You can admire; if you want to buy, you pay our price and you buy. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I think, you know, my life is here in the States, and, you know, Ithe fortunate thing is that I haven't quit my day job, because if I relied uponbecause the gallery is an unevena very uneven cash flow. Shop high-quality unique Clifford Schorer Winslow Homer T-Shirts designed and sold by independent artists. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I enjoyI don't know. And I think that was to my detriment, because certainly their wisdom could've saved me a lot of time. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. The reality was, it was cheap. 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. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So I don't think I could ever give it up. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So there are those who were present that were important to me, and there's one figure who was not present who was very important to me. I mean, I'm still waiting for the great Quentin Matsys show. Right now I'm down to one 40,000-square-foot building. "All in the Gay and Golden Weather", published June 12, 1869. I loved the flea markets in Paris in those days. They were phenomenal art collectors. Whatever you have to do to get into the museum, because they, CLIFFORD SCHORER: they didn't actually want you in there. And my maternal grandmother, Ruth, was still living. Massachusetts native Clifford Schorer said the painting was used as security for a loan he made to Selina Varney (now Rendall) and that he was now entitled to it, the Blake family having failed to make a claim in a US court. JUDITH RICHARDS: But what about the issue of who do they actually belong to, and do they belong to the culture, the local museum? CLIFFORD SCHORER: I had a little bit of disposable income. JUDITH RICHARDS: Because how you define a collection and the price point? CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. And though that might have been too bold for our first step out of the box, because it was so much contemporary and so in-your-face, but we had been doing steps in that direction all the way along. ], And in the Chinese export world, it wasn't quite that. So I was independent; I mean, I was independent from a very young age. Clifford Schorer (1966- ) is an art collector in Boston, Massachusetts and London, England. There are some institutions now that are speaking to me about things that they've borrowed that they really feel have become integral to their hang, and they want to keep them, and so that's a harder conversation, because, A, I may not be at the point where I want to sell the work, or, B, it may not make any sense from a tax standpoint, because I have given quite a bit, so I don't have much deductibility. So we drove down there and, JUDITH RICHARDS: That was your first car? I did put them in boxes and move them to deep storage. And I left and I started the company. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I wouldn'tI would probably never acquire another gallery, because that wouldI mean, I think I would probably be more of a financial investor in other art businesses, potentially service businesses. No, no. And I said, "Well, whatever your normal process is, just do your normal process. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And easy to walk around, and easy to spend three days there, you know. [They laugh.] I can point out that prices at auction are still 40 percent below the price that a well-executed private sale treaty could be done at, if the buyer and the seller are fully informed and have all the information, understand the importance or lack of importance of the work, you know, the things that an auction doesn't allow for. So, you know, when bold ideas come, I'm the kind of, you know, the vetting board for the bold ideas, and I enjoy that. ], JUDITH RICHARDS: Going back to putting your hat on as a collector, what would you sayif this is relevant to youis the most important piece of advice that you received about collecting, and, in the same sense, a piece of advice you would give someone who was starting out? I mean, I would certainly still be able to collect, and probably more successfully, because I would be focused like a laser beam on sort of one thing, you know, one idea. They were able to sell the parts of the collection that were not museum-worthy, but they raised a tremendous amount of money. And if the auction house can earncan tell a client, "Well, we're not going to charge you anything; we'll charge the buyer. Or did you have friends who also had these interests? At the core, CLIFFORD SCHORER: American and European. JUDITH RICHARDS: You can be foolish when you're that age. JUDITH RICHARDS: And did thosewere those thingsdid you consider acquiring those things as well to accompany the painting? Like, you knowand the same thing. JUDITH RICHARDS: It sounds likegone through all the money. So, in other words, you know, the spread between buy-sell was relatively high, because the dealer had found them in a very strategic way, you know, from private collections that they investigated or, you know, things like that. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So, yes. So, you know, those are very exciting moments. So we had a five-yearwe had our five-year sort of anniversary. CLIFFORD SCHORER: we made everything. JUDITH RICHARDS: And you wanted to live in the middle of nowhere? 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. I thought for sure this is someyes, this is some Renaissance, you know, late Renaissance thing, or even early Baroque thing, that, you know, is amazing. And I found it; it was an ambassadorial gift to the Spanish ambassador, and found the exact painting and everything. CLIFFORD SCHORER: TheyI believe one of them asked someone who knew us mutually after I walked away, "Who is that guy? It just wasn'tI mean until 1999when, unfortunately, the auction houses forced me to come out of the closet, thatthat's really the only time, you know, when the Christie's and the Sotheby's, when they became so socially engaged with me, and they were trying to drag me out, you know, that they werethey were seeing a younger person buying things at a sale, and they wanted to know who they are, and what theyyou know, they're doing market research, and in their market research, they want to drag you to a dinner and plop you next to the ambassador and, you know. So rather than go back to schoolI wasn't going back to schoolI went and got a programming job at Lifeline Systems, which was a very short, concentrated project. So they had had merger discussions in the '70s to merge the institutions, and the Higgins finally ran out of runway. JUDITH RICHARDS: And the insurance? Periodically, they'll have them here in New York when theythey'll have a dinner with the Belgian ambassador, and they do this sort of thing. Oh, no. JUDITH RICHARDS: Is that a whole collection or just two? You know, you'd spend two days there every weekend. But, yeah, I mean. So, you know, I think that's why I say it's a hobby you can take to your tomb. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And what they kept domestically and what theywhat the scholars and, you know, the courtiers had domestically was of a different level. So we just talked all night in the lounge at the hotel, the whole night, just, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, about this painting and that painting, where it came from andyou know. CLIFFORD SCHORER: commentarywe had a Reynolds and a Kehinde Wiley together, and we showed that, you know, basically, this portraitureyou know, the portraiture is not only of its time, but it also can be timeless. How can they possibly have a Piero di Cosimo in Worcester? CLIFFORD SCHORER: Meaning, I bought a company. One is an Adoration of the Magi, and one is The Taking of Christ, so I have sort of the beginning of the story and the end of the story [laughs], which I'm very excited about. The things I brought into the passenger cabin. You know. So he says, "You'll be a Corporator." I'm improving the collection. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, I knew Plovdiv has an important role in antiquity, but I didn't know what I was going to see there. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. 750 9th Street, NWVictor Building, Suite 2200 I mean, I'm not writing 400-page tomes on, you know, theyou know, the Old Testament series of Rubens. So those private collectors often didn't have professionalother than dealers and advisers that were outside of their, you know, home, they didn't have in-house curators who made, you know, art historical decisions or collecting decisions. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Based in Boston. You know, I wouldn't stop. They were independent at that point; now they work for Christie's, and then theyactually, recently they've left Christie's; one has left Christie's and the other has as well. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yes. I'd probably be better off. [Laughs.] Matter of fact, for a great deal of time in speaking to all three of them, they didn't know who I was. Not that my collection is that important, but even the idea that I'm sort of peeling off the wheat from the chaff in any way. But I do think it wraps human history in a way that makes it exciting, but it also can still be beautiful in those settings. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And obviously really didn'tonly went back to drawings and prints when, you know, when there was something. That's not going to happen. About. And, you know, obviously, we also value our clients; we work with our clients. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. JUDITH RICHARDS: How did that happen? [Laughs.] JUDITH RICHARDS: and some Flemish Baroque, too. He worked masterfully with both oil paint and watercolors. [00:40:05]. Clifford Schorer. I mean, who am I? CLIFFORD SCHORER: So, I mean, I would say that all of those things would be exciting and fun to do, but unfortunately, I don't have the ability to do them all. I mean, I know that. [00:25:59]. Rockox. CLIFFORD SCHORER: It is difficult for, you know, someone who's used to running a 20,000-employee, for-profit operation to come into a 160-employee museum and understand how this expenditure furthers the mission, rather than, you know, a profit model or efficiency model. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So, I have had some issues because, obviously, living in Boston, New England, you have the humidity problems, and I had a lot of paintings on panel. I mean, as a matter of fact, CLIFFORD SCHORER: There was a day when I all of sudden said, you know, I can collect paintings. I enjoy exhibitions at the Frick and at the Met. I hadyeah. 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 mean, I remember I got it back to Boston, and it was hangingit's hanging in the photos. The discovery hinges on the unlikely meeting of two men: Clifford Schorer, an entrepreneur and art dealer who specializes in recovering the lost works of Old Masters, and Brainerd Phillipson, a. [Laughs.] CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, no, no.