Their father was in the artwas sort of a discoverer. I guessI guess I felt a bit insecure about the fact that I needed their help to learn something. 750 9th Street, NWVictor Building, Suite 2200 [00:18:01], CLIFFORD SCHORER: So, yes, and it has to be opportunistic. [00:54:00]. And, JUDITH RICHARDS: You didn't feel encumbered? So we both get on planes, and he goes and finds pictures in Berlin, here, there, and everywhere, and we pull together. They may not be moneymakers. To me, the Met is visiting friends, you know, visiting pictures that, you know, I know from [laughs]I look at the granular level of certain paintings because I know them very well. [Laughs.]. [00:56:00]. And I think, giventhe market history had sullied the picture. The shareholders did very well by the real estate. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. You know, we had a bit of a detour into history because we did the Pre-Raphaelite show, which was a big undertaking for us, you know, kind of a year of the Pre-Raphaelites. Born in 1836, Winslow Homer is regarded by many as one of the greatest American painters of the 19th century. JUDITH RICHARDS: Has your role evolved during that period of time? I mean, you readwith this contemporary art market soaring. Have you always maintained fine art storage? CLIFFORD SCHORER: Whatever you want to do, it's fine. So, you know, in a sense, there was ajust a moment, and that momentif that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have bought the company. JUDITH RICHARDS: Is there any indication onit's a loan. The Louvre, when it was easy to go in and easy to come out. They had good people; they had good people. So you have lots of interesting things in Bulgaria, but they're basically in the sort of, you know, big, communist, ornate, central museum in Sofia. Right and Left Painting. And there are 7.9 or eight billion people now. Like, get a sense of what it meant to him? So it was sort ofyou know, it was sort of an early-days discussion. [They laugh.]. You've talked a lot about your involvement in museums and education, so obviously you do have a sense that there's a level of responsibility when you acquire these works to share them. JUDITH RICHARDS: Have there been any surprises that you've come across in terms of this, being involved as you are with Agnew's? CLIFFORD SCHORER: And then we get on our airplanes, and we start flying around, looking for things, yeah. CLIFFORD SCHORER: the natural entre into it. CLIFFORD SCHORER: You know, that's very frustrating. Your perspective is unusually broad, at least it used to be. I loved the flea markets in Paris in those days. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I'm not that intelligent. It's astonishing. So I would go up to Montreal, live there for a little while, and come back. So, no. But anyway, no, I mean, you know, it was the good old days. He would run around to continental auctions back before the internet, and now the kids and I do a lot. And by 13, I thought I had no business in school, which is why that sort of very constricted environment up in New Hampshire was tough for me. [00:34:00]. And we were able to put together a comprehensive Laserstein show. I mean, I'm doing the floors in my new buildings. And it was an area I didn't know, and you know. JUDITH RICHARDS: So have you been collecting in some other, noncompetitive area? CLIFFORD SCHORER: Mm-hmm. She's great. Chief of the Investigations Division, Inspector General's Department, Inspector General's Office (Washington, DC) B ack, George Irving. Winslow Homer. I mean, yes, of course. So, yes, I've had, over the years, to send things to the art museum or to conservators or to other places to get them out of my house. They would have Saturday gatherings where people would set up folding tables. And her father was Wilhelm Wolfgang. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So, it's very unusual forwell, when you talk about old art, and you talk about a, you know, an institutional collection, I know, for example, Worcester Art Museum has a policy, as do most American museums, you cannot lend to. Well, I mean, there was a collector-dealer, I think. You know, it was wonderful. We went to the apartment, and I bought the painting, and at the same time, the familythis was from one of the largest commissions of the 17th century, and the last two paintings were still in the hands of a man whose name was the same as the man who signed the commissioning documents 400 years before. But my desire to live in the middle of nowherethis was in Meriden, New Hampshire, which was literally the middle of nowherewith 400 other. The problem is, I've always had to forget about all of the things in my path until recently. Do we think this is this?" CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yes, I mean, it's interesting because I came to the art world as such a sort of soliloquy, I did not reallyyou know, I didn't have people to talk to about that sort of thing. JUDITH RICHARDS: Do you see yourself spending more and more time in London? CLIFFORD SCHORER: Leysen. And then I'd come back and make a lot of money for three weeks [laughs], and then I'd travel for three weeks. And I said, you know, "Thanks for that." And knowing, of course, that, you know, in a way, sort of on day one, my business challenge was to take a business that was burning, you know, [] 8 million in losses, and flip it off instantly and reopen it as a business that would basically break even or make money, because I was not in the business of buying a company simply to continue the legacy losses of the previous ownership. And said that "If you don't fire him, I'm going to sue you." Clifford Schorer Co Founder & Director Mr. Schorer is a serial entrepreneur who specializes in the start-up acquisition and development of small and mid-sized companies. So I went to Gillette, and they hadthey were looking for a programmer analysta senior programmer analyst. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I'm trying to think if I'd been to Europe by that age. [Laughs.]. JUDITH RICHARDS: Is that a whole collection or just two? You know, and I was trying to do my best to go along with that because I thought it was a ticket to yet another city. You can admire; if you want to buy, you pay our price and you buy. I said, "One of the greatest bronzes on the planet is in Plovdiv in the Communist Workers' Party headquarters in a plastic box." Are there any other thoughts you have about the responsibilities of a collector, at least in your field? I don't think Ai Weiwei would have participated either. So thoseyou know, those are the moments where I think about all those table arguments about this picture and that picture and [00:28:00]. That's respect. It's fascinating to me to see the roots of sea travel that were established by that point to move these goods around at incredibly low cost. CLIFFORD SCHORER: we made everything. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. Yeah, well, this was an early, early. CLIFFORD SCHORER: They were doing that anyway. JUDITH RICHARDS: How did that happen? I mean. Winslow Homer was an American painter whose works in the domain of realism, especially those on the sea, are considered some of the most influential paintings of the late 19th century. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And often, those are the ones I cannot afford under any circumstances. JUDITH RICHARDS: And you happen to be able to have this person who [laughs] shows you proof, too. I wish I had. I tried to resign from the MFA, but they said it was no problem, and then Worcester actually asked me back ascreated an advisory role, advisory collections committee. Images. They werethey wereI mean, in France, of course. I said, "Okay.". I hadyeah. You know, gobe too ambitious with your consignment terms, you know. JUDITH RICHARDS: When you were doing research and you were reading auction catalogues, those are catalogues with the sale prices written in. And, you know, the best Procaccini, when I was looking back in 2000, was 5 to 6 million. Without synthetic fertilizers, it's impossible to feed the human race. [00:30:00], CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. Another gallery, a different gallery? Just one huge vertebrae specimen, yeah. JUDITH RICHARDS: I imagine you wanted to preserve the goodwill of the name of Agnew's. I think that they're, shall we say, more demanding of one's time, so you have to be available for them, and you have to work with them more individually. You know, sure, I mean, I could go down a list of 200 people that I've wandered in on and started spouting nonsense, and they tolerate my nonsense, and then they actually engage in a conversation with me. So it was very depressing. And I said, "Well, I assume you do if you just bid me up to $47,000." CLIFFORD SCHORER: So, I can just give a recent example. JUDITH RICHARDS: and what it stood for. But it wasI've covered the allegories I'm interested in. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Just the gallery in London, right. JUDITH RICHARDS: Is this something that youthat the Worcester Art Museum had to deal with, or have they always had good-quality climate control? Thatyou know, the sophistication of the buyer and the marketplace in Old Masters is not going to be swayed in any way by [laughs], you know, that you had something on view momentarily, you know, in a museum; because you leveraged your ego or your money, or whatever it was, they've got your picture on view. He said, "Let's do a Lotte Laserstein show." [Affirmative.] I liked dark colors. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Yes. And did art play any role in that? So I would say that's probably the only piece of advice I can have, is that you have to be much more object-focused, learn as much as you can about that object, and try as much as possible to ignore the catalogue entry that shows Chairman Mao by Andy Warhol next to Leonardo da Vinci next to the so-called lot that you're about to buy, and draws these amazing marketing inferences that, you know, you will be like the Medici if you buy this thing. That is a harder issue for the contemporary world, I think. People came and visited to see the collection. I mean, not, of course, of the quality of Randolph Hearst [laughs], but of a quantity, for sure. You know, along with Ai Weiwei as the eyeballs or something, you know. I've got some Portuguese examples. I'm at my office; I'm looking the Strozzi up, and I see Worcester Art Museum, and then it dawned on me, Wait a minute, they also have that Piero di Cosimo. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And obviously really didn'tonly went back to drawings and prints when, you know, when there was something. The Frick's very focal; they're very small; they're very focal. The subjects that they were trying to make that were attractive to the audience. Yeah, not so much an engraving. Why is this not Renaissance?" And there was a, you know, there was a large group, and they were giving a lecture on the Counter-Reformation and how this painting perfectly encapsulates the Counter-Reformation becauseand you fill in the blank. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No. They're rare, of course. I was making a lot of money for three weeks, and I was traveling for three weeks. Summary: An interview with Clifford Schorer conducted 2018 June 6-7, by Judith Olch Richards, for the Archives of American Art and the Center for the History of Collecting in America at the Frick Art Reference Library of The Frick Collection, at the offices of the Archives of American Art in New York, New York. Because in those days, you had to have the paper, you know; not everybody was online. JUDITH RICHARDS: Okay, rabbit-skin glue. So he says, "You'll be a Corporator." And if you can't get more than 20,000 people in here, you've got a serious problem. So it really was a question of lobbying to say, "Look, I'll make this better for you over a period of years," than doing it this way. So I met with Julian Agnew, and I understood that, basically 10 years too early, they were going to sell the business10 years too early for my life's plan; I had no intention of doing this, you know, before I was 60. I couldn't afford that. 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