Learning from Hunk: One Museum Leader’s Debt to a Collector

Since we opened the can of worms on collectors (below), let’s look at the rarely mentioned flip-side where collectors mentor the museums. Here, in Art & Auction’s excellent piece on Harry and Mary Margaret Anderson’s collecting, we hear from SFMoMA’s Neal Benezra who learned a lot from Harry:

From early on, they have regularly opened both their house and the office to groups and students. In 1975 they initiated an intern program, giving Stanford Ph.D. candidates the opportunity to work with the collection, which continues today. More than 30 graduate students have participated, including Neal Benezra, now director at SFMOMA, who was one of the first interns to work with the couple in their home. “I don’t think mentor is too strong a word,” the director says of his relationship with Hunk. Unlike many students pursuing doctoral degrees, Benezra was not pulled toward a career in academia. “The opportunity to work with such important collectors gave me direct exposure to works of art and, ultimately, museums,” he says. “It’s a different kind of art history. Working with Hunk every day, I learned about the real world of art.”

Collector Profile: Harry and Mary Margaret Anderson  (BLOUIN ARTINFO)