The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection Sept. 2014 | Page 51

In one sense the collection can be said to represent what was
happening in the ceramic arts during the... years that we were
avidly collecting, but more importantly for us, it is about what
was happening in our lives and what our values were.

the traditional museum pedestal and wall-mounting

SH: The Vogels had one of the greatest collections of

approach. We, of course, were thrilled that the show

minimalist art. They donated it to the National Gallery in

was modeled conceptually on our home environment.

Washington D.C. Subsequently, a part of the collection

PH: The density just comes from wanting to be with

the pieces we love. If we are away for a couple of
weeks, when we come back it’s like being greeted
with the greatest welcome by just opening the door
and seeing the work. The other great aspect of being
surrounded by art, as Stephen says, is looking and
seeing the pieces in a new way, not only the individual
pieces but also how they interact with each other.
Sometimes I know I take the art’s presence for granted
and other times you have wonderful eureka moments
even if you’ve lived with a piece for ten years.

was distributed to museums throughout America
through a program called The Dorothy and Herbert
Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States. They are
world famous for their collecting and their generosity.
Through them we met many important contemporary
artists such as Sol LeWitt, Richard Tuttle, and Christo
and Jean-Claude. Herb and Dorothy were always lovely
to Pam and me and we continue to have a wonderful
relationship with Dorothy even though Herb is no
longer here. For quite a number of years Herb and I
used to talk almost daily for an hour about art. As Pam
said, he would call me the day after a visit and say,

We met the collectors Herb and Dorothy Vogel through

“Let’s talk about this piece.” I always said to people he

Michael Lucero and his wife Cheryl Laemmle. We became

was twenty-five years ahead of everybody else. He was

close to them. We would visit them at their apartment

like Superman because he could see through things—

uptown or they would come to the loft and we would

he could see the future direction of art. When they

s it around and talk about art. Dorothy is more outgoing.

started collecting minimalist art no one even knew about

She’s the one who could mingle in a crowd and Herb

it. He brought a different perspective to our collection;

was always very serious and very focused and had the

he encouraged us to look at our collection in different

most brilliant mind about art. He knew Lucero’s work

ways. He pointed out visual qualities in individual works

and some other ceramic work, but they didn’t necessarily

that we had not noticed before and made us think

collect a lot of what we collected. But Herb would sit
in a chair and look around the loft and later he would
engage Stephen on the phone about what he saw in
the individual pieces or in the seeming relationships
between them. Having this much artwork has provided
us the opportunity for conversations with some very
fascinating and learned people like Herb and Dorothy.

more deeply about how the pieces interacted with one
another in our space. Inspired by Herb, sometimes I
would even lie on the floor—we would joke about this
sometimes—to get an entirely different perspective on a
piece, one from which I had never looked at the piece
before. I would talk to Pam about it and then we would
talk to Herb about it. You could be living with a piece

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