Schorer also recalls Anna Cunningham; George Abrams; Sydney Lewis; Chris Apostle; Nancy Ward Neilson; Jim Welu, as well as Rita Albertson; Tanya Paul; Maryan Ainsworth; Thomas Leysen; Johnny Van Haeften; Otto Naumann; and Konrad Bernheimer, among others. And I met wonderful people; I saw them all last night. JUDITH RICHARDS: Did you ever think about collecting drawings or prints? I mean, it was something I enjoyed doing, and I would do it again, you know? So all day and night we send pictures back and forth by WhatsApp going, "Do we think this is this? I wanted to go to the shelves and just start at one end and find things that interested me. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So I went to the director's office, and there's a glass door. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, the dealers that I would say, you know, rise to the level ofeven though they're inadvertent, because they don't know that they areI would say mentors, Johnny Van Haeften and Otto Naumann for sure. [00:28:03], JUDITH RICHARDS: Was your business background also important to them? JUDITH RICHARDS: Did you collect books ever? Winslow Homer. JUDITH RICHARDS: They don't have school groups or something? No. Right now I'm down to one 40,000-square-foot building. We love her. I wasn'tI didn't have anything approximating a cultural youth. Those days are long over. We should close the museum tomorrow and give everybody that walks by on the sidewalk $400 and just call it a day, because that's what the budget is. And I remember saying, you know, These are the best Chinese export objects that you can buy, you know, in America, because these were very much American market pieces. Have there been important dealers that you've worked with that have influenced. So part of what you were studying wasn't just the work; it was the market. JUDITH RICHARDS: When youin those early years, did you have a goal? TV Shows. So you've gotyou can put them side by side. JUDITH RICHARDS: It sounds likegone through all the money. Yeah. But, and I went right toI went right to the paintings. [Laughs.]. L-E-Y-S-E-N. And he's also involved with the Corpus Rubenianum; he's a great charitable giver. I would think that you did have a lust for the object, with all the objects you've accumulated. But the scholarship at the time said, "Wait a minute, that looks like a preparatory drawing for that painting," which then changed the attribution of the painting to a better attribution. You know, when a good picture arrives into that market, it creates a ripple, and it sells well. I think that that's a big problem, very serious problem in contemporary, you know, and basically where a collector-dealer can make a market for their particular artists by using friends and colleagues to install things in institutions to give them that curatorial imprimatur. So, yeah, I mean, there are some instances, but those kinds of thingsso we're doing that, and obviously, we're open and exploring ideas of what the next show will be. I don't know how many there were that were unsorted. I lived in Montreal off and on. [00:10:02], JUDITH RICHARDS: When you started out in this field, did you have a general sense of where you wanted to go? And as I said, I mean, that was ait was a wise decision to buy Chinese. [00:10:00]. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So, you know, there's still an auction wholesale-to-retail spread more because the presentation is slipshod and fast, and, you know, you're in a group of merchandise that goes across the counter on the same day. And so he gave me this Hefty bag and he told me to sort it. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Butyeah, I mean, there are occasionswe did a 5,000 years of portraiture show with an Egyptian Fayum and a Lucien Freud. But, yes, I believe so. I had a great time with that and didn't think it would go any further than that, and then the Agnew's thing occurred. And, you know, if I think about that in relative terms, you know, the Medici Cycle by Rubens is not as large as that. And so, those are wonderful. That's respect. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And so I was very happy to be there at the moment when they needed the business side to think about things like the real estate, the liability, the employees, you know, the human resource matters, the board relationship between their board and our board when they're being absorbed into our board, that sort of thing. JUDITH RICHARDS: grinding your own pigments. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Renovations; purchasing a company; selling a fiber optic switchyou know, whatever it isyou know, building a shelteryou know, we do all sorts of different sort of project-based companies, and nothing has cash flow, meaning I don't sell widgets and collect the 39-cent margin on a widget, and I don't sell X number widgets a year. And at that moment, I decided this marketplace is basically like a rigged stock exchange. I don't know that I ever, CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yes, no, no, other than going there and looking at things. I'm trying to think what other fairs we've done. I think George is the kind of old-school collector, where art consumes probably 45 percent of his brain [they laugh], as opposed to everybody else that I know, where it's 10 or 15 percent. Victor Building JUDITH RICHARDS: So this is a field where you're not cultivating auction catalogues and, CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, I mean, that's the field. JUDITH RICHARDS: Well, let's remember to get back to that. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So by the time I was 20, I started collecting, you know, monochrome from the Song period. JUDITH RICHARDS: it's kind of easy to figure out. And it came up for bid, and I was bidding on it, and I think it ended up pushing over [$]1.7 [million], and I was out. JUDITH RICHARDS: Yeah, yeah. I mean, this year, there might be two and next year there might be none. You know, they had the large office. JUDITH RICHARDS: An investor rather than a conductor. So I went to TEFAF; Hall & Knight hadthis must have been 2000had a phenomenal booth. And, you know, there was a day when Agnew's had 40 employees and a full building in London and, you know, exhibitions going on 24-7 and had printmaking exercises, had contemporary artists doing things. I'm trying to think where else Iand I traveled all over Eastern Europe during the communist period, so I spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe. JUDITH RICHARDS: and at the Worcester Art Museum. You have to understand, I think, that at the core it's about the object for me; it's about theit's about the artwork. You know. JUDITH RICHARDS: So the only alternativeif the person can be convincedis if you just offer them cash to buy it, and then you have a part of your inventory. But I bought it for the frame. This is incredible." They started chatting about art, and then Mr. Phillipson mentioned. I enjoy exhibitions at the Frick and at the Met. [Laughs. It's King Seuthes III. I've got some Portuguese examples. I don't know if, CLIFFORD SCHORER: I don't know if I would say collecting books. Well, that's because it's a posthumous portrait. And again, I mean, I don'tbecause it's not a family legacy business for me; I'm not planning on handing this off to a son, so I have to think very carefully about what the next generation of the Agnew's company will be. Like a Boule chandelier. And then I promised myself, I'm going to get out of high school and I'm going to go down to Virginia. JUDITH RICHARDS: Could anything be done? At some point. JUDITH RICHARDS: So was your contribution focused on that installation and maintaining that object and any other objects you might, CLIFFORD SCHORER: It's very complicated, but basically, JUDITH RICHARDS: Well, you don't need to. [Laughs.] CLIFFORD SCHORER: Much too generous with attributions. We do TEFAF New York, TEFAF Maastricht, Masterpiece. You know, you'd spend two days there every weekend. JUDITH RICHARDS: Do you see yourself or the gallery having a role as a mentor towell, yourself as a mentor to younger collectors and the gallery for its own interests to expandto grow a new generation of clients? So I go in there, find thisthere's this little Plexiglas box, and inside this Plexiglas box is the most breathtaking bronze I have ever seen. The angels that were inI believe it was The Adoration of Mary of Egypt, or Maryit was Mary of Egypt, The Last Communion of [Saint] Mary of Egypt. I was walking through the room, and they were giving this lecture, so I sat for the lecture, of course. [Laughs.] Mr. Schorer is a serial entrepreneur who specializes in the start-up acquisition and development of small and mid-sized companies. They were very, very strong. I mean, beyond generous with attributions. Best Match AGE -- Clifford A Schorer Jr Utica, NY Phone Number Address Background Report Addresses Trenton Rd, Utica, NY Sweet Fern Rd, Stroudsburg, PA Pleasant Ave, Herkimer, NY The subjects that they were trying to make that were attractive to the audience. And I said, "I wantjust let me in." So, I mean, I rememberI remember buying that because I thought it would be a good decoration. And in my new home in BostonI just got a small place to replace my big house because I needed a place to sleep when I'm in Boston. And my maternal grandmother, Ruth, was still living. You walk in; there's no receptionist. And actually, it was very similar to my grandfather, which was not his son but his son-in-law. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah, we are, and we will. I mean, there are many historical examples of seeing some particular painting in a museum and just standing there for 25 minutes and saying, you know, "I can't believe this painting. JUDITH RICHARDS: Having that expand? But, no, I mean, it's. And I think I needed more of a therapist than a decorator. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, I mean, you know, the only thing I would add to that last statement is that, in the gallery world, I think that everybody I know does it for love and not for money. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So I sold it all. And I had to carry the pieces. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And obviously really didn'tonly went back to drawings and prints when, you know, when there was something. So, you know, one major painting today selling for $25 million, even though the gallery may only make a commission on it, is still more than the gallery sold in adjusted dollars in 1900. You know. And I remember talking about that object for months to everybody and anybody. And I saw my name alone in a category, and I was very shocked, because I had never said, "You may do that." This isto me, this is one of the great paintings of Procaccini. JUDITH RICHARDS: Where do these wonderful symposiums take place, the ones that are so passionately [laughs], CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, those areyou know, I'm thinking of very specific ones. Winslow Homer. And I think her contribution to the house was some amazing curtains, which cost me a fortune. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yes. And on the other side of the equation, you know, the auction house is marketing to a buyer who's going to pay the fee, and it is going to impact your net sales price, whether you understand that or not, you know. I wanted to start by asking you to say when and where you were born, and to talk about your immediate family, their names, and anyone else who was important to you in your family. So I love to do a little bit of everything. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I went to TEFAF. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And he's a very entertaining historian. JUDITH RICHARDS: So as you got to 2000, 2001, how did your interestyou said you became involved with the Worcester Museum. I mean, I was programming cash registers at that point, so it was very interesting. And, frankly, after the story is lostand the story is what sells the picture, and then the picture is burned at auction; then it's worth half of what it was before you did that. I mean, it may at some point, but it's certainlyit's a measured approach, I think. So, you know, the finances of it drove the whole thing. JUDITH RICHARDS: [Laughs.] How did that acquisition come about? And sure enough, like a year later, the bronze show comes to London, and there it is with thein fullyou know, 100 greatest objects in bronze. So, you know, I hope that's really my contribution in that context. [00:08:03], CLIFFORD SCHORER: Chris Apostle from Sotheby's. American artist Winslow Homer (1836-1910) the self-taught master best known today for his scenes of nature and the sea got his start as one of the "special artists" of the Civil War. Or maybe even the. It was a very beautiful, 18th-century French frame on this Italian, Neapolitan, somewhat good 17th-century painting. So, it's the, CLIFFORD SCHORER: it's the hunt, the pursuit, the discovery, the investigation, the scholarship, the writing. JUDITH RICHARDS: If we can go just separate, not the gallery. JUDITH RICHARDS: You were spending more and more time involved with art as a business and as a passion. So I didn't know himI didn't know him as a young man. And, you know, that's a fun game, and it yields some fruit, it really does. CLIFFORD SCHORER: He stayed with my mother. JUDITH RICHARDS: Have you been involved with other arts institutions besides Worcester? CLIFFORD SCHORER: these are bigger projects. But for me, it's the combination of the conception and the craft, so the conception is very important to me; knowing that [Guido] Reni stole his figure from the Apollo Belvedere because it was here when he was there is interesting to me and Iyou know, to find that out, if I didn't know it before, either by accident or by some kind person sharing it with me, I'myou know, it adds a layer to my experience of the art that's different from my aesthetic experience of the art. Hurricane, Bahamas, 1898 Painting. JUDITH RICHARDS: And since your background, in part, was business, JUDITH RICHARDS: it would be fascinating to look at that example. Check Out this page to know the phone number about Clifford Schorer. This was the case for one art collector, who stumbled upon a rare drawing on his way to a get-together in 2019, CNN reports. 15 records for Clifford Schorer. [Affirmative.] So there came moments when I would be flush with cash because I did something, you know, reasonably successful, and then I would take all that money and go just sink it faster than, you knowprudently, but I would sink it. I mean, I didn't specifically go to try to find the dealer who made a market in Chinese in Paris. Like, get a sense of what it meant to him? JUDITH RICHARDS: So instead of collecting for yourself, CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah, I'm thinking about now collecting in a different way. So for the average buyer, philosophically thinking about that, they think, Okay, well, I'm going to sell this, and I'm not going to pay a commission. They just have both retired from us. [00:04:00], JUDITH RICHARDS: Which, if there's one person. JUDITH RICHARDS: What did you call it? [Laughs.]. I collect Dutch landscapes. JUDITH RICHARDS: Region, meaning New England? JUDITH RICHARDS: So that was really interesting and enjoyable, JUDITH RICHARDS: to learn what was entailed in. And he was an art collector. But I was definitely a museum-goer. This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators. So they put Anthony Crichton-Stuart, who used to be Christie's head of Old Masters, in charge of Noortman Gallery. And it impacts different institutions in different ways, but it's a big issue in the art world. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I was interested in history primarily, if I had my druthers. Thereas I mentioned, I had been chasing in 2000 this Procaccini, this major Procaccini altarpiece, which I was not able to buy, and it was theit was with Hall & Knight, and it was at TEFAF, and it was one of those TEFAFs that you go home utterly devastated. So it wasn't that I had a great knowledge; it's just that I thought Boston was very beautiful. CLIFFORD SCHORER: My grandfather and I had a similar language about the world. But it was still enough of the addiction dose to make you continue on and on, and on, and on. I think we might have one extra letter in there, but that's okay. But I just didn't have enough practice. JUDITH RICHARDS: Do you want to mention any specifics? That was completely alone. You know, people with whom I've sort of done business; I've had long conversations. Let's put it that way. I'm actually building a building in Massachusetts for that, which. And this was an example of something that they made to commemorate the 100-year anniversary, probably around 1744 or so, of the VOC [United East India Company] making entres into China to sell the export goods. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, we were in auctions, competing with other people who were in the trade, so often your sort of very important thing to keep in mind was what everybody else was doing relative to something you were interested in: who was on it, who was not on it, that sort of thing. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Sure. I mean, I think that right nowso what we did in the interim is, we did this portraiture show which brought in, CLIFFORD SCHORER: It brought in Kehinde Wiley, Lucien Freud, and, CLIFFORD SCHORER: you know, otheryou know, Kehinde Wiley's. He's not a regular "player" in the region, but what Cliff Schorer has accomplished as board president at the Worcester Art Museum over the last two years has helped revive attendance . CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, not gone through it; distributed it to the shareholders. Cliff has been . I never thought, frankly, it was a field of complexity enough to warrant even reading about it. JUDITH RICHARDS: [Laughs.] I mean, the number of those issues I've dealt with in only five years is astonishing. You know, it's ait's a story of ruination. And my mother was. I would go to HtelDrouot and spend the entire day, day after day after day. JUDITH RICHARDS: Have there been any surprises that you've come across in terms of this, being involved as you are with Agnew's? I know you read books. CLIFFORD SCHORER: O-C-K-X, I believe. JUDITH RICHARDS: So you're notit sounds like you're not sure you will go back to collecting for yourself. Our older colleagues might have found it charlatanism, but that's understandable. I think that's a big story for Plovdiv. And she got tired [00:20:02]. My great-grandfather, when I was around eight or nine years old, gave me a Hefty trash bag with 80,000 postage stamps in it and said, "Sort these out." JUDITH RICHARDS: to the Imperial porcelain? I lived in Massapequa, Long Island, for probably an extended period; I would say from about age seven until aboutactually, from about age eight until about 13. So, sure, I read, you know, whatever I could find. And I said, you know, "Thanks for that." We maintain the photographic backup to all of that so that we can research individual paintings in the photographic archive. Now you've got that top strata, which will always be high and going higher. JUDITH RICHARDS: everything that's going on. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Bless you. You know. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, that's changed. And to have, you know, people who mightyou know, whose eye I respect far more than my own, like Nico Van Hout at the museum in Antwerpto have somebody like that say, "Yes, you're right; you know, this is in fact what you think it is." So, you knowand the money they made is what made the Rembrandts. Web. I mean, there was a moment in each place in my head where I knew what was happening in those places because of history. JUDITH RICHARDS: Have you ever tried to, or wanted to, learn how to do any of the kinds of ceramic work or painting or whatever yourself to see what's entailed? I love to run around and look for paintings for them. So, yes, I mean, I'm very, very grateful that I did all of those things. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art. I mean, not because it wasit was cheap. JUDITH RICHARDS: You've started your own company, Bottom Line Exchange. And I'm very excited, because Procaccini will finally get a major, monographic book. CLIFFORD SCHORER: They would be artists that might be in storage and, CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, I mean they would be on the walls in some collections, and they might not be considered by art historians to be sort of the key figure of the movement, you know. [00:32:01]. And those days are now over, because the auction companies have created a broader market. But I think it was just muscle memory at that point, so. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Eggoh, it was worse than that. JUDITH RICHARDS: It sounds like you had a natural eye. JUDITH RICHARDS: When you were doing research and you were reading auction catalogues, those are catalogues with the sale prices written in. JUDITH RICHARDS: But for you as an individual collector? I mean, obviously, the team is small, so we have to pick our battles carefully. [00:25:59]. I mean, you know, when I think back to the Guercino that, you know, I find in a little catalogue, and then I do the work, you know, it is very gratifying to have something, especially something like van Dyck, which is, to me, you know, in the pantheon of gods. In their day, they weren't particularly valuable, which is why they're strewn all over Boston. So it is veryyes, you know, you have to put the, you know, the benchmarks of pricing in their histories, but now that I'm in the trade, which is a very different perspective, I have to take those shackles off a bit because I think like an old man, like every old man. He just built, I think, the first public museum in Antwerp. JUDITH RICHARDS: Mm-hmm. JUDITH RICHARDS: Is that the first time you've encountered that kind of [laughs] situation? So we just talked all night in the lounge at the hotel, the whole night, just, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, about this painting and that painting, where it came from andyou know. And why was it particularlyand this isstill we're inbefore 2000? So I had finished all this. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And Worcester was once a city of, you know, nine millionaires, and those millionaires supported the museum. JUDITH RICHARDS: Did you talk to him about collecting at all? ", CLIFFORD SCHORER: It's interesting. Being self taught, he practised with water colours and started his career as a commercial illustrator. And he started me on collecting, actually. And the. No, no, no. We had a Bill Viola exhibition of his martyrdom series [Martyrs: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, 2014] that he made for St. Paul's, CLIFFORD SCHORER: That was at TEFAF, the first time, CLIFFORD SCHORER: first TEFAF in Maastricht. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Sure. I bought a cash-flow business, that I don't need to babysit. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I tried toI made every installation decision. JUDITH RICHARDS: Is this something that youthat the Worcester Art Museum had to deal with, or have they always had good-quality climate control? Time goes by, and they use your name, yeah. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So it's a simple fact of plentiful quantities, disparity in quality that I could see and discern, and you could have entry-level objects at $50. I sold it all. I mean, I don't obsess over, you know, things that I consider decor in a way. We'll get into that in a few minutes. [00:08:00], CLIFFORD SCHORER: So he would've comehe would've come into America then, and didn't speak English becausefrom what I could tell, his English was a second languageand then became an engineer. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Early 20th-century British and Continental. You know, I love that. JUDITH RICHARDS: or show people the works there? But, yeah, I had a programming job there. The interview was conducted by Judith Olch Richards forthe Archives of American Art and the Center for the History of Collecting in America at the Frick Art Reference Library of The Frick Collection, and took place at the offices of the Archives of American Art in New York, NY. But if something great pops up in our little cabal, it immediately travels up to their level. That [01:00:00]. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I mean, I readwhen I get involved in something, I read obsessively. So, yes, in a way, you have to forget some of that. So did that affect your interest at all? But even better, it led me later to the apartment of the descendant of the original commissioner of the painting, whom I found in Madrid, from whom I bought the last painting from that same series. Is that whole chapter of, CLIFFORD SCHORER: So that whole story is fresh scholarship. Those are the ones where you go three days withof everyone presenting their papers, and then you have a Q&A at the end, and you can't shut people up because they're soyou know, they're fuming over what they've watched for three days. I love computer languages. So I think that the understanding was there that I was going to do it, so, you know, might as well support him in that decision and then see what happens. JUDITH RICHARDS: And most of the people bidding at auction in those days were the wholesalers. JUDITH RICHARDS: Mm-hmm. And heby the time I knew him, he had retired as, I think, the 50- or 60-year chief engineer of Grumman Aerospace, sofor their plants, not for their aircraft manufacturing. Now he stands to get rich off it. So I would go up to Montreal, live there for a little while, and come back. Hasyou've talked about a lot of traveling to discover, to see things that you were going to see, destinations. My role was in figuring out the real estate problems that the company had, the finance problems that the company had, the management issues that the company had, but not the art questions. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yes. And then I'd come back and make a lot of money for three weeks [laughs], and then I'd travel for three weeks. I was, JUDITH RICHARDS: Yeah. And you know, we had sort of half-begging, half-boasting meetings where we said, "Yes, we know the boy got all Fs in high school. Professor Schorer is a serial entrepreneur who specializes in the start-up acquisition and development of small and mid-sized companies. I couldn't sort of spur of the moment go say, Oh, buy this because it's very interesting. H-A-E-F-T-E-N. And Otto Naumann. So, you know. Oh, no. So, yes. So I went to the booth, and I talked to them about the Procaccini, and they didn't know who I was, and I basically wanted to keep it that way. Menu. So you have dead artists' legacies advocating, which I think is a much easier thing to negotiate. CLIFFORD SCHORER: by someone who possessed it. CLIFFORD SCHORER: That would've been a little bit early. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So where some of the other investors may have made a very small return because theytheir gains were diluted by the lossesI was very focused on, you know, "I want this painting and this painting and this painting." CLIFFORD SCHORER: No. I mean, in those days you had stamp and coin clubs, and you would go. So you haveyou know, you haveif you added all of that up and then inflated that with inflation, it probably still wouldn't equal one major sale today, because art inflation is actually much higher than monetary inflation. I think I've alwaysyou know, coming from stamps, where it's engraved image, going to Chinese porcelain, where I'm focused on the allegorical story or the painting on the plate, you know, the progression isobviously, I took a little detour in perfection of, sort of the monochrome and celadons of the Ding ware of the Song dynasty. I probably should, but, you know. This exhibition reconsiders Homer's work through the lens of conflict, a theme that crosses his prolific career. We drove my van, actually. I needed to think about walls. So, you know, I love that. I was in Prague. Yeah. ], JUDITH RICHARDS: Going back to putting your hat on as a collector, what would you sayif this is relevant to youis the most important piece of advice that you received about collecting, and, in the same sense, a piece of advice you would give someone who was starting out? And I said, "Your only quid pro quo is I want you to send me a photo of you giving a lecture with a bunch of schoolkids sitting in front of you in front of the painting.".