Olga Hirshhorn: Curator Knows Artistic Value Is More Than Price
By MAX HART
The woman with an eye for Rodins, Picassos, de Koonings and
O'Keeffes also, as it turns out, likes Zitos.
"Oh, that is very nice," she says, surveying a weathered
oil painting of surf crashing into cliffs. It is out of a stack of
framed paintings piled on a workbench in the Thrift Shop on Lagoon Pond
Road in Vineyard Haven. Speckled with dots of what looks like dried
ketchup, it has a slightly greasy sheen, as though it hung over the
stove in a cramped kitchen. Despite the imperfections, its admirer is
impressed.
"Look at this, who painted this?" she asks, before
finding the name in the lower right corner. The signature simply reads
Zito.
"Zito?" she says with a smile, drawing a blank.
"Isn't this a charming painting?"
The casual art collector would agree. But this diminutive lady
rustling through the dusty work in her yellow and white dress with
matching sandals is no casual collector. Zito has momentarily captivated
Olga Hirshhorn, the grand dame of art collecting and namesake of one the
most renowned art galleries in the world.
"I love going through these, because you never know what you
will find," Mrs. Hirshhorn says with a laugh and added emphasis on
"what." "You dig around and find all these little
goodies."
SRC="http://www.mvgazette.com/news/2006/08/11/content/olga_hirshhorn_porch_sm.jpg" It is Wednesday morning, and Mrs. Hirshhorn is busy preparing to
again host this year's Chicken Alley Art and Collectibles sale at
the Thrift Shop on Sunday from 3 to 6 p.m. Now in its fifth year, the
Chicken Alley art show is undoubtedly the most unusual art opening on
the Vineyard during the summer, displaying paintings, jewelry and
artifacts that have been donated to the shop over the last year. Instead
of showing off works of artists with names like Ellis, Bramhall, Whiting
or Murphy, the Chicken Alley sale shows off - well, less
recognizable names.
"Nobody knows what you will find," Mrs. Hirshhorn says.
"That is what is so fun about it."
This coming from a woman who has devoted her life to the
appreciation and preservation of art. Mrs. Hirshhorn is the widow of
Joseph H. Hirshhorn, a businessman whose exquisite and extensive art
collection was the inspiration for the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn
Museum in Washington, D.C. Avid collectors of modern and contemporary
art throughout the 1950s, the Hirshhorns' collection included some
of the most famous artists of the 20th century, including Picasso, whom
the couple knew and socialized with. The collection is widely considered
one of the most important in the world.
On Sunday, the only Picasso for sale will be a framed $20 print
someone donated to the store, which is exactly the point.
"It's a fun thing, and the reason I did it was because I
wanted people to know what a truly wonderful place this is, and how they
can find really neat things here," she says of the thrift store.
"You can really furnish your home with stuff from this place, and
we don't price these to be beyond the pocketbooks of the people of
the Island."
And that means deals are to be had. She recalls several rare
Salvador Dali prints and a signed David Hockney print that have come
through in years past, along with a wide variety of original paintings
from lesser known but talented artists. Sometimes, Island artists will
donate an original work to the show.
For Mrs. Hirshhorn, though, the real fun is in the treasures that
are to be found.
"There are old oars, pulleys, fishing poles and plenty of
kitchen objects," she says. "There is even a harpoon! And
you can present them all as art objects. That's what's so
wonderful about the thrift store. You can make art."
She also recalls an ice cutter someone bought several years ago
- as a piece of art.
The origins of the Chicken Alley Art and Collectibles sale date to
five years ago, when she came up with the idea while dropping off a load
of clothes at the thrift store, an annual rite of spring.
"When I arrive from Washington for the summer, it takes me a
week to get settled," says Mrs. Hirshhorn, who lives in her
Franklin street home through the summer. "And I always go down to
the thrift store with a bag of stuff and, of course, I always come back
with a bag of stuff. But that year I found this oil painting of a
seascape that I paid $15 for and, oh, did I love it. So I went to Dolly
[Campbell, one of the store's managers] and said, ‘Why
don't we have a spoof of an art opening on a Sunday
afternoon?' Well, we only had a month and a half to prepare for
it, but we still made $3,000."
The two-hour event was so successful, she said, people immediately
began asking about next year, and soon the store was collecting art from
every direction. To keep up, managers stored the pieces - which
ranged from paintings to sculptures to antique plastic masks of
Christmas angels - wherever they could. Some stayed in the
store's back room, while other pieces moved off-site to barns and
storage facilities.
"We started something we now can't stop," store
manager Sandy Pratt says on Wednesday morning, surrounded by a sea of
canvas and framing. "This is not even half of it."
Mrs. Hirshhorn's enthusiasm for the event is a reflection of
her zest for life. Time and age certainly have not slowed her down; at
86 she exhibits the same spunk that compelled her to learn - at
age 64 - to ski. She loves to fish and still collects art from all
over the world.
Mrs. Hirshhorn first came to the Vineyard in 1988 when she rented a
cottage off Lambert's Cove for the summer, and she knew
immediately that she wanted to come back.
"I told the realtor I was working with that I didn't
want to drive down some long, fashionable Island dirt road," she
says with a laugh. "I said I wanted to be in Vineyard Haven within
walking distance of the town. Well, this was available and it was
perfect."
The house needed work, and she ultimately bought the old falling
down barn next door to be converted into a guest house.
These days, both houses are home to her ever growing and impressive
collection of art, from Cuban and Haitian paintings to sculptures of all
shapes and sizes.
"But some of my favorite things at my home I bought
here," she says, her eyes lighting up. As proof, she lists the old
sled, oxen yoke and plow that sit in her yard. An antique pair of
clip-on ice skates and roller skates are attached to her wall as well.
"All these treasures, they are all around us," she adds
with a laugh. "That's what makes the Vineyard so
wonderful."
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