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Chapter One

Growing Up with the Anschutz Collection

As someone who grew up with the Anschutz Collection, I am particularly glad to have this chance to reflect on my father's art collection from the distance of a few years and several thousand miles. On the eve of the collection's first showing in Denver, it seems like a good time to review the three decades of our shared history.

For as long as 1 can remember, the art collection assembled by my father, Philip Anschutz, has been an important part of my family's life. My parents began taking my brother, sister, and me to Anschutz Collection exhibition openings from the time we could be trusted to behave ourselves at grown-up events. Since my father preferred not to show his collection in Denver, such occasions were invariably exciting for the three of us because they always involved traveling outside Colorado. Although we may not have understood the importance of these functions at the time, we enjoyed walking around the exhibitions with Dad, looking at the paintings and listening to him tell romantic stories about the Old West.

Our early education in art was not limited to exhibition openings of the Anschutz Collection but was something that we lived and breathed during the years when we were growing up. Paintings from the collection that hung on the walls of our home in Denver would often temporarily disappear to join those already on tour, while other paintings would take their places. Nearly every inch of wall space in our living room was taken up by miniature reproductions of the paintings in the collection, and posters from previous exhibitions filled our basement walls. My father's library was always full of books on history and art, catalogs from past exhibitions, and photographs of various exhibition openings. We learned a lot about western history by listening to my father talk about the paintings in the collection, paintings that told a familiar story--surveyors and trappers exploring new territories, pioneers braving the wild frontier, Indians facing the challenges of a changed existence, and cowboys working on the plains. He enthusiastically told us stories about the artists themselves. We heard how George Catlin observed the tribal ceremonies of the Mandan Indians only a few years before the tribe was nearly wiped out by smallpox in 1837. And we learned from my father that Albert Bierstadt sketched the scenery along the Oregon Trail, that Frederic Remington and N. C. Wyeth began their careers as illustrators, and that Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, and other early modernist painters sought artistic refuge in post-World War I New Mexico.

Besides teaching us about western history through paintings from the collection, my father was also eager to teach us about American art. He explained the influence of the Hudson River school on western landscape painting and showed us how Taos and Santa Fe artists captured the intense light of the New Mexico desert. He taught us that each generation of artists influenced the next, passing on a shared vocabulary appropriate to a common subject matter. In short, we learned that the paintings my father collected were part of a larger artistic tradition.

The passion and enthusiasm that my father passed on to the three of us stemmed from his own lifelong interest in history and particularly in the development of the American West. Inspired by his interest in history and driven by his desire to put together a comprehensive survey collection of western American art, he has built an extraordinary collection that spans nearly 180 years of American history. Today, the Anschutz Collection comprises over 650 paintings and drawings by more than 200 artists from the early 1800s to the present.

Unlike many collectors who begin to work seriously on their collections only after reaching the pinnacle of successful careers, my father has built his collection along with his business. As a result, his business career has often been mirrored in the broad themes of the collection--a sense of adventure into the unknown, the triumph over adversity, a passion for exploration, and the desire to create something of lasting value. The Anschutz Collection embodies these general themes and in an interesting way reflects the events that have marked my father's career in oil exploration, real estate, railroads, and telecommunications. In each step of his business career, he has kept his sense of adventure. He has entered new fields, such as telecommunications, when they seemed unrelated to his core businesses, has often been described as a risk taker, and has frequently faced challenges and difficult circumstances along the way. His successful restructuring of several railroads in the early 1990s and the real estate spin-offs that followed exemplify his desire to create new and viable businesses. It is not a coincidence that many of the paintings in the Anschutz Collection reflect these aspects of my father's career. He has chosen to collect a type of art that embodies themes to which he, and most Americans, can relate.

My father began collecting art in the early 1960s, just as he was finishing college, largely under the influence of my grandmother. Although Marian Pfister Anschutz was neither a collector nor an art expert herself, she wanted my father and his sister to be knowledgeable in many areas and encouraged them to cultivate different interests and hobbies, including an appreciation for fine art. Although she had no formal training in the arts, she loved painting, music, and history. She strongly believed in exposing her children to art and culture at an early age and would often take them to local museums in Kansas. She was also an enthusiastic traveler who, according to my father, would "pack her bags whenever a plane flew overhead." Throughout my father's childhood, when the family took trips across the country and to Europe, my grandmother saw to it that they visited important museums and historical sites. This early exposure to the art treasures of Europe and America had a strong impact on my father, for whom both art and history have remained enduring interests.

Encouraged by his mother, my father continued to develop his interest in art and history by reading. He remembers being particularly fascinated by the illustrations common to American history books of the 1940s and 1950s, many of which featured well-known examples of early American painting. He studied history and business at the University of Kansas but continued to enlarge his knowledge of art by reading books and articles and independently pursuing research in American art. Shortly after finishing his degree, he took the final step in his education as a collector by simply beginning to collect.

As he began to have some success in business, my father continually put money aside for investing in the art that he loved. He readily admits that, like his financial resources for buying paintings, his knowledge about art and his background in the field was initially limited. It was not limited for long, however. Research and experience soon took him far beyond what he had gathered during high school and college, and he began to understand the significance of various artists and the important roles they played in the development of the genre. Eventually, as he acquired a greater number of paintings, he began to develop a more discerning eye and an ability to find quality examples that fit into his growing collection.

By the end of the 1960s, my father was well on his way to building a significant collection of American paintings. Early on in his collecting career, he began to develop the concept of a specialized collection with a central theme, rather than a jumble of isolated examples. His vision was to assemble a survey collection that documented the history of American painting by focusing on a single locale, the western United States.

At the time, there were only a few existing collections of American art that could serve as models for the type of collection that my father envisioned. Probably most influential on his early collecting activities were the two great western American art collections of the previous generation--the C. R. Smith Collection and the Thomas Gilcrease Collection. Smith, the president of American Airlines, started collecting western art from New York in the 1930s. The Smith Collection was notable for its high concentration of works by Charles Marion Russell, half of whose estate Smith purchased, but it was Smith's early appreciation for relatively unknown artists, such as Henry Farny, that caught my father's attention. He was impressed by Smith's critical eye, his focus on certain important artists, and his desire to acquire works that he truly enjoyed.

Like the Smith Collection, the Gilcrease Collection also originated in the 1930s. Unlike Smith, Thomas Gilcrease, a successful entrepreneur and founder of the Gilcrease Oil Company, did not develop a narrowly focused art collection but instead collected everything to do with the West. With the establishment of a museum as his goal, Gilcrease collected Indian artifacts, books and manuscripts, paintings and sculpture, and anything related to early American western history. His collection grew rapidly since he had the means to purchase large quantities of material from dealers, estates, and other collectors. My father was familiar with the Gilcrease Collection from visits to the Tulsa museum beginning in the 1950s. He was certainly impressed by the sheer size of the collection and the fact that it was assembled during a time when few others were interested in the art or history of the American West. By the time that my father began to hit his own collecting stride in the late 1960s and early 1970s, prices for western American paintings had grown as interest in the field increased, so that replicating such a collection would have been very difficult. He recognized that he would have to take a different approach.

My father's collecting goals were more modest than those of the great collectors of western art, more like those of his fellow Coloradans William and Dorothy Harmsen. When he met them in the early 1970s, the Harmsens had been collecting western American paintings for nearly twenty years and had established a well-regarded collection. My father was impressed by the wide range of artists the Harmsens had assembled and determined to acquire a broad representation for his own growing collection. But in addition to surveying the development of American painting in the West from 1820 to the present, he wanted his collection to illustrate how each generation chose to represent the West and the impact their work had on succeeding generations of artists. My father has been careful to acquire only those paintings that fit within the general organizational framework he originally envisioned, although he has continued to broaden the traditional definition of what constitutes a "western" art collection.

His most significant acquisition in terms of the development of the collection was the group of paintings purchased from the Santa Fe Railroad in 1972. The acquisition was important not only for its size but also for the range of artists represented. In hindsight, it seems ironic that the purchase of this large group of paintings preceded my father's own entry into the railroad industry.

My father had heard that the Santa Fe Railroad had an extensive art collection and that the basement of the company's Chicago headquarters was literally full of paintings that had never been properly cataloged, including a number of large canvases the company would never be able to accommodate in its offices. Intrigued by the idea of sifting through the railroad's collection, he traveled to Chicago and managed to arrange a meeting with the company chairman. In exchange for the right to purchase some of the pieces, my father offered to go through the railroad's holdings and catalog the paintings. After some negotiation and many hours of examining and cataloging works stored in the building's basement, he eventually acquired from the Santa Fe Railroad eighty-two paintings and two large murals, the majority of which were excellent examples of the Taos and Santa Fe school. The addition of so many Taos and Santa Fe artists was significant because until then the Anschutz Collection had been deficient in the area. As a result of the Santa Fe purchase, the collection came to include works by all six founders of the Taos Society of Artists in 1912, as well as many so-called second generation Taos and Santa Fe school painters.

The Santa Fe acquisition was also important for the historical documentation that accompanied the paintings. During the cataloging process, as he dug deeper into the Santa Fe records, my father found a number of files dating from before the turn of the century, which he also included in his purchase offer. The files contained correspondence between the Santa Fe Railroad and several artists offering train tickets, meals, and lodging in exchange for a specified number of paintings inspired by the artist's journey through the West. My father was particularly amused by correspondence between the railroad and Thomas Moran, in which Moran expressed his dissatisfaction with the Santa Fe's compensation for his paintings and suggested that the company did not appreciate the true value of his work. Although other railroads made similar offers to artists, the Santa Fe was perhaps the most active in terms of using artists to create a pictorial record of its western territory. In addition to the historical significance of the Santa Fe files, the sheer volume of works and the railroad's focus on Taos and Santa Fe artists made the Santa Fe purchase the most important single acquisition in the development of the Anschutz Collection. The acquisition also provided depth previously lacking in what had been conceived as a survey collection.

Another important addition to the collection was the acquisition of Ernest Blumenschein's Sangre de Cristo Mountains from the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1973. Although he was in Toronto on unrelated business, my father visited the museum to see whether there were any American paintings that the museum might consider selling. His timing could not have been better. The museum did have a few American paintings in its collection and, because it was in the process of shifting its focus to Canadian paintings, was willing to consider selling off some of its American holdings. Among those paintings that the museum was about to deaccession was a large work by Blumenschein, an artist with whom the director admitted he was not familiar. Trying to disguise his delight at finding an apparently under-appreciated example of the artist's work, my father remarked that he had heard of the artist and was interested in seeing the painting. After some difficulty in locating the Blumenschein in the museum's files, he accompanied the director to a warehouse in downtown Toronto, where they spent several hours searching for the painting. The search proved to be well worth the effort. In the end, my father paid a low price for a painting that is undoubtedly now one of the "stars" of his collection: Sangre de Cristo Mountains is considered by some to be one of Blumenschein's finest works.

Despite an increasingly demanding business career, decision making about the collection has always been my father's exclusive province. Although he has always made all acquisition and deaccession decisions himself, the collection has benefited from the expertise of several formal and informal advisers. Two advisers in particular had an early impact on my father as a collector--Wolfgang Pogzeba and George Schriever.

Wolf Pogzeba, a successful artist in his own right, was influential in helping my father develop his eye for American art. As a close personal friend, Wolf acted in an informal advisory capacity for the Anschutz Collection during its early years. He was not only knowledgeable about the technical aspects of painting but was also in touch with current developments in the art world at large. Using his broad base of contacts, he helped my father with several early acquisitions, including the Santa Fe Railroad purchase. Sadly, my father lost a valued friend and the collection a trusted adviser when a tragic airplane accident claimed the lives of Wolf Pogzeba, his wife, and their young son in 1982.

George Schriever assumed the role of curator of the Anschutz Collection following a successful term as head of the American Department at Kennedy Galleries in New York. When George joined the collection in early 1973, his first tasks were to organize it along generally accepted cataloging lines and to help define its future direction. As a result, he was able to implement an active acquisition program designed to flesh out the collection with paintings by such important artists as George Catlin, Asher B. Durand, George Inness, Ralph Blakelock, and Thomas Moran. George and my father also sought out works by the two most famous artists ever to depict the West--Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell. By the early 1970s, however, prices for works by Remington and Russell had already risen to a point that made it difficult to build a collection comparable to the one Gilcrease had assembled earlier.

George and my father concentrated on expanding further into the field of Southwest painting, building on the treasure trove of Taos and Santa Fe paintings that had been acquired from the Santa Fe Railroad, and further broadening the definition and traditional limits of a "western" art collection. Unlike the market for Remingtons and Russells, which rarely came up for sale and were increasingly expensive, the market for other artists with strong western American associations was relatively open. As a result, the size, scope, and depth of the collection was expanded with the addition of fine works by such artists as Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Bellows, Leon Kroll, Marsden Hartley, N. C. Wyeth, John Marin, Andrew Dasburg, and Georgia O'Keeffe.

Drawing on his experience at Kennedy Galleries, George helped professionalize the collection. His disciplined organizational approach greatly enhanced the Anschutz Collection's credibility among other collectors, museums, and art experts. He was a proponent of connoisseurship and shared with my father the belief that an art collector ought to seek out the best available examples. Under George's guidance, the collection grew both in size and in breadth. He encouraged my father to collect works by a wider range of artists, including work by contemporary artists. Partially as a result of his efforts, the Anschutz Collection increasingly gained national prominence.

The ambitious exhibition schedule begun during George Schriever's tenure continued under the able guidance of his successor, Elizabeth Cunningham. Between 1974 and 1991, various portions of the collection were exhibited in fifty-two cities and ten countries under the titles Painters of the American West, Masterpieces of the American West , and West, West, West . The collection has been seen throughout the United States, in Canada (Calgary), in Europe (Helsinki, Brussels, Munich, London, Paris, and Vienna), in the People's Republic of China (Beijing and Shanghai), and in the former Soviet Union (Moscow, Novosibirsk, Tbilisi, and Leningrad).

Whether abroad or at home, exhibition tours were typically organized with the assistance of various corporate sponsors. Companies such as Mobil Oil and ITT helped underwrite the high cost of putting the tours together, thereby ensuring a wide audience for the collection. My father has always enjoyed sharing his collection with the public by making the paintings available through exhibitions or limited loans to museums and other institutions. At various times over the past thirty years, paintings from the Anschutz Collection have been lent to many museums and institutions, including the Denver Art Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of New Mexico; the Princeton University Art Museum; Gilcrease Museum; and the White House.

Although my parents attended most of the exhibition openings during the years the collection was on tour, many times with us in tow, it was not always possible to accompany the collection to every stop. Of the exhibitions that we were able to attend, I have many fond memories. When Painters of the American West opened in London in the summer of 1982, my brother, sister, and I (aged six, eight, and eleven, respectively) met Prince Philip, the royal patron, as he toured the exhibition. Although the queen was not able to attend, we were very impressed that the prince had come to view our father's art collection and could not contain our joy when he went out of his way to speak with the three of us. Seven summers later, we got the chance to travel along with our parents as part of an "official delegation" to the Soviet Union for the 1989 opening of the West, West, West show in Moscow. As guests of the Soviet minister of culture, we were treated to the best that the city of Moscow had to offer, even if we weren't allowed to leave our hotel unaccompanied.

The West, West, West tour was the most memorable for our family and remains my father's favorite. The Anschutz Collection began its tour of the Soviet Union in Moscow in June 1989, before moving on to Leningrad, Novosibirsk, and Tbilisi. The exhibits were well attended in all four cities, and the opening at the State Tretyakov Museum in Moscow was particularly successful. Representatives from the Soviet Ministry of Culture had organized several related events around the Moscow opening, including a series of free concerts by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, a country-rock band that my father had brought with us from Colorado.

The timing of the West, West, West tour was also significant; 1989 was a watershed year for the gradual collapse of communism in the Soviet Union. The country was just beginning to open itself up to outside influences under Gorbachev's program of glasnost, and there was a sudden surge in the popularity of all things American, including American art. Given the sensitive political situation at the time, the tour was organized with the help of the American Embassy in Moscow and contacts at the State Department in Washington, D.C. In addition to the timing of the tour, West, West, West was also memorable for the warm response of the Soviet people. The Anschutz Collection was one of the first collections of western American art to be exhibited in the Soviet Union. Despite their unfamiliarity with many of the artists, most visitors to the exhibition were able to identify with the subject matter. In particular, the Soviets responded to several of the key themes that bind the collection together--the notion of expansion into a rugged frontier, the idea of individual struggle against the elements, and a sense of overcoming adversity that is as much a part of their heritage as it is deeply ingrained in the American soul.

My father does not think the reaction of the Soviet viewers is unique. In fact, he believes that most Americans find the subject matter and underlying themes of this kind of art engaging, and he is fascinated by the way viewers are drawn to it. Specifically, he feels that its popularity has grown over the years because people can easily relate to subject matter that reflects not only the "western experience," but the whole scope of the American experience.

After nearly two decades of touring, the Anschutz Collection entered a period of well-earned rest and conservation in 1992. Initially, few changes were made to the collection during this time since it coincided with my father's purchase of the Southern Pacific Railroad, an extraordinarily busy period in his business career.

Like many others, the Anschutz Collection has evolved as the collector's eye and access to funding have improved. Although quality has always been his aim, in the last few years my father has been able to replace some earlier purchases of lesser quality--what he calls "holes" in the collection--with better examples as they have become available. For him, as for most serious collectors, constantly upgrading the collection has been one of the great joys of collecting. He thoroughly enjoys the continual search for quality paintings to improve his collection and often buys pieces at auction and from dealers or private individuals with whom he has built relationships over the years.

Since 1997, my father has focused on filling gaps in the collection and has made several significant acquisitions, including Albert Bierstadt's Indians Traveling near Fort Laramie , George de Forest Brush's Picture Writer's Story , William de Leftwich Dodge's Death of Minnehaha , and works by Thomas Moran, Titian Ramsay Peale and Alfred Jacob Miller. Although these recent acquisitions have helped move the collection toward maturity, his conviction that his survey collection isn't yet complete assures the continuation of his constant search.

In our conversations together about the collection's history, one impression stands out above all others: the tangible joy that my father derives from his collecting activities. All collectors collect for a reason, whether for investment purposes, for their homes or businesses, for their own egos, or for the sheer pleasure of searching for and capturing quality examples of a beloved genre. My father clearly belongs in this last camp. His dedication to collecting art stems from an infatuation with the search for particular paintings and his ability to put those paintings together in a coherent collection. As a result, he has created a collection that has real value as a survey of American painting of the West.

As an enthusiastic collector-to-be, I have often asked my father's advice regarding various pitfalls that can catch young collectors by surprise. Characteristically modest, he has usually declined to add to the existing body of knowledge available to beginning collectors. Instead, he takes the position that one best learns to collect simply by doing it. Believing, however, that one should collect for the sheer delight of the paintings or objects themselves, he has consistently cautioned against collecting art solely as an investment:

I think if you do it for those reasons, you probably do it for the wrong reasons. If you truly love what you're doing and have a plan or a vision for your collection, then it becomes something you enjoy doing. It becomes a passion and a hobby. The fact that you are doing something that may or may not be financially rewarding becomes secondary.

--Sarah Anschutz Hunt

London, 1999

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Painters and the American West : The Anschutz Collection

0300087225

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