Handwerker Gallery Newsletter

Spring 2000 – Volume 2, Number 1

Talking with Murray and Dorothy Handwerker

In 1977 Murray and Dorothy Handwerker, Ithaca College benefactors and art connoisseurs with an outstanding collection of modern and contemporary American art, helped found the College’s art gallery, which is named in their honor. Murray Handwerker is also a trustee emeritus of the College. Through the Handwerkers’ continuing interest in the gallery’s activities and their financial contributions to its operation, the gallery’s storage area was finished last summer and the programming for this spring was substantially enhanced. In December the Handwerkers talked about their involvement with the gallery.

Murray Handwerker: The first questions are, how did we get together in terms of art background and what was our interest in Ithaca College?

Dorothy Handwerker: Well, our involvement with Ithaca College came from the fact that two of our sons [Kenneth ’72 and William ’76] went to Ithaca College, and they in turn met and married two Ithaca College girls. How we became involved with art? Well, we were always involved with art.

Handwerker Gallery: How did the idea of helping establish the gallery come about?

MH: The College was building the library. [President] Jim Whalen approached us and wanted to know if we would be interested in developing a gallery [on the ground floor of the building that would house the library]. And we said yes, we would be interested. [But] the space proposed for the gallery was tiny and intricate, and there were going to be classrooms on the same floor. So, how do you protect the gallery and how do you get in and out in emergencies? The interior stairway leading up to the library was a security problem. But the gallery was built, and Ithaca moved Dorothy Dillingham’s collection there. The gallery opened with an exhibition of the world-renowned portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh in February 1977.

HG: How do you think students benefit from having the gallery on the campus?

DH: An exposure to art and an exposure to things that are multicultural. . . . To have a cultural exposure, to see what is happening in the art world, to be aware that there is such a thing as art. There is a very serious lack of art studies in lower schools, in middle schools, in high schools. It’s been dropped completely, from what I understand. In most schools there’s no longer an art class. Unfortunately, I think that the intellectual level of young people today has been diminished tremendously. Yes, they may be making strides in [the use of] the Internet, but intellectual growth and growth as human beings have been diminished tremendously. And that’s why I’m very emphatic about art and all the arts. I think they’re vitally important.

MH: Art is a contribution to a well-rounded person, to being more than an expert technician in computers or business development and finance. But that’s what’s happening today — people are reading science and going into finance. They all want to be wizards on Wall Street. Their values are strictly materialistic, [developing] a new method on-line, off-line, a wireless computer, and so forth.

DH (laughing): He’s not a computer person.

HG: How did you start your own collection?

MH: When I got out of the army, we bought a home. The first item we bought for that home was our first painting. And our friends couldn’t understand this — how could you not buy furniture before you bought a painting for over the fireplace?

DH: We went to a gallery, where there were hundreds of paintings, and we each went our own way. We decided we would each write down what we liked and then get back together and make our decision. When we each completed our tour, we found that we had both chosen the same painting. The price was $1,200. Now Murray had just gotten out of the army, I was pregnant, . . . and $1,200 — oh, my!

MH: Raphael Soyer was the artist’s name. He wanted us to have the painting, so he said, "If you can pay for it over a period of a year, the painting is yours." And we paid monthly installments. But we had the painting in our home.

HG: Tell us more about your collection.

DH: We have an American art collection. And the reason we do isn’t that I felt American art was so superior. [Rather,] at the time we started collecting, I could buy the finest American art for much less than the old masters or the Impressionists or any of the [other] great art. So, as a result, we really have a superior American art collection: J. Alden Weir, Childe Hassam, Ernest Lawson, George Wesley Bellows, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacob Epstein. Two Whistler pastels. Then, Max Weber, whose work is fantastic, as good as, in my opinion, any Picasso or Braque. Mary Cassatt, of course. We still have a Soyer, Winslow Homer.

MH: [Dorothy] had the eye. She is amazing, absolutely. Gallery owners couldn’t get over her ability to walk into a gallery and choose the right work.

HG: Any memorable encounters with the artists?

DH: When I chose her Black and Purple Petunias, Georgia O’Keeffe wanted the painting back. I bought it from Doris Bry, her representative. And I got a phone call from [Bry] saying [O’Keeffe] wants it back, she does not want to sell it. It was Alfred Stieglitz’s favorite painting. So I said, "I’m sorry, I chose it. I want it, I love it. No way." [O’Keeffe] was furious. We met her at her show at the Whitney. If looks could kill . . . ! She was beautiful. Her eyes were like true steel.

HG: What direction would you like to see for the gallery now?

DH: Does the gallery belong to Women in the Arts? We’re members of this organization, and I think that’s a direction the gallery can investigate. They are setting up exhibitions all over the country to encourage people to exhibit women’s work. And how many great women artists do people even mention? O’Keeffe would be the only one.