. So I see lots of great things, and I can't have 'em all and came to, I came to recognize that very quickly. But to your point, years ago when I started collecting, this would've been in the late seventies when I was just becoming enamored of these magical stereo view cards. I can remember, and this was at a time when a hundred dollars was a lot of money to buy one stereo view card. And I remember talking to a dealer who's a very advanced dealer and a great, great guy and a great connoisseur of these things. I said, God, this is a hundred dollars. I don't have a hundred dollars. He said, buy it. You will never regret it. You will never see it again. So buy it. And that's great advice. If you like it, buy it. Because if it rings your bell, you may not ever see it again. 

Speaker 4 (51:19):
Well, there's always the issue though, of not being able to afford it. I can remember back as a student, maybe in the late sixties, there was main auction, had a big Frankenstein painting, Frankenstein, I'm not sure which of the brothers. Yes, one of the brothers. And it was a painting that was about eight feet wide, six or seven feet high portrait of a family. And I don't know why, what have I ever done with it? But in any case, I sold for under $200 and I didn't really have $200 to spend. Alice Phyllis Weston bought it hung in her front hall for years and years and years. 

Speaker 5 (52:12):
Wow. Only to bug you, right? Yeah. 

Speaker 4 (52:17):
Taunting taunting me. 

Speaker 9 (52:21):
Well, if that's it. Thank you so much, gentlemen. I thought this was, oh, we have one more question. Great. So I guess this is mainly for Wes, but in the auction business, do you frequently see items that are just, your estimates are way off, either too high or too low? I asked that question because Skinner had a musical instruments auction this past weekend. And there was one, most of the instruments and other things sold for prices that were reasonably comparable to their estimates. But there was one half size violin that they estimated at 30 to $50, it sold for $23,000. And one bow, they estimated for a hundred dollars, it sold for 12,000. So is that, how frequently does that type of thing? 

Speaker 4 (53:15):
Well, it's funny that you ask that because I, over the years, have really tried to put my arms around the presale auction estimate. And it's always a trick because the estimates are based in large part upon prior sales. Okay? Skinner sold this very similar thing for $1,500. They'd estimated it a thousand to $2,000 came right in the middle. So we should estimate that a thousand to $2,000. And lo and behold, the day of the sales sales for 800. So there's that. You try to do some research to come up with a presale estimate. For some things, it's very difficult. The more unique it becomes. It's just sort of, okay, what are we going to, let's just pull it right out of the air. But over the years, and I found this consistently across categories, that if you try to play the game of estimating based upon research, you'll find that about a third of the things sell for below, below your low estimate about a third of the things sell within the estimate. 

Speaker 4 (54:43):
And about a third of the things sell above the high estimate. So the great luxury that, and it's the auctioneer sort of great dream, is to have a collection where the owner says, I just want it to sell. I don't care what it sells for. And you can put any sort of estimate on it that you want. And in the past few years, we have sold some great local collections of Americana that were in the States. And I knew that that thing was going to sell for a thousand dollars, and I estimated a hundred to $200, and it sold for $1,100. But that doesn't happen very often. Most people who have property want you to give them an idea of what it's going to sell for, and it's pretty remarkable. It's about a third under, a third in the middle, a third above when you start to try to do that. 

Speaker 3 (55:48):
Well, thank you so much, gentlemen, for chatting with us tonight. I thought this was really interesting. Thank you. 

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We hope you'll come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and have conversations about the art yourself. General admission to the museum is always free, and we also offer free parking special exhibitions on view right now are William KenRidge More sweetly Play the Dance Tiffany Glass painting with color and light, the poetry of place, William Cliff, Linda Connor, and Michael Kenna. A program that might interest you is a Skype session with Ralph Steadman on Sunday, June 11th at 12:00 PM which is presented by artworks. This is a free public Skype session with world renowned illustrator, Ralph Steadman, who will be tuning in from his studio in England. You might know Ralph Steadman from his famous illustrations for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This event is free and reservations are not required. For program reservations and more information, visit cincinnati art museum.org. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even Snapchat. Our theme song is a Fron Mu by Balal. And as always, be sure to rate and review us on iTunes. 

Speaker 10 (57:02):
Are you sure? 

Speaker 1 (57:03):
I'm Russell Iig, and this has been Art Palace produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.