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| First Person: Money & Meaning |
American Legacy
James and Frances McGlothlin
01/01/2006
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Each of
our kids has his or her own lifestyle. Taking care of and maintaining a
collection such as the one we have and will continue to build upon is a huge
responsibility. Our kids like art, but they move more toward modern art; they
are a younger generation. In a way, it would be unfair to leave the collection
to our kids. If it did the same thing for them that it does for us, that would
be another thing. This is really just our passion. Since we made the gift, it
has made us feel so great, because we have gotten so much wonderful feedback
from people we don’t know but who have been to see the work and know about the
gift.
 | | TWO MAGNOLIAS and a Bud on Teal Velvet, circa 1885–95, by Martin Johnson Heade,
was originally discovered in Wisconsin for $20. It is now valued at more
than $1 million. (© 2005 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.) |
Price and Value
We competed against the auction houses to purchase the
Fraad collection. We would have sold much of it, of course. There were maybe
10 paintings that we would have kept. We met the heirs. It was funny to learn,
for example, that on Saturdays, for entertainment, they would go around to art
galleries. Afterward, the two of them would have lunch and decide what they were
going to buy. That is sort of what we do. It just seemed very touching. But the
heirs were completely focused on what they could get for it. We don’t want to be
negative toward the heirs; they just did not have the passion. So for them, it
was an inheritance question.
There are many collectors around today whom we
admire. To begin with, there is Dick Manoogian, based in Detroit, who has a
wonderful collection that’s always changing. He does the same kinds of things we
do—buys and sells. Alice Walton, who recently purchased Kindred Spirits [Asher
B. Durand’s Hudson River School landscape], is said to have a wonderful
collection, as do our good friends Ted and Barbara Alfond in Massachusetts.
Almost everybody in this group is a businessperson; there is just something
about that competitive spirit that has to come through in the bidding and
acquiring.
 | | MADAME ERRAZURIZ was painted by John Singer Sargent, circa 1883–84. Both are
from Capturing Beauty: American Impressionist and Realist Paintings from the
McGlothlin Collection. (Photograph by Katherine Wetzel.) |
Hamilton Smiles
Art can be a phenomenal investment. One of the pieces
in our collection, Two Magnolias and a Bud on Teal Velvet by Martin Johnson
Heade, was first found at a Wisconsin tag sale for $20, and it is now worth
millions. That’s very atypical, but if you’re buying A or A+ paintings, the
appreciation is going to be better than the stock market. If you’re buying
below-A paintings, you had better get a deal because you can’t sell those as
readily. They are not hard currency like the A+ paintings are. With an A+
painting, you can just walk out the door and say you want to sell it, and in a
week or two someone will probably buy it.
We’ve sold about half of what we
have bought, and we’ve never taken a loss on a painting. What we have
principally sold are the first paintings we bought. We are now onto the second
trunk, and we think we’ll do much better now that we know what we are doing. In
the last eight years, the value at auction of A+ paintings has multiplied by
between five and eight times.
We have many pieces of art now that aren’t
hanging; they are in the inventory for sale. That’s part of it: knowing that we
made good selections. Now we are moving on to a collection that we hope is
better and more diversified, and we hope that people appreciate what we’ve
bought in the past.
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