The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection Sept. 2014 | Page 52

SH: Whenever we acquired a new piece, we would

spend a lot of time thinking about where we were going
to put it. Introduction of a new piece could disturb the
relationships between the existing pieces that we had set
up previously. Oftentimes, with a new piece we would
spend hours or days trying to find the proper place for it—
one that wouldn’t change the feeling of everything—just
to make sure it fit in perfectly with the rest of the whole.
Even one little thing could disturb the vision so we had to
get it right. I think about that frequently, how we wanted
to make sure everything just fit together in our vision.
Sun Koo Yuh, Let Me See, 2006.

for twenty years and then you see something new in it.
That’s what makes a collection so fruitful and exciting;
for us looking at art is always new and refreshing.

RP: Do you ever disagree about potential acquisitions

and if so, how do you resolve the difference of opinion?
PH: Across all the years that we’ve been collecting, I

can remember only one circumstance when we didn’t
RP: Do you occasionally move your pieces around

immediately agree on a piece. It was at a show of

in the apartment?

Christina Bertoni’s work at the Victoria Munroe Gallery.

PH: It’s more rare as time goes on. As we acquired

SH: Which is very unusual when we have over three

works sometimes it caused us to need to move some

hundred pieces. In thirty years, our tastes were so

things around. We have moved some of the vessel

compatible that we could walk into a gallery, each

forms that we collected earlier in our career, and

walk off in a different direction and then, at the

which aren’t as much our focus now, to storage.

end, we would both home in on the exact same

We also have a number of pieces in the warehouse

piece. I have no idea why that happened, how it

for which we just don’t have the space in our living

happened. We come from different backgrounds,

quarters. However, we have never made it a habit

but our gut feelings just meshed perfectly.

to move pieces in and out of the loft, nor have
we ever sold a piece. We just kept accumulating

RP: Did both of you have an interest in the arts

and finding room for work as we acquired it.

before getting married or is it something that
became your thing as a couple?

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