Hidden Gems from the Housatonic Museum of Art

Hidden Gems from the Housatonic Museum of Art

Essay by Sarah Churchill, Adjunct Instructor of Art History, CT State Community College, and Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye, Director of the Housatonic Museum of Art

Curated by Charlotte Lefland, Collections Manager of the Housatonic Museum of Art, and Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye, Director of the Housatonic Museum of Art

Front Cover:

Benny Andrews, American (1930 - 2006)

Bea, 1969

Oil and collage on canvas

Gift of Black Students Committed to Action

1975.16.01

A World-Class Collection in a Community College

Visitors to the Housatonic Museum of Art (HMA) often marvel at this unexpectedly remarkable collection of art housed within a community college in Bridgeport, Connecticut. They exclaim that the museum is a “hidden gem” that more people should know about. These visitor reactions inspi red this exhibition, which showcases the museum’s strengths in modern and contemporary U.S. and European art. And yet the question remains – why is this impressive collection located in a community college in the largest and most underserved city in Connecticut? Who started this collection and what is its history? While many people played a critical role in shaping the Housatonic Museum of Art, this essay focuses on arguably the most important person – the founding director, Burt Chernow (1933–1997).

Artist, Educator, and Visionary: Burt Chernow

Born in New York City in 1933, Burt Chernow is described by his widow, the artist Ann Chernow (b. 1936), as having been raised in a “household unrelated to art” but who nonetheless developed impressive interest and talent.1 At nineteen, he entered the United States Army where he served as an artist and illustrator until 1955. He graduated from New York University (NYU) in 1958 with a Bachelor of Science in Art Education, followed by a Master of Arts in Higher Art Education in 1960, completing a sixth year of graduate work under his mentor, friend and benefactor, Dr. Howard Conant (1924–2011). Conant served as Chairman of the Department of Art Education at NYU and was instrumental in starting its campus art collection in 1958.

Upon graduation, Chernow taught at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City under the influential museum educator and NYU professor, Victor D’Amico (1904–1987). He later moved to the wealthy suburbs of Westport, CT, teaching at the

Stamford Museum, the Silvermine Art School, and the Greens Farms School in the Westport Public School District. In 1964, Chernow honed his skills as a collector through the founding of his first public collection for the latter.2 In 1967, he began teaching at Housatonic Community-Technical College, as it was then known, accepting an official faculty appointment in 1968 and a department chairmanship in 1971. Chernow got in at the ground floor of the emerging Connecticut community college system and was excited by the seemingly endless possibilities for growth and change, as well as the rich diversity of the Housatonic student body.3

In the 1960s, fuelled by a drive for social equality, increasing rates of high school graduation, and the need for a more highly skilled workforce, community colleges became the fastest growing segment in higher education.4 However, resources appropriated for community college development had yet to match the pace of their demographic growth, nor would they ever rival their peers in public or private fouryear colleges and universities. In fact, throughout the entirety of Chernow’s tenure, both classes and the collection were held in the former Singer Sewing factory on Bridgeport’s East Side. He retired early in 1984 to pursue writing projects, completing an official biography of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, which was published posthumously by his late wife, Ann Chernow.5 Housatonic only relocated to a permanent, purpose-built facility in January 1997, at which point Chernow came out from retirement temporarily to install just over 700 works throughout the new campus.6 A few months later in June of that year, having devoted himself entirely to the arts, Chernow died tragically of a heart attack at the age of 63.

Democratizing Access to Art

From his prolific theorizations of college art collecting, Chernow demonstrated sensitivity to the context of the community college, which he considered revolutionary,

transformative, and vastly under-resourced.

We at the junior college level, in examining our values…face several inescapable conclusions. If, for example, we acknowledge the educational importance of university art collections, we must examine our lack of activity in providing a visually exciting ‘live art’ college environment for our students.7

He derided the Ivy League and its ilk as “hospitals for the well” and challenged his peers to equal his efforts in developing public teaching collections regardless of the parent institution’s finances or student demographics.8 The arts, for Chernow, went to the deepest roots of human existence and were a right, not a privilege. “In the battle for men’s minds, which is the only real battlefront,” he wrote, “the arts represent an untapped national resource. For the arts to fulfill their potential role, their integral relationship to education must be both recognized and enlarged upon.” 9

Chernow believed that college collections offered students and educators something different from the sequestered gallery spaces he viewed as elitist.10 Rather than displaying art in a traditional gallery or museum context that may intimidate the average person, Chernow thought that placing art within community college environment would be less alienating for visitors. In this endeavor, Chernow’s installation of art throughout campus was an intentional rebuke of “the criminal burial of enormous numbers of educationally useful works” within museums and economically privileged institutions of higher learning.11 Works of art displayed in public spaces, he argued, could give an identity to communities most at need of an artistic and educational intervention.

Internal Support and External Networks: Creating the Collection

When Chernow joined the faculty at Housatonic, he immediately began pursuing donations for a

teaching collection. His efforts appear to have been widely supported by the Housatonic administration from its inception. “One of the reasons I went to HCC as an art teacher,” Chernow explained, “was because of the young president, Edward Liston, who agreed to my starting the collection. I didn’t want to work in a sterile institution. And I knew it would be important for the students.”12 Chernow exercised a large degree of autonomy over his passion project, which the administration continued to bolster over the years. Writing in 1981, later college president Vincent Darnowski praised Chernow, remarking, “The idea has worked magnificently…a presence of paintings, sculpture, prints and art objects… raise[s] the atmosphere from government-issue monochrome to heights of richness and beauty.”13

Only a fledgling institution in 1967, Housatonic barely had a permanent building let alone a budget for acquiring original works of art. Undaunted, Chernow reached out to local artists and friends for artwork donations, drawing particularly from the thriving New York City art scene. Taking advantage of a substantial tax credit program, he built a network of generous benefactors including Alex Katz (b. 1927), Elaine De Kooning (1918–1989), Christo (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude (1935–2009), and legendary gallerist Leo Castelli (1907–1999). According to Chernow, the college’s earliest patrons gave because they knew the work would be put to good use. “In a private collection a piece is, in effect, locked in a vault,” explained Chernow, “but in a public institution the painting really comes to life in an artist’s mind.”14

In only four months, Chernow had accumulated roughly one hundred artworks mostly from local, living artists that were valued at more than $100,000, at the time.15 The early success of Chernow’s solicitations can be attributed to a large tax credit offered specifically to benefactors of educational institutions. While gifts to non-educational museums and non-profit charities were limited to 20% of gross

total income, gifts to educational institutions could equal up to 30% – a benefit that unsurprisingly attracted wealthy donors.16 Further, artists were permitted to take a fair-market value deduction for donations to a museum, library, or archive. Works like Alex Katz’s oil on canvas, The Incident (1961), which was among the first dozen gifts Chernow received, was reportedly valued at $10,000.17

The effects of this scheme resulted in a collection strong in twentieth-century American art, including a large concentration of prints and works on paper, and an impressive amount of painting and sculpture. The ease of soliciting artworks from living artists would change significantly after 1969 when, in response to the notorious abuse of the law by former president Richard Nixon, the U.S. Congress implemented the Tax Reform Act. Thereafter artists could only deduct the cost of materials. As the 1969 Tax Reform Act did not apply to donations from collectors or from artists’ estates, Chernow’s collecting practice shifted towards these avenues, saving the Housatonic collection from oblivion and, in effect, broadening the scope to include antiquities, ethnographic artifacts, and highly desirable examples of modern European and American art.

Chernow also operated a private art consulting business and offered his services as a licensed appraiser and art consultant. Through this business, Chernow maintained direct contact with a steady stream of potential patrons, from whom he reportedly requested donations for the college as part of his appraisal fees.18 The list of donors includes not only close friends, like NYU mentor Howard Conant, Gabor Peterdi (1915–2001) and Christo, but also wealthy benefactors and well-known philanthropists, such as former Chicago gallerists Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Lust, the famed “Monuments Man” Frederic Eugene Ossorio, and Herman and Wendy Klarsfeld, two of the college’s most prolific benefactors. Acquisitions also came from the students themselves,

through purchases financed by student activity funds and approved by the Student Government Association. For example, in 1975, a student group, Black Students Committed to Action, gifted an impressive oil and collage on canvas, Bea (1969), by Benny Andrews (1930–2006), a bequest likely motivated by Andrews’s own advocacy for African American representation in the art world.19 Chernow has suggested that even without the tax break, many living artists were nonetheless keen to contribute to such a community-minded endeavour, which was also bolstered through the credibility of the artwork joining the blue-chip core of the collection.20

Following in Chernow’s Footsteps

From the initial concept to the first artwork in the collection, Burt Chernow shaped the Housatonic Museum of Art into the world-class collection that it is today. The museum’s subsequent leaders, especially Robbin Zella who was the director of the HMA from 1998 through 2022, continued Chernow’s legacy and stewarded the collection to an impressive 7,000 artworks. Many original works of art, typically 20% of the collection (compared to 5% of most museums), hang throughout the 300,000-square-foot campus of Housatonic Community College. The campus loan program allows faculty to select artwork for their offices and shared academic spaces. Zella initiated thematic hallways installations with accompanying exhibitions and online resources to further educate HCC students and the public at large about the collection. Zella also received a significant grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to digitize the painting collection and make the entire collection accessible through an online database hosted by Connecticut Collections. Donors and artists continue to give artworks to the museum today, inspired by the mission of making artwork accessible to students and the public every day.

Endnotes

1 David Rosenberg, “Burt Chernow and the Arts Heritage Awards,” The Hour (September 25, 1997), pp. c1–3.

2 Ann Chernow and Miggs Burroughs, “Art Town: The History of West PAC, A Museum without Walls,” Westport News, October 25, 2019, https:// www.westport-news.com/news/article/Art-TownThe-history-of-WestPAC-a-museum-14556202. php, accessed November 22, 2019.

3 Sandra Dolbow, “Connecticut Spotlight on Ann and Burt Chernow,” Spotlight (May 1987), pp 66–67, 85 and Harold Hornstein, “Partners in Art,” Westport and Weston Living, (March 12, 1997), p. 25.

4 Richard L. Drury, “Community Colleges in America: A Historical Perspective,” Inquiry, Vol. 8:1 (Spring 2003), p. 5 and Arthur Cohen, Florence Brawler, and Carrie Kisker, The American Community College (Somerset: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2013), ProQuest Ebook Central, pp. 6–11.

5 Burt Chernow, Christo and Jeanne-Claude: A Biography (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002).

6 “New Campus Opens,” Currents, Vol. 9:2 (Housatonic Community-Technical College: March 1997), p. 4 and Dana Keeton, “Art Collection Showcased in Housatonic’s New Home” The Bridgeport News, (April 10, 1997).

7 Burt Chernow, “Colleges Have an Educational Responsibility to Make Art and Everyday Part of College Life,” in Junior College Journal: The Magazine for Junior College Education (American Association of Junior Colleges: September 1968), p. 15.

8 Harold Hornstein, “Partners in Art,” Westport and Weston Living, (March 12, 1997), p. 25.

9 Burt Chernow, “Some Random Thoughts on Art, Education and the Environment,” N.D., unpublished, Housatonic Community College Archives, p. 5.

10 Burt Chernow, “Housatonic Museum of Art: Enhancing Quality” in Community and Junior College Journal, vol. 53:5, (February 1983), p. 23.

11 Burt Chernow, “Untitled Manifesto [critique of

art collections and museums],” N.D. Typed and handwritten manuscript. Box 19, folder 9, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, p. 76.

12 Irene Backalenick, “HCC is Home to an Exciting, Eclectic Art Collection,” Fairfield Citizen-News (March 6, 1991), pp. 22–23.

13 Burt Chernow, “Housatonic Museum of Art: Enhancing Quality” in Community and Junior College Journal, vol. 53:5, (February 1983), pp. 22.

14 Backalenick, 1991: 22–23.

15 Burt Chernow, “Colleges Have an Educational Responsibility to Make Art an Everyday Part of College Life,” 1968: 15.

16 Howard Conant, “College Museum Notes: New York University Collection,” Art Journal, Vol. 21:1 (Autumn, 1961), p. 20.

17 Catalog Record 6, 1967, Housatonic Museum of Art Archives, Bridgeport, CT.

18 Esther Watstein, “Oral Interview with Archivist Esther Watstein, Colleague of Burt Chernow,” Interview by author, 10/15/19.

19 Benny Andrews Estate, Brooklyn, NY, “Overview,” http://www.bennyandrews. com/, accessed December 2, 2019.

20 Philip Eliasoph, “Diamonds in the Rough: Impressive Surprises in HCC’s Art Collection,” The Advocate and Greenwich Time (October 4, 1987).

Photo credit: Paul Mutino

Book designer: Whitney Marshall

Front Cover image provided by benzoix on Freepik

Hilla Von Rebay, French-American (1890 - 1967)

Seated Black Man, Not dated Oil on canvas

Gift of Dr. Paul Brief

1978.35.01

Giorgio De Chirico, Italian (1888 - 1978)

Voyage of the Poet , Not dated Oil on canvas

Gift of Dr. Benjamin Fine

1975.09.01

Willem de Kooning , Dutch-American (1904-1997)

Untitled (Standing Woman), 1951-52

Oil, enamel, charcoal, and collage on cream paper

Gift of Herman S. Klarsfeld

2007.13.03

The Incident, 1961

Oil on canvas

Gift of the artist

1967.06.01

Alex Katz , American (b. 1927)

Jack Whitten, American (1939 - 2018)

Burn Baby Burn, 1969

Oil on canvas

Gift of Beldock, Levine and Hoffman

1980.40.03

Jane Freilicher, American (1924 - 2014)

Canal, 1961

Oil on canvas

Gift of Jane Freilicher

1968.08.01

Paul Camacho, Puerto Rican (1929–1989)

Storage II, 1971

Acrylic on canvas

Gift of HCC Student Government

1972.36.01

Romare Bearden, American (1911 - 1988)

Carolina Red, 1972

Oil and collage on wood

Friends of Housatonic Museum Purchase

1975.10.01

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation (b. 1940)

Untitled, 1979

Lithograph on buff Arches wove paper

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Burt Chernow

1988.16.03

Gladys Triana, Cuban-American (b. 1937)

Homage to Munch (The Scream), 1985-1989

Collage with paper layered on pre-primed canvas and oil paint

Gift of the artist

1990.06.01

Yoko Ono, Japanese (b. 1933)

Telephone Piece for Bridgeport (Instructions), 2010

Holograph ink on cream paper

Gift of the artist

2011.01.02

HOUSATONIC MUSEUM OF A R T