The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection Sept. 2014 | Page 15

Writing about private collections is the toughest assign-

some stage to another part of the puzzle and, finally, attach

ment a critic can receive. Why? Because the act of build-

itself to the whole. When those pieces began to interlock,

ing a collection is an intensely personal activity. It is not

three or four at a time, the Hootkins became more aware

governed by the laws of scholarship or the expectations of

of a particular growing thread and then consciously (but

the professional curator

not self-consciously)

and so cannot, in all

added more pieces

fairness, be critiqued

to that cluster.

on the same basis as

How do I know this?

a museum collection

I was there. I have the

(although writers

unusual advantage—

persistently make the

and disadvantage—of

mistake of doing this

knowing the Hootkins

in collection reviews).

early in their collecting
life when my partner

The assembly of
works shown in The

The Hootkins' Tribeca loft is filled with their art collection.

Human Condition:
The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection of
Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture is a snapshot in the
ceramic movement from the mid-eighties: its ambitions,
its boundary-breaking desires, and specific aesthetic
journeys within that movement are captured with
hot passion, insight, intuition, and aesthetic rigor.

Mark Del Vecchio
and I were running

the Garth Clark Gallery in New York and Los Angeles.
We did not light the fuse. Don Thomas and his pioneering
Convergence Gallery in Soho provided that spark. Though
his gallery closed in the 1980s, Thomas and his partner
Jorge Cao remained close to the Hootkins. Knowing
their sensibilities, Cao, with his vibrant postmodern

The collection has an impressive cohesion (despite

flair, created the interiors to house, light, display, and

an initial appearance of freewheeling eclecticism) not

celebrate their art in two homes, first the apartment on

because Stephen and Pam Hootkin followed a formula,

the Upper East Side and then their current loft in Tribeca.

but because there was an underlying, if loose, schematic
that was felt more than known and which guided them.

We arrived in New York shortly afterwards with the ambition
of overturning New York’s staid views about ceramics. From

A jigsaw puzzle is an excellent metaphor for the Hootkins'

this shared mission, a friendship developed with Pam and

model of collecting. Stephen and Pam would pick a piece

Stephen. This was not the relationship that dealers usually

and place it on the table, confident it would connect at

have with collectors: politely cautious and resting on

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