The Moment blog has a wonderful interview with
Dorothy Vogel. On the odd chance that you don’t know who the Vogels are, they built an extraordinary collection of minimalist and conceptual art while working as a librarian and postman. One way that did that was by developing relationships directly with artists. Let’s let Dorothy explain:

(She explains after the jump.)

Rumor has it the gallerist Leo Castelli sold you a lot of your work.
We bought our Donald Judd from him. He was a wonderful man and very supportive. We did not buy a lot through him though because he always gave us artists’s phone numbers and told us to call them directly.

Did any artist refuse to sell you work? Did you feud with dealers because of your aggressive collecting style?

Generally people wanted to come into our collection, so it was the other way around unfortunately. We never had problems with dealers. I know John Weber said that in the film but in many cases, we started buying before they had representation. John always knew which of his artists we were directly buying from and we never told other people to go to the artist directly. We always told them to go to the dealer. [ . . . ]

Do you believe in selling art?

I think it’s a personal decision. We never did but I don’t disapprove of it. When you buy a work it’s yours and you have the right to sell it or give it to whomever you want. An artist loses that right when they sell the work.

Meet the Vogels (The Moment)