Dennis & Debra Scholl, JD ’81
Dennis Scholl, JD ’81 & Debra Scholl, JD ’81 CHANGE AGENTS “My favorite piece is always the next one.” For Debra and Dennis Scholl, the beginning of the Miami art season is marked by walking through the front door of their home to see what is hanging on the walls. They never know — honestly. That’s because for each of the past 11 years they have turned over the keys to their house and their 650-piece art collection to a different curator and gone away for a few days. In their absence, an art version of an “extreme makeover” occurs. The curator has absolute freedom in terms of what is hung where; the Scholls, in turn, commit to living with the result for one year. It’s a commitment that would scare off many collectors, but the Scholls like to shake things up. “We want people to come in and have a reaction,” says Debra. “If there is no reaction, the art isn’t doing its job.” Not only does the couple change the art they live with every year, but approximately every decade they also change what they collect. First came prints, then photography, then a mix of contemporary painting, video, drawings and other art forms; the two haven’t decided yet what will follow. “My favorite piece is always the next one,” says Dennis. Altogether, the Scholls have bought approximately 1,000 pieces of art; of the 650 they currently own, 50 are in their home in Miami, another 50 to 70 are in their home in Aspen, Colo., 500 are in storage, and others are on loan. They employ a full-time curator just to manage the collection.
I was passionate about coins and baseball cards. Debra is from New Jersey, so she had regular access to the great art museums of New York when she was growing up.” But despite their different collecting origins, they learned about art together — “just not from the gallery where we worked,” laughs Dennis. After graduation, Dennis worked in finance, helping to raise money for others, before leaving to become a venture capital investor in his own projects. Along the way, he also became a serious winemaker as the founder of Betts & Scholl, which has received numerous high scores from Wine Spectator for their wines. He joined the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in 2009 as the Miami program director for the Knight Arts Challenge, and earlier this year he was named vice president/arts, charged with developing a nationwide arts program for the foundation. Debra initially went into banking and then opened a development company that has played an important role in the revival of South Beach. They also have used their legal training to help artists negotiate for public art projects. But art collecting remains their shared passion, and each addition is made only after careful consideration — and sometimes spirited debate. “We never say, ‘You get that one, and I’ll get this one,’” says Dennis. “We also have a two-vote rule — Debra has saved me from myself over and over. I believe you buy from your subconscious, and we come from two different points of view. Debra likes emotionally charged pieces; I go more for geometric and architectural pieces. After a while, however, your tastes begin to meld. You start from different perspectives and try to arrive in the middle.” He smiles. “After 32 years, we find that the middle has grown.”
Debra and Dennis (both JD ’81) have come a long way since law school, when they worked together part-time at a mall art gallery that sold “artwork to match your couch,” recalls Dennis with a smile. “I was born with the ‘collecting gene,’” he says. “As a kid,
FALL 2010
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