JUDITH RICHARDS: the visual experience is the key. My partner and I were going through Plovdiv, and I went to what used to be the Communist Workers' Party headquarters in town, which is now kind of a little makeshift museum. [00:58:00]. World War II. They have these kindthey have everything from 19th-century styles to very Modernist styles, and it'sit gives us a chance to say, you know, here's a modern interior, with a beautiful thing. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So, saw them, bought them; in one case, I'll give credit to someone else because it's his discovery of the lot, but I would see them and buy them and then, you know, we would basically spend time working on them. JUDITH RICHARDS: Do you have conservation issues? Clifford Schorer, a Boston-based collector, forgot to bring a present for the party he was attending, so he stopped by a bookstore that sold collectables on . And thatyou know, in those cases, I think only if it rises to the level of a conflict of interest that violates the oath. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I had made a resume. JUDITH RICHARDS: Okay, justI suddenly wasn't hearing the mic. You know, it was wonderful. JUDITH RICHARDS: She lives in Italy though? I mean, my favorite type of symposia end with, you know, almost fisticuffs between scholars about attribution. Now that decorators are not putting bad Old Masters in the living rooms of every nouveau riche house, that's not floating anymore. JUDITH RICHARDS: more or less, the interest in earlier painting has declined somewhat, but perhaps not in specifically where you're looking. Everyone's retiring. The book isso, Hugh Brigstocke and his new. But that wasn't what brought me to it. Then we did the Lotte Laserstein, the Weimar German show, where we borrowed from the German state institutions for the first time ever, as I understand it, as a private gallery, borrowed from museums, Berlin specifically. Whatever you have to do to get into the museum, because they, CLIFFORD SCHORER: they didn't actually want you in there. It's what leads to bankruptcies in galleries, is buying too much stock and not selling it fast enough. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. And also, there were many dealers where I could suss out instantly that they knew absolutely nothing, and they were talking nonsense, and that drove me mad, so I would literally just turn around on my heel and walk out the booth. So, I mean, you know, I learned to read a tiny bit. A little house in Levittown that was literally bursting with stamps. Clifford lived on month day 1984, at address, North Carolina. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, learning about the Lombard artists, all the Lombard artists, and sort of looking at them and deciding which ones I thought had merit. JUDITH RICHARDS: Probably there's a few things that happened before that, we haven't touched on. [00:38:00]. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I have a lust for all the things the objects do in my brain. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. Of the blue-and-white, and the highly decorated, sort of the Qing period stuff, that's all gone. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And I bought a lot of blue-and-white from Kangxi and Qianlong because that, again, was what was plentiful in the New England homes. I was, JUDITH RICHARDS: Yeah. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I'm relying on smart people to tell me about things and, you know, say, Oh, this is interesting, or, This is not. And I hadn't ever sold anything, so there was no selling going on. You're living in Boston. [Affirmative.] JUDITH RICHARDS: yeah, but it's so different to really try to do it yourself, JUDITH RICHARDS: read about it in a book. Just to pick up a little bit from where we left off yesterday, this is still before Agnew's enters the picturein the earlyinaroundso you're collecting Italian Baroque, as you described it yesterday. I've got some Islamic examples. JUDITH RICHARDS: You just didn't want to think about selling? And Iand Iyou know, obviously, there's a lot more material. And not being so much in business? CLIFFORD SCHORER: by someone who possessed it. CLIFFORD SCHORER: But, you know, I guess with minor things, you know, with less important artwork, it is what it is. So, yeah, I mean, there are some instances, but those kinds of thingsso we're doing that, and obviously, we're open and exploring ideas of what the next show will be. CLIFFORD SCHORER: it all goes back to the, you know, I remember these places. JUDITH RICHARDS: Yeah. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, the stated goal has always been to die with one painting, the best painting I've ever owned. I met a few collectors that I still know. I'm always the general on my projects. Clear the way for the new. More from This Artist Similar Designs. And you know, for me, when I go back and look at them later, I can laugh at myself, you know. JUDITH RICHARDS: Oh. CLIFFORD SCHORER: It's been a very long-term loan. But this is correct. I don't know how many there were that were unsorted. JUDITH RICHARDS: So as you got to 2000, 2001, how did your interestyou said you became involved with the Worcester Museum. There was a logic for the family dissolving the enterprise which was hard to overcome with the attraction of a sale. JUDITH RICHARDS: Did youdid you make all those design decisions yourself? We can cover a lot of auctions in a night. But in those days, you hadyou know, you had little accounting houses in Salem, Massachusetts, running thatyou know, running that enterprise. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Now, the difference is if the artist is alive, and the dealer is alive, and you've got, you know, sort of some other motivations. JUDITH RICHARDS: Does it say "Anonymous Donor" at the museum? And you wouldn't have enduring liabilities for all the things that you've sold in the past because the company would cease to exist. So, it was very, you knowit was the right [laughs]it was the right zeitgeist. And I finally saidI said, "Look, how much is it going to cost me, and can I take you to lunch, or, you know, what is it going to take me to get in there?" Menu. Do you have a year that you, CLIFFORD SCHORER: I kind of had a hard stop at 1650 in Rome, but in Naples, I took it right to 1680. JUDITH RICHARDS: ancestry. He's not a regular "player" in the region, but what Cliff Schorer has accomplished as board president at the Worcester Art Museum over the last two years has helped revive attendance . So I got the job and I went to work there. JUDITH RICHARDS: Thinking of boyhood passions, you talked about war, and did you ever want to collect armor? In Chinese export, the beauty of it, to me, was there were interesting subjects in the paintings. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So that was fine. JUDITH RICHARDS: Has your role evolved during that period of time? Again, an opportunity. But really, this house sort of speaks for itself as a kind of singular work of art, as Gropius so often said. But, I mean, I can tell, you know, when yet another picture arises from a certain quarter, what we're dealing with. Yeah, to me, and I was excited, so excited. CLIFFORD SCHORER: have to reach out to the field, right. Then you have the everything else, and the everything else is becoming a really sad mess, and it's because Grandma's dying, and Mom and Dad are dying, and the 50-something and youngerthey want nothing to dothey want, you know, clean lines, Mid-Century Modernism [laughs]; they want Abstract Expressionism. And that's the way that relationship went for years and years and years, and then, all of a sudden, I popped up sort of with them as a dealer. JUDITH RICHARDS: Mm-hmm. Art collector Cliff Schorer recently located a missing painting by Dutch master Hendrick Avercamp after finding an image of it online on an $18 throw pillow. I'm certain it was with Mildred, because she was very involved in all of those things. The mark is often apocryphal. It was justit was this hoarding, boxing, newspapering, closing the box, knowing what's in the box, and moving it over, and getting another box. So what's happened, I've seen, is there's been a decoupling ofthe top one percent of the market has soared. JUDITH RICHARDS: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. JUDITH RICHARDS: So while thesewe're talking about these early collecting experiences. I said, "One of the greatest bronzes on the planet is in Plovdiv in the Communist Workers' Party headquarters in a plastic box." JUDITH RICHARDS: You mean it's unusual for galleries in London to borrow from museums? And there's no further I can go. Do you have all your collections in a database, or what kind of inventory do you keep? Like a Boule chandelier. You know, all of those things, and then you just let go, and it's, you knowit is aI think my psychology is well suited for that in a sense, because I don't have this great lust for the object; I have the lust for the moments that, you know, that sort of [00:36:00]. Born in 1836, Winslow Homer is regarded by many as one of the greatest American painters of the 19th century. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Oh, I thought it was great, yes. And Anna especially, too, on the aesthetic, of creating a new aesthetic that people do not any longer associate with the old aesthetic. So, do something to tie it into the Old Masters, either LorraineClaude Lorraineor Poussin orand Cezanne. I liked dark colors. And I know them, and I know the pictures, and I won't say more than that. It's the Dutch, rather than the Japanese. Thereas I mentioned, I had been chasing in 2000 this Procaccini, this major Procaccini altarpiece, which I was not able to buy, and it was theit was with Hall & Knight, and it was at TEFAF, and it was one of those TEFAFs that you go home utterly devastated. So that is something I did with them. JUDITH RICHARDS: You were traveling a lot in the '80s. I'm just finding those morsels left on the trail and trying to follow them, and then that'sto me, yes, that's exciting. Yeah, well, this was an early, early. Did that kind ofdid you ever look back for your family there? Clifford Schorer is the Co-Founder & Director at Greenwich Energy Solutions. Other kinds of pitfalls that you might, CLIFFORD SCHORER: All of the above. So I think that, you know, we're in athat's in a different world, but I see that. And I think, giventhe market history had sullied the picture. But I think that I'm not willing to roll that roulette wheel. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, that's changed. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I mean, I bought aand that's when I started buying paintings. And I saw Daniele Crespi as an artist who is equally competent but died so young that he never really established his name. Winslow Homer was an American painter whose works in the domain of realism, especially those on the sea, are considered some of the most influential paintings of the late 19th century. I think I've alwaysyou know, coming from stamps, where it's engraved image, going to Chinese porcelain, where I'm focused on the allegorical story or the painting on the plate, you know, the progression isobviously, I took a little detour in perfection of, sort of the monochrome and celadons of the Ding ware of the Song dynasty. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So, to me, that was that was very exciting. JUDITH RICHARDS: Did youwere you maintaining a kind of a wish list, so when you came into thiswhen you had the money, you knew you had your goals? JUDITH RICHARDS: Mm-hmm. So because I happened to be going to all of these events, I would see the object. [00:16:00]. JUDITH RICHARDS: So you had developed an interest in architecture? Absolutely. Or. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I've always enjoyed symposia, you know, of one type or another. It's the same problem. And so he gave me this Hefty bag and he told me to sort it. October 16, 2020; Beef And Broccoli. You know, someI mean, certainly, the newer collectors who are in the Dutch and Flemish world, I think they're less scholar-collectors. His oil paintings were immensely expressive. Had you started going to museums there? JUDITH RICHARDS: You were spending more and more time involved with art as a business and as a passion. And so, those are wonderful. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, not gone through it; distributed it to the shareholders. We're not going to determine [laughs]you know, we're not going to insert that Magnasco into the artist's oeuvre or get it out there for the public and change the perception of that artist. TV Shows. You know, I wouldn't stop. I think there are two different pieces of advice, of course. No, no, no. Yeah, which I will acquire, just because it's related to the painting. [Laughs.] You can spend as much money as you want; if you open a door, you're going to change the humidity. So what I'm trying to do is take a very hands-off approach to the sort ofany cash flow that goes into the business is reinvested in the business, which helps us to be able to buy better stock and do different things, and that might give us a slight edge over some other galleries where their owners need to provide their lifestyle from the income. In every house, there are 15 of them. My maternal grandfather was dead by the time I was born. [Laughs.]. I mean, you know, obviously, I love the writing style of Simon Schama. [00:56:00], CLIFFORD SCHORER: I do like art storage and handling. JUDITH RICHARDS: Right. I'm done. I mean, I was programming cash registers at that point, so it was very interesting. I think the problem was it was the overlap between business and art that made it difficult for them to manage the institution. So I joined that, which was a lot of fun. JUDITH RICHARDS: So I'm thinking of 20th century. JUDITH RICHARDS: Yeah. You know, you're always in conflict. And as I said, I mean, that was ait was a wise decision to buy Chinese. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And that was talking to art historians, which is something. And just, you know, wander around and pull books. About. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Islip, I think. The neighborhoods that I knew. [Laughs.] So I went to TEFAF; Hall & Knight hadthis must have been 2000had a phenomenal booth. So it's, to me, those moments. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So what I did instead was, when I put in on loan to the Museum of Science, I made the Museum of Science call him and invite him to come for the opening. JUDITH RICHARDS: So this was the mid-'80s? CLIFFORD SCHORER: And everywhere I went, I met people. Traditional age to start college? You know, we had a bit of a detour into history because we did the Pre-Raphaelite show, which was a big undertaking for us, you know, kind of a year of the Pre-Raphaelites. JUDITH RICHARDS: Do youwhatat Agnew'sso, in thisspecifically in this period of your life, what do you think are the greatest challenges you are grappling with as a businessman-slash-collector art expert? I lived in Massapequa, Long Island, for probably an extended period; I would say from about age seven until aboutactually, from about age eight until about 13. JUDITH RICHARDS: So it sounds like it was a very smooth transition from being a businessman and a collector to getting involved in the business of art through these interactions, these. I thought it really worked well. JUDITH RICHARDS: spent five dollars and you get a thousand stamps? I said, you know, "Oh, come on, I'm not going to risk sending a 16th-century painting for you to do that." And, you know, for example, Anthony decided he wanted to do a Lotte Laserstein show. Their sketches, woodcuts, and paintings showed both the . Or was it a matter of opportunity, that you would look at what was out there and decide what you wanted and give. [00:06:02]. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Maybe, maybe, I don't know. And I remember finding that hysterical, that they would water this mud horse every day with a spray gun. JUDITH RICHARDS: [Laughs.] JUDITH RICHARDS: So you talked about what's important and what was significant art historically. [00:02:00]. But for those moments of flourishing, when they were a key point, you know, look what they produced. I mean, this year, there might be two and next year there might be none. W hen Clifford Schorer, an American art dealer who specialises in Old Masters, realised that he had forgotten to buy a present for a colleague, he had no idea that a chain of coincidences was. We had a cocktail party last night at someone's house; it was all the board members. I mean, duringI mean, later on, during the Sarajevo conflict, I got on a plane. They may not be moneymakers. JUDITH RICHARDS: How did that happen? You know, we saywe say that probably a little tongue in cheek because we know, of course, they would've loved to sell them as archaic objects, even when they weren't. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I liked Boston, I felt that it, CLIFFORD SCHORER: it's a good city. So I had actuallyI was doing something which, in hindsight, was very foolish. You know, it's extremely interesting. ONE SIZE ONE SIZE 16.0cm10.8cm5.3cm ! . He worked masterfully with both oil paint and watercolors. List of all 147 artworks by Winslow Homer. And so, you know, obviously this is a man with probably a military education in Germany. [Laughs.] But the turnaround comes: the Procaccini was owned by [Piero] Corsini. They were contemporary dealers. It didn't matter to me at all. Without having someone who could actually be front and center, running the business, I would not have purchased the company. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah, we have to pick our battles carefully. And, JUDITH RICHARDS: You didn't feel encumbered? CLIFFORD SCHORER: Professor [Ernest] Wiggins. shelved 1,082 times Showing 30 distinct works. I mean, in a way, there isthere is still this desire to be involved in the business, to be building things, to be working on projects. JUDITH RICHARDS: Were you doing all this traveling on your own? Plot #10205011. I went from, you know, the Gustave Moreau museum to theor well, pre-d'Orsay, right? So in this case, we were able to do something which German museumsGerman state museums with historical arthave traditionally said no to. So I went along with it because, you know, I thought, Okay, I'll get some [00:01:59]. Winslow Homer. JUDITH RICHARDS: You mentioneddid you grow uphow long did you live in the city where you were born? CLIFFORD SCHORER: And obviously really didn'tonly went back to drawings and prints when, you know, when there was something. 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