Sydney Besthoff: Collecting New Orleans-style (2004)
artdesigncafé | café library | Published 15 September 2009
This article was previously published in Sculpture, 23(8), October 2004, pp.26-31; and in G. Harper & T. Moyer’s Landscapes for Art: Contemporary Sculpture Parks, pp. 46-50. (International Sculpture Center Press: Hamilton, NJ, USA) with the revised title: "Creating a sculpture garden in New Orleans: A conversation with Sydney Besthoff".
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Louise Bourgeois. Spider, (1996). Bronze, 70 x 296 x 278 in. Installed in the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Since the 1970s, Sydney and Walda Besthoff have specialized in collecting modern and contemporary sculpture, in addition to photorealist painting. In November 2003, the five-acre Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden opened at the New Orleans Museum of Art. It features 50 sculptures, 41 of them donated by the Besthoffs’ foundation, including works by Arman, Fernando Botero, Louise Bourgeois, Scott Burton, Lynn Chadwick, Sandro Chia, Barbara Hepworth, Jacques Lipchitz, Allan McCollum, Henry Moore, Arnaldo Pomodoro, George Rickey, George Segal, Joel Shapiro, and Ossip Zadkine. (The remaining nine were museum purchases or gifts from other donors.)
Previously, most of the Besthoffs’ sculpture collection was on view at K&B Plaza, a seven-story office building in downtown New Orleans, which Sydney Besthoff purchased in 1973. The building, designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in 1960–62 and featuring an 18-foot granite sculptural fountain designed by Isamu Noguchi, became the headquarters of K&B Incorporated, a family-owned drugstore chain founded by Besthoff’s grandfather in 1905. Besthoff served as chairman and CEO of K&B until 1997, when he sold it to the Rite Aid Corporation. He still owns the building though, and, even after the donation, it still contains a sizable art collection.
Besthoff has served on the boards of numerous business and arts organizations. He was a founder of the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans and past president of its board of directors. He also serves on the board of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Meanwhile, Walda Besthoff has had a lifetime commitment to the performing arts, particularly theater and dance, as a performer, staffer, and patron. Mrs. Besthoff served on the board of the Contemporary Arts Center in the 1980s, chairing the Capital Campaign for its expansion. She is currently a trustee of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Sydney and Walda Besthoff are the recipients of the International Sculpture Center’s 2004 Patrons Recognition Award. The couple will accept the award at a gala in their honor on Saturday, October 30, 2004 at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
R.J. Preece: What particularly attracted you and Mrs. Besthoff to 20th-century sculpture?
Sydney Besthoff: Originally, we were very interested in collecting antique furniture. However, after you fill up the house, there’s not much you can do. So, we wanted something else to collect. And I particularly wanted to collect something within my size range, that I could get my arms around, that wasn’t too vast. And so we selected a very abstruse form of art known as photorealism and went into it in the late ’60s/early ’70s, when it was just starting to become a really hot area. After that, we became very interested in other forms of art.
We thought that sculpture was a nice adjunct, and we had an office building in downtown New Orleans— with a 20,000-square-foot plaza. We commissioned our first work, which happened to be by George Rickey, and George was really delighted with the commission. He came here to install the piece. And I worked with him on the installation— in the sense that I was around. I got really interested, and that started me off. From there, we commissioned a few pieces, bought a few pieces. As the years went on and on, we had a lot of stuff.
Sydney Bestoff interview: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
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