Oral history interview with Virginia M. Zabriskie, 1975 May 28-June 6

Transcript

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Virginia Zabriskie on 1975 May 28. The interview took place at Zabriskie Gallery in New York, New York, and was conducted by Paul Cummings for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

The sound quality for this interview is poor throughout, leading to an abnormally high number of inaudible sections. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose.

Interview

PAUL CUMMINGS:  —say it's the 28th of May, 1975. Paul Cummings talking to Virginia Zabriskie in her gallery, in New York City.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —in New York and went to school in New York

PAUL CUMMINGS:  What kind of school, where?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Public schools, music and art high school, so that interest in art began with some small talent back then.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Were you interested in painting then?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Always, I mean, I always drew. I always painted. Certainly by the time I got to college my ability to [inaudible] passed my ability to paint.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. What about your family? Where they interested in—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, no they had no money, no pictures in the house. No, nobody really showed any real interest in art, though once I started in business my mother and father started to buy a few pictures, not from me [they laugh] but generally in competition with me.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But now where abouts in New York were you?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, we moved maybe 10 or 12 times, and it was late Depression. West Side of New York public schools.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Now Zabriskie is not your maiden name was it?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, I married in 1953—'52, '53. I married a man named George Zabriskie, and my marriage was coinciding—I married, and I opened up a gallery almost simultaneously.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Where did you meet him? Where did he meet you? [00:01:58]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  In a restaurant. [They laugh.] When we went one evening in a restaurant with a group of other—he was at that time he was in the army, running scripts for Signal Corps. He had no interest in art, but certainly he—I think through George Zabriskie, his encouragement and sort of a discipline that he taught me about—early in the gallery business I remember nobody had been in my gallery for three days, and I closed up, and I went home about four o'clock. And he said, "Well, if you're going to run a business you're supposed to be open till six. You stay there." And I've never, in almost 20 years of business, I have never been closed a day, and I have never not had an exhibition. So there's never been a season or period of time where I did not put up one exhibition, take down another—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Kept right on.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —on a day the gallery was closed. I mean, I noticed that some galleries close for installation. I have never been closed.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, if you've had this interest in drawing and painting as a child, what did your family think of this? Was it just something you did?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I think all children have talents, more or less, whether they're singing or dramatic, or painting. I don't think it was either encouraged or discouraged. It must have been encouraged enough to, you know, allow me to go to the school, which at that time required examinations, et cetera. [00:04:04]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, so there was some support but not—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh no, yeah. I had tremendous—I had tremendous business incentive, I think early on—always. I mean, I would make things to sell. I had lemonade stands. I made pins to sell—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You liked all of that action.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —I was always in business. And somewhat in competition with my father.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Now what did he do?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  He had a—last part of his life he had a bar. He was always in business for himself, and none of these businesses ever succeeded. They were in things like indoor golf courses and accounting, and all kinds of things. There was never any real stable—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Continuity, a lot of variety.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —continuity, yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you have brothers and sisters?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I have a younger brother who also, in terms of our background, has been quite successful.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Now who's he?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  He's state's attorney in Prince George's County and it’s a county, almost a million people, and he recently in—he tried [Arthur] Bremer in that—the man who shot [Governor George C.] Wallace.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, what's his name?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Arthur Marshall. So he has no interest in art. In terms of career, he has been successful.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, terrific. So what happened that you went to, going back to college, to—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  When I went to—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  —to high school. [00:05:58]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I went to Elmira for two years, where I had a scholarship, which I lost. Then I came to NYU, and I graduated from NYU.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  What was that in?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Art history.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  In art history.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Uh-huh [affirmative]. In 1949, and at that time I went to Europe for a year.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How did you come to study art history as opposed to, say, studio courses?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, it's seemed more natural. I combined studio courses with art history in my last two years in college.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Who did you study with? Any people who you remember?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, I remember Professor McMahon who gave a course in—a course that I remember liking in writings of art history. I studied with Professor Eden [ph]. When I met Walter Pach I remember, I suppose Walter was my first step into professional art world outside of school. I thought of him the other day when I went to see the Whitney show because I had picked him up in my in my junior year at NYU, and I had gone back, and so I knew him in '48 and '49. And when I went to Europe in '49, by that point he introduced me to Madame Focillon and Jacques Villon, and by that time I had met John Sloan. I had been to parties at George Constant's. I had sat for several portraits by Walter in his studio—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  By who?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Walter Pach. [00:08:00]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  In that studio on Three Washington Square North. And he had encouraged me to go into art history.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Now, how did you meet him the first time?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, [laughs] I walked into the Whitney, and there was this sort of man looking at me, and he was twirling his moustache. We started to talk about paintings. Of course I think it would have to be [inaudible]. It really, really is hard to hate him, and I told him what I thought of his pictures, and then he said, "I'm Walter Pach." And I said, "That's fine. I'm Virginia Marshall," because I did not know him, I didn't know anything about him. He told me he was an artist and he would like to paint my portrait. And I remember going back to Professor Eden and saying to Myron [inaudible] Eden, I said, "I met Walter Pach in the Whitney, and he wants to paint my portrait." And Professor Eden said to me, "Well, last time [inaudible] that you met Walter Pach." I said yes, and he says, "Last time I saw Walter Pach in the library, and I said, 'How are you, Mr. Pach?' Mr. Pach went humpf to me." [They laugh.] And I said, "Well, he didn't do that to me." And I can remember when I went the first time to sit for him. My mother sat in the park, in Washington Square Park while I went upstairs. And it began a friendship, which was certainly a very unique all the time that I knew him because of the difference in our ages. [00:09:57] I'm not sure exactly what that difference is now, but I would guess when I met him he was probably mid-60s, and I was 19, 18—18, 19, and I knew him until I visited him in the hospital just before his death '50—I mean, I'm not sure of the day, but it was, now, it's '58 or '59 he died, but I'm not sure. So I knew him for almost a decade.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How was he influential?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I think it was influential simply because probably the most important year for me was that year '49, '50 when I went to Europe, and even then he sent me to look up a professor that he had studied with when he was a boy, a young man. So I studied French with Professor Soccard, and if Walter was 65, Professor Soccard was 80.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  What was his name again?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  So Maurice Soccard.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Soccard.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And he was interested in—he had never been to Greece, but he had been a Greek and Latin teacher, I think, and he studies in Paris, and he was very helpful and very [inaudible] amazing. And Walter had studied French with him, I think, in 1916 or '17.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh heavens, yes.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And he sent me in '48 to study with him. So you know, it was a very important year. I belonged to—actually I belonged to the Focillon's Circle, and it was through Madame Focillon that I studied at the Louvre and actually took the exams for docent de conferencias [ph], I think it was called, and I was the first American to pass the exams to lecture in the department of painting at the Louvre. [00:12:18] And I was just a—I had never been out of New York, practically, until that point in my life, so. It was a wonderful time at 20, 21, to be in Paris. I haven't had any experiences similar to it before.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  That was just after the war, and it was—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  It was still [inaudible] war as far as we knew, yeah. But up to that point, up to 20, 21, I had never been in a gallery.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  What about the museum?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I had always been in museums. I think in New York, growing up in New York, I think you asked me before, I had a grandfather who took me to museums. So I was not unfamiliar with the Metropolitan or the Cloisters—museum.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Did you go to the Whitney, or was that—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, I don't think I ever went to the Whitney downtown till I was 18 or 19. I do remember—I do have some memory of Peggy Guggenheim's gallery, but it really wasn't until that year I came back in 1950 from Paris. I remember the first real dealer I ever met was when I came back, and Walter took me to meet his friend Pollock, a young man who had the Peridot [ph] Gallery downtown. [00:13:59] And I [inaudible], and then I went back to graduate school, and even then I had not—oh, I think one of my first gallery experiences was selling catalogues for the Goya show at old Wildenstein's in '51.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  I want to ask you some more about Paris though because how—the introduction to the Focillon Circle was what, through Pach?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Through Pach, also at that point I met Ellie Monroe [ph], Professor Monroe was lecturing there.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  What were the classes like that you took at the museum?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  The classes at the museum were very large. I think there I studied with Dorie Val/Vow [ph]. I studied with, let me see, [inaudible], some of the names will come back to me.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Now, those were all lectures?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  They were all large lecture courses, and [inaudible]. But these were large courses that probably had classes of 100.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh really?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  They were not the kinds of courses of seminars, smaller lecture courses that I took at the Louvre—I mean at the Institute [of Fine Arts at NYU].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But what did—you know, once you kind of ran through the course—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  A lot of these courses were simply being audited by students.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, I see.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I actually took exams in these courses.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  To become a docent?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  To become a docent.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Did you—you actually lectured in the museum?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Two or three times in English but that was all because see, at the end of that summer my mother came to Europe the first time. I went back.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, how did you find the Focillon Circle? [00:16:02] Who was—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, it was all very—it was overwhelming because I can remember one evening somebody asked me what my field of specialization was, and I felt—and I felt maybe blueberry muffins [they laugh] or something like that, you know, it certainly was a—I think—someone said to me the other day that he never really thought of me as a scholar. I don't think I was either. I think I enjoyed the kinds of investigatory things involved in art history, and I enjoyed art, but I remember even being back at school, the whole idea of studying German was just—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Not interesting.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —not interesting to me. Uh—now I worked here at NYU with J. Hudson, Jay Henson [ph]/Johnson [ph] with Harry Bober, with Craig Smyth.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How did you find Johnson and Smyth and those people?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, I loved Johnson. I remember his classes. I liked—I studied with Karl Lehmann. Oh god, this is like 25 years, and I have not mentioned these names. You know, it seemed—but always there was this ambivalent feeling about teaching. Harris Pryor [ph] offered me my first job after graduate school, and I had to make that decision by going up to Utica—an education.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Were you sort of interested in teaching at the time, or?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, it seemed obvious that I was either going to teach or work in a museum. I didn't see Utica until many years later. [00:18:01] Once when he was proctor and I think I went up for the Arthur B. Davies show, and I realized [laughs] that I had the made—that the museum itself was marvelous. It was located next to a gas station. And I saw where Utica was, and I knew I had made a marvelously wise choice in not—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  In not going there.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —in not going to Utica. At that time in Paris I had made a friend named Betty Morrison, who was at school with me and who was getting her master's, had gotten her master's at Yale. And when I came back and we were both back at the institute, my first interest in business was when I set up a business called Art Research Associates. And we charged people $2.50 an hour for research, and then we called on our fellow students at the institute to do the research. So Robert Rosenblum was one of our star employees [laughs]. And we would pay Bob and a dollar and a quarter, and then we would pocket a dollar and a quarter.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh fantastic.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And so I had this business. I think the most interesting thing we did as a business there was to get [inaudible] to publish press this, which helped them have the weight—they had never published.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, now how did that come about?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And that came about because we had gotten in touch with Perry Rathbone who was at that time head of, I think, Museum Association of America. And it was our plan to attend the functions and publish a list of prices, which we would then circulate to the museum association. [00:20:04]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, the museums, what about the dealers?  They weren't—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, and also to dealers. And we had gotten Perry Rathbone to support this idea, and we went to our first auction, and it was right after that that PV [ph] decided to publish the [inaudible] prices. But they had never, till '50, published prices. So I started, with Betty, this first business called Art Research Associates when we were in graduate school. But we did—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How did that function?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, it functioned even while I was in the gallery business. And we did work for [Germain] Seligman, [inaudible], private people. But it always meant looking for new work. And we would do—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Did you work on any large projects, or were they—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, the largest projects we ever worked on were projects which were not actually related to art research. We did a history of tea drinking through Lipton's history [inaudible]. These were picture workbooks, but through our research, we worked for—what I didn't like about it, and what I still don't like about it is calling up people and selling. I mean, I didn't like it in my own business, and I don't like it now.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You were calling up on the phone saying who you are and doing something? But how—it's very interesting because you have been a dealer for over—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Twenty—over twenty years.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How have you been able to function with that dislike?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I don't know how because I think now, in the last 12 or 15 years I've had a voice problem. [00:22:06] So that's been very difficult for me. I mean, in speaking. I don't know. I just do it.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You just keep going.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I just keep going, yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, to go back about the research, what would you do for someone like Seligman, for example?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, Betty finally ended up writing his books. I mean, she wrote his book on de La Fresnaye. I had met—that was one of our first real customers, so to speak, because I had met Ethylene Seligman, Germain's wife at graduate school, and she had introduced me to Germain, and we simply—I remember, he was a very old fashioned‑type dealer. And he would never let me work at the Frick because he always felt someone would be looking over my shoulder. And—uh-huh [affirmative]—he was really not letting your left hand know what your right hand was doing, so that I remember one of the important pictures I worked on was a Vermeer that the Wrightsmans bought and was—eventually ended up at the Met. But we worked on that picture for some time [inaudible]. Seligman had acquired, now I forget exactly from whom in Belgium came [inaudible]. And it was the first picture and very sophisticated picture that the Wrightsmans ever bought. And they bought that picture through Seligman. But there were all kinds of lesser things that we would do. [00:24:02]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  What would you do, provenances?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Provenance, exactly—[phone rings]—and auction catalogues and all kinds of—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Books and publications.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —books and—[phone rings]

[Audio Break.]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE: — which I really don't do very much in dealing with contemporary art.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, you don't have it in that way.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Not in the same way.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  There's not enough time or not changes of hand or ownership. Did she continue in her activities for a while?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  She continued working when our business dissolved. She continued working for Seligman till about eight or nine years ago. And she now is the art editor for New York Graphics [ph] and has gone on to do that kind of work.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Into the book—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Book, yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  —book business. Well, what did you do between the time you—you know, this went on for a number of years.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, I 'll give you chronology.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I was in New York in '49 and '50. I came back from Europe '50, summer. I left for Europe in June of '49, came back August '50. I worked all that year at graduate school. At the end of that year I worked at—with Betty. We had talked about our business. We opened up our business. She came to New York in '51. We opened up our research business in '51, but I also had to support the business. So in '51 I wrote for pictures on exhibit. Betty also had infantile paralysis, so she did not work. I had outside jobs to support our business, and I worked that year for Charles Offen [ph] doing reviews in '51. [00:26:07]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How did you like that business?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Of what?

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Writing reviews.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, I was very timid. I don't think I gave me—first of all, I don't think he gave me very good people to review. I think I got the reviews that nobody wanted. [Phone rings]—was very, very timid about reviewing. People—I'm trying to remember who I actually reviewed. I remember Joseph Meert, went to his studio. I reviewed—I'm trying to think. I probably did about 20 reviews for Offen [ph].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Did you like writing about art?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I didn't write easily. It was a struggle. I think they were competent. I don't think that—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But writing about art didn't become an interest?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I don't think I was an easy writer. And I think everything I do, whether it was school or gallery, I have to work very hard. I think I have worked hard. I don't think either—somebody long ago gave me a little saying from Moby Dick which said, "Oh, time, strength, cash, and patience." I think it is simply sitting and working at something that if I have succeeded it's because I—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Just kept going.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —I just keep doing it.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  So you were—going back to chronology, you were doing this—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, '51 Betty and I opened our business. [00:28:00] I worked at part-time jobs to help support the business. We had a little apartment. Our rent was $100 a month on 52nd. We put out [inaudible] called Art Research Associates—we used the most illustrious person I remember, as I said, from school was Bob Rosenblum. Then we ran maybe in the height of our research business we had four or five researchers.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh really?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, we paid a dollar and a quarter, not full time [laughs].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Who else was working for you?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Ellen, let me see. If I went through my files I would—you know, maybe I could pull out bigger names. She later went to work for William Stein's. Ida Ruben was in graduate school then. I'm trying to think of who we used. I'm not sure that all of these people have continued in the art field.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, why wasn't it a money-making proposition?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, even then at $2.50 an hour because when we gave anybody an hour's work, we really gave them an hour's work in order to establish ourselves at $2.50 an hour [laughs] we probably worked an hour and a half for everyone we charged an hour, you know. I mean, it was hardly even money-making. It was not a winner [laughs]. I mean, we were simply working an hourly basis, and we never had that much business, and we didn't handle a good part of it ourselves.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, I see. And then you also had to find new—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Our whole idea was—have you got a minute?

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Sure.

[Audio Break.]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  We did, uh-huh [affirmative], you know, we got a lot of publicity [inaudible]. [00:30:06] That was in the High Museum [ph].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Did it become easier to find clients after a while?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, a lot of people would keep calling us back, you know. [Inaudible.] Oh, that's not how—that was helping my gallery.

[Audio Break.]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —really, always fixated on magazines I could never [inaudible].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But not Vogue?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Not Vogue. I was able to push the image [inaudible] too far back. However, that continued into the time I had my—even here. Which year is this? That was in a way, this is the least interesting part of my career [they laugh] and so during my career in art is—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  It's all the, you know, the beginnings of it. So, you know, what prompted the development of the gallery.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, what had happened was that in—you asked me where I met my husband. I was at graduate school, and there was a man I went out with named Marvin Korman, and I guess I met my husband December '52. And we were married in—I didn't meet him December, I met him June '52, and we were married in December of '52. And we went off then. I was still running my [inaudible] and at that time Betty moved in with my mother-in-law. [00:32:00] [They laugh.] And we continued our business from my mother-in-law's apartment. And then that year we worked in '50—January '53—'54 in June, about a year and three or four months later, my friend Marvin Korman got married, and I had that—my husband at that time was—I'm thinking slowly to get dates for you—was working for the Signal Corps, we had been in El Paso, Texas, and Marvin Korman had let me take his show of graphics down to El Paso where I put on a show at El Paso at Western—I forget now.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  At that museum?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, it was the university.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, the university.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And I had never—no, I had a marvelous time. I had a better time in El Paso than I did in Paris in some ways.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  In what way?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Because I had never seen climate like that. And I was marvelously successful with this little show of Marvin's that I took to El Paso, Texas.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Now, did he have a gallery there?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  He had a gallery downtown, called the Korman Gallery, and then he moved up to 835 Madison. And he was at that time showing people like Ed Casarella, Vinnie Longo. Somebody named Sam Aiden [ph]. He had Pat Adams, who I still have, because of Vinnie. And I took this group of prints down there. [00:34:03] And I had—oh, I was on television and there were lots of articles, and I just had a marvelous time, and I felt very successful in El Paso. And at that time I thought, well, if I lived in a small town I'd obviously could be very successful, I just—we had no money, and we had no introductions when we went there, but by the time we left El Paso I had met a lot of people, and all kinds of people had come to the show. I had set up at Texas Western, I guess it was called, and I had had my television show, and I had a marvelous time.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh my goodness, you were doing all those things.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  But all of this happened from the hotel De Soto, where were we were living and writing scripts—I mean, George was there writing scripts on the M1 rifle for the Signal Corps while he was still in the army. And I think even before we left El Paso the mayor of El Paso had called [inaudible].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How long did you live in El Paso?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Four months, five months, it—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Just for a little?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —yeah, just a little bit of time [laughs]. And then I came back to New York, and Marvin had gotten married. And this was June '54, and Marvin felt he had to get a job. He could no longer keep his gallery. So, Marvin said would I like to buy his gallery? At that point my grandmother had left me a $1,000. She died. And George's uncle had died, and I think George inherited about $10,000. So, he had given some of that. [00:36:00] But anyway I really did not feel I had to earn a living, at least I couldn't spend money, so I bought [ph] Marvin's gallery for a dollar, and that was May‑June of '54. And I had $185 a month rent. I had Marvin's stationary. I ran the gallery from 1954 to, I guess, '55 or '56 it was called the Korman Gallery till I ran out of stationary [they laugh]. I charged all of Marvin's artists then because I had never really been in a gallery, $100 a year, for the first year. Everybody paid all their expenses of their exhibition. I can remember for the first three years because I would not pay sanitation, which was $5 a month, carrying the garbage to the corner to dump it. So my expenses were my rent of $185. I had 14 artists who paid me 100 bucks, which was $1,400, which about covered rent. And I opened up a gallery. Vinnie Longo was a big lecturer. He would come in and give the lecture. And he was a big organizer because I remember the first show Lester Johnson's picture would hang nowhere, it didn't fit. [They laugh.] And I think that was June '54, [00:38:00] and that first year—well it's all in my files from then on exhibitions and that kind of a thing. I remember I was so innocent about business, and I was in for six months and had not charged an increased city sales tax because I absolutely did not—I was almost in business eight or nine years before I had an accountant.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh really? [They laugh.]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I hired an accountant, '65.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, in the first—when you were still at the Korman—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Because people keep asking me, "Well, did you—" people still think that I had $50,000 or $100,000 [inaudible] or somebody was rich, but I had not really been, except those few shows I had reviewed for Charles Offen [ph], my experience with dealers and Old Masters. I was scared to go into galleries. [They laugh.] I'm still a little hesitant about walking in galleries. [They laugh.] You know, I really understand people walk right in.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Who did you sell things to while at Korman?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I had no one— I knew no one. I remember, you know I had actually been there about three weeks open, Philip Rushman [ph] walked in. Nobody really walked in. I had no friends that bought art. I'm trying—we would have to go back through those early records to see. Very early on even the Museum of Modern Art [inaudible] small pieces. Sold a few prints—Ed Casarella. Earl Boyer [ph] bought one or two of the first things. Showed David Sawin, he had a couple of friends who bought the pictures. [00:40:06]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you have any idea about what the gallery was doing or?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, I was—oh no. I don't even know—I remember the first woman who walked into me. She said—I never knew that prices were not fixed. [Inaudible.] Woman came to me, and she said, "Are these prices fixed or can I bicker?" I said, "Bicker?" [They laugh.] You know, of course since then I've had that, you know, I realized the prices are not fixed. And it was completely—my experience was, I think in some ways it's been very good because anything I've learned about running a gallery has been learned on the job. I've had known. No pre-conceived because I say— well, I was 24, [2]5, 25 years old. Or no—26. I mean, I had no background really before that. I mean, people said—have said to me, "What did you do before?" I never did. I mean, as long as I'm in business. And I realized that I'll never be married 50 years, because I got remarried the second time five years ago. But it's conceivable that I will be in business 50 years, and maybe the oldest living art dealer [they laugh] in America at some point.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I mean, in continual—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Operation.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —operation. It's very conceivable to me that I will be in business—if I'm in business 21 years now, and I'll be in business 26 more years. [00:42:08] I mean, that's possible.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh easily.

[Audio Break.]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I mean, I feel it's all there, you know, but still.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But you know, what happened? Here you were in this gallery with—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I mean, every day I went to work. Sometimes—I mean, right now—I used to read books or magazines, or talk to people—people in those early days calls used to frighten me because I'd be alone and it'd grab me [ph]. Al Jenson was someone who would lecture me early on—oh, Brach.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  What do you mean people would lecture you? They—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, they would come in. They'd tell me what the art business was about, how I should run my gallery. How Paul Brach was a big lecturer, he still is. Al Jensen—I thought of how the other night when Will Pickard [ph] is—I saw Will at a party at Matilda's, and I realized that, you know, Al and Will were together, and Will wrote—one of the first bits that was written about me was little—writing about me in terms of women art dealers for German magazines, and I was the youngest. And I had any distinction at all of how [inaudible], but it was written up in Mademoiselle or Seventeen. It was written simply on being the youngest because there was nothing else [they laugh] to write about. You know that was why. That was my thing.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Did you go to studios? How did you meet other artists?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Artists would walk in. I mean, I didn't know any artists except those that I—I think probably when I went in the gallery. [00:44:06] I had a good art history background. I knew those few artists that I had reviewed for pictures on exhibit. I hate to say it, I'm not sure in '54—I knew Pollock because I had met him at the beach in the summer, he had picked us up. I think I knew de Kooning. I knew Picasso. I knew Brach. I knew 20th century French guys—I knew Jacques Villon. Didn't know contemporary artists outside of Walter Pach's studio. Few studios reviewed for pictures on exhibit. George Constant's studio, John Sloan's studio, Edward Hopper's studio.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How did you like the studios? I mean, this was a—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, well, this—I mean Walter—I mean, it was so romantic how even though he was a lecherous something, I mean, that he was, he would tell me stories of—he'd read me correspondence from Diego Rivera, how he loved Mexico. He would read me all the letters [inaudible]. I can go around, I can close my eyes today and see his studio, and I can see the bowery bronze on the table. I can remember the Marcel Duchamp chess players over the bookcase. I can see the George Constant. I can see the Delacroix of the Arab hanging on one wall. I can see the [inaudible]. [00:46:01] I can see the George Hoff [ph] paintings and the little study room. I can see the Raymond Duchamp torso standing right placed in front of his window. I mean, I can go around.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You could draw a map.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And I can draw, literally draw a map of those pictures in that room. I cannot see my favorite little—I was looking at a Bari yesterday, the tiger eating a fox or something in the [inaudible] collection drawings downstairs. I said, "Oh, it's not as good as Walter's [inaudible]. No, I love that show. I can see each picture as I go around. Of course, at that point he was selling things, and he was selling things to [inaudible]. In the last years of his life, that's how he lived. He would sell pictures, but the studio was—I mean, it was romantic, you know. I think I got then, at the—Walter Pach's lifestyle was interesting. I knew he was not a good painter though. When he was me—was with me, he was holding his painting [inaudible]. And anything he had done as an historian seemed to be very secondary to him. He wanted to be known as a painter. But he even couldn't fool me. [00:48:00] You know, I knew that somehow—he encouraged me in the gallery. He would come to the gallery. He'd look at Lester Johnson, and he would say, "Now, if he would not paint that picture before breakfast, if he would learn to paint after breakfast and not before," that was one. He was not—really he was sympathetic [inaudible] Pach was, to me, but I don't think he liked what I was showing.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, how long did it remain the Korman and when did it become—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  About a year and a half.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  And then you ran out of stationary.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, I ran out—Korman also, it meant I was at 835 Madison, also meant changing the letters in the window. And in those early days I thought about it too because they do have history. A woman—one of my early sales was to a woman name Cynthia Philip, and she had come—I tried all things to attract people in those early days. I had a fiddle [ph] program. And I had met a man named Walter Lohan [ph]—oh no, he was a filmmaker. He had a lot of money.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Walter?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Lohan [ph]? I'd have to look up that film probably, and I ran it on Thursday nights, and my idea was to be open on Thursday nights and keep the gallery open [inaudible].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How did you pick Thursday night?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, it was like department stores. And I had all sorts of schemes for [inaudible] and these artists from my second floor. And film programs had never worked because people would come to my gallery for the film programs. [00:50:02] Buddy Lowenthal [ph]? I should look that up because he was quite a well-known show [ph]. He showed films that he had done on [inaudible] and modern American folk art, and he had people that I was going back to think of my friend Cynthia who came. She wasn't my friend before David Sawin's show but she had come to see David's show, and I had unpacked the gallery. It was Thursday evening, and she was sitting on the steps, and she was just irate at me. And she came back, and she said, "You're supposed to be open Thursday nights and you're closed." And she bought a little picture, and after that she had had a baby, and she used to leave her baby in my window, at the corner gallery was a kind of step-down window. And she thought, well, because she had—you know, I had nothing to do. I just sat there, and this has been the myth that people have had 20 years. People who would never call on you if you worked in the bank always drop by your gallery, and in no shears [ph] people used to drop their babies off because they thought I had absolutely nothing to do. There I sat all day waiting for people to come in and buy—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Be the babysitter.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —some pictures. So once I think I had two babies in the window, which actually was a step-down window, so you couldn't really see the babies, and no one really did come and we used to keep babies occasionally in the gallery. It was about a year and a half, and it meant changing the stationary. It also meant that I had succeeded a little bit. And I wasn't scared to have a gallery, you know, that it was going to work. [00:52:00]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  When did you think you got that sense, that it was going to?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I didn't know, and I certainly didn't even have it when the [inaudible] Bob Schoelkopf called. Bob was also one of my first buyers. And Bob had bought Pat Adams from me, and he was at Yale, he had never worked. I think Bob's about a year older than I am. And I liked him. And it was after I had been in business three and a half years that my lease was up. I had no money, and I thought, oh, what am I going to do? And I wanted to move. I wanted to enlarge the gallery, and it was at that point that I thought, well, if I do anything at all— you know? And if I had a partner, who would I want? And I thought of Bob, [inaudible] I had been in business. I think Bob went in business with me '57, '58. But I had opened up '54, '53. We have to look up should look up [inaudible].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But now, you had moved the gallery, right?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, I was always at 835 Madison. It was just three years, I think, till I went in business with Schoelkopf, and we went to 32 East 65th.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  That's right.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Wasn't it, 32, we took over Allen's [inaudible] Allen's.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, right, that was that long—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  It was a beautiful space. It was a gorgeous space. And it was with that show, it was Schoelkopf that I got into earlier American things with that New York City show. [00:54:06]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How did you come to do that? What was the idea behind the—or how did the idea appear even?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, I don't know. I mean, it was all—Bob and I wanted to do something. We wanted to be open in July. Do you know which year that show was? I don't even know. Do you have it?

[Audio Break.]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —in '58. See, Bob did not pay anything to come in business with me. Simply it was a question of, again, sharing expenses. By the time our partnership dissolved because Bob did not like being called Mr. Zabriskie. He was getting married. Then I paid Bob for that dissolution. By that time we had begun to make a little, you know, at least there was something to divide up by the way of inventory.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Now, you know, going back to the—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Is this interesting to you all?

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Or, I don't know what you want. I knew a lot of artists and that maybe if you ask questions—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, that's—I wanted to ask one other thing, about Robert and—Schoelkopf. He had just come into the gallery one day.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  He had just walked off the street because he lived across the street.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, I see.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I think he also liked me. I think a lot of—[laughs] I have to tell you, I think a lot of my early successes, such as they are, was that Walter Pach liked me. Bob Schoelkopf liked me. I mean, I don't think—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Was he collecting or just buying things?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, he was—he had been at Yale. [00:56:01] I think Bob and I have very different points of view about art. I think we are very, very different, and I think we are admiring of one another. Bob has and remains for me just about the most erudite man I have ever met. And he is just a fountain of information and knowledge, which he was able to retain whole and use. And he had been at Yale. He had never worked at all. He had been on his way to Portugal, I think the year before, to translate some obscure, contemporary Portuguese poets.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  He was really a scholar.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And then he ran into some art history friends from Florence, and they were studying in from Yale. And I think that was his first contact with art history. And his first purchases were from me, and he bought a few things. Now he didn't—I mean, it wasn't till very recently—I always thought Bobby had a little money. Well, his mother had a little money from Polaroid [ph]. But his parents now were elderly and sick had no money. This is also kind of misconception. I mean, nobody has had a more difficult year than Bob and his [inaudible].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  No, no.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  But Bob, to me, is one of the most indestructible, in all 25 years of art dealing. I'll tell later, more of this, you know, art dealer story about Bob Schoelkopf. [00:58:02] But his point of view has never, I think, been very visual.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  It's always kind of historical or—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  It's historical.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  —and social or literary.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Just the way he sets up shows, I mean. Also, one of his problems, I think, is he has no business sense. To go back, I think I have always had a sense of business, and I think that's one of the reasons I have survived. And I think many people who have gone into business have varied. I think this is one of the—to get back to '75 and feminism, is that when I went in business, Paul, there were a lot of women dealers. Many were in contemporary art, and today there are many fewer.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah, and no new ones. [Inaudible]. A couple.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I think simply in the '60s contemporary art became big business. Oh, art has always been big business. But women had been motivated not towards business but in a—and I used to think when I first went in, if I could only make $100 a week. That's all I really want to make. I just don't want to struggle. If I could just take a salary, make $100 a week, which seemed at that time—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Like a lot.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —a reasonable salary. And that's all I would want. I would like to do my business and to do it well, and I'm not really motivated for money, and that in some ways I think I have succeeded because I have been a little more—maybe that's starting from the beginning. [01:00:08] Maybe it's nothing. Every penny counts [ph]. I mean, today nobody writes the checks but me. And I really save—I look at that phone bill. I look at the restoration. I study the advertising. I know my printing costs. I think—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Got to watch every piece, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —many, many people have entered this business either because they've come out of money, they had money. I'm not sure what dealers, as I look around, started with $1,000 from the [inaudible].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Not many.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Or else had not—people have always—there was a myth this one time that Hershel was packing.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But he bought a lot from you.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  He's bought a tremendous—he accounted for 25 percent of the sales for at least a five-year period. He kept my business alive. Uh-huh [affirmative].  But I never, outside of my mother—and that's what's so terrifying about my business now. I used to be able to close my gallery in June, open it up in October and say to my mother, "Please hand me $300 to pay my rent." I have never borrowed more than $500 in my life. [Phone rings.] But that was always from my mother.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, that's fantastic.[

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And I have never—people have come to me even recently in funding asking me if I need money. [01:02:07] My business is still run in the most simplistic way, and nobody believes it [laughs]. I mean, it is self-generated. I have never even borrowed money to buy a picture.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Really? How about that.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  People don't understand [laughs]. I mean, if I—you know, I have never. I don't know. People say, well—even bankers offer to loan me money [they laugh]. I mean, the whole business is still run like a lemonade stand.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  So it's just, you have to sell more lemonade?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  It's all self-generated, yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, right. Um—

[Audio Break.]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —one of the reasons [inaudible], and today I really feel, because I know Denise Rene is a lot of trouble. Rumor has it that she had a lover whom she later [inaudible]. And I think today I am the woman dealer who makes the most money [ph]. And I run most of my business. I don't think there's another one. I'm sure.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Because I don't think—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  That can match my last year's money.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Now, Betty Parson's doesn't do what you do?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  She's never run money, really.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  No. Every time her artist got expensive she lost interest and made a leave.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I think I am the only one. The general [inaudible] as much money. I don't know Nancy Hoffman or Paula's situation, and I believe [inaudible] has packed hers. She couldn't not. I think I am, at this point in my career. My expenses now run $10[,000]-12,000 a month, means that I have to sell $400,000 a year. [01:04:15] And it's still that same struggle I had before because I have no big name. And each time last year I tried [inaudible]. This year I tried for Cornell. Each time I'm waiting for that one big name—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Sort of big thing, yeah, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —that will make this gallery less of a struggle.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah.

[END OF TRACK AAA_zabris75_8187_m.]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  —side two.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —the feminist part is this part is because it's a period of [inaudible] today.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah, but I'm curious because you began, or you were showing people like George Holt.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, but I didn't show George Holt.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But later.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Later, yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Later, I mean, but, you know—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  It was 1958—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  —fifty-eight.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —fifty-nine.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, right.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Bob and I decided to do this city show. It's called The City. It was at that point we had our first contact with Katz. Both of them were Katz, Leslie Katz, his father Joe Katz. First time I met Hirshhorn came in, bought the Bellows from me, did all his dealings with [inaudible]. We did a show. I don't even remember now how we decided that I would do a show in July. We'd have to look up that day, in '58, called The City. And Pach must have been alive because I remember him putting me in touch with Antoinette. So it was either '58, '57.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Had you gotten to know other dealers much by that time?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, I didn't know anyone. I knew a few. I knew my old friend Lou Pollock. I never got out of the gallery because I had no one working for me. Nobody worked [inaudible] worked for those three and a half years. Simply I was there every day. I think once I went away with George. We got Joe Boyer to gallery sit. Occasionally one of my artists would [inaudible] sit a half a day, but I simply went to that gallery every day at 10:00 and sat till 5:30.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Did you think about—[00:02:00]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I never went out.   

PAUL CUMMINGS:  —no, no, did you think about what it was to do—what you were to do as a dealer?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I knew I had to know [inaudible], write a press release, to sign an enhancement, hang the shelf. But I still did not how to sell. Artists were recommended. Couldn't go to many studios. I did not really want to—had no social life in the modern art gallery. My husband was not interested. I think that was one of our problems in the end was that people called him Mr.—you know, asked him about the gallery. He was very helpful in the gallery, much more so than Arthur—he was involved in helping me physically with that gallery. First contemporary picture here, like this one by Pat Adams, which was hanging at home. I never bought a picture, did not own a picture. I had been in business, say, four years before I bought a picture. I have bought some donated prints in Paris in '49 for a quarter each. I had bought some Chagall prints, you know, couple bucks. Jacques Villon had given me a couple of etchings. Marvin, when I got married, he gave me a Jacques Villon print, but I never owned anything. I had never owned a picture. I have never been a collector. I met Fred Price early on, and he said to me, "Sell, and then repent." I've always had the feeling that pictures do not really belong to you. [00:04:00] They're there in passing. Also makes me a very bad salesman for art. Sue Vanderwood here is a much better salesman because she believes in possession. I have never had much money, so I'm always very shy about prices. I always feel, mm. I always feel sorry for people who spend all that money on pictures when they really shouldn't be apologetic for prices. People say my prices are low. Sue very often gets a higher price here for some [inaudible], you know. Somehow it's very hard for me even 25 years later to put price or dollar and picture together—I always feel it's [inaudible].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, I get the feeling from what you say that the exhibition about the city was really that—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —our first collection, it absolutely was. I mean, I had sold some small things. I had sold [inaudible]. You know, I think once at an Ed Casarella show I had sold $1,500 worth of pictures, which meant that I had $500. I remember my first tragedy. I had sold a large painting by Salvatore Grippi to a woman from Chicago. It had been $300, $400. I knew it had almost paid my rent for the month. I had bought a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Sent the picture to Chicago. It was the first big painting I had sold, and told my husband about it. Maybe it was six months after I had been in business. [00:06:00] Up to that point I had sold nothing for more than $30. And sold that picture. Then the woman sent it back. And at that moment it was the only time in my life I had doubts about continuing. And now pictures go out and come back, but I never told my husband that picture had been returned. I really just suffered through the sale and lost the sale. I had put on some good shows, I felt, by myself. I had a beautiful drawing show in Korman that I had done of American drawings. And as I look back on and the list of Edwin Dickinson, and people—Corbett was in that, Dickinson, Hallberg, and all kinds of nervous people. And made people—I let them know it was a drawing show, and people came and showed me drawings, and I think that show was '56, '57, beautiful Franz Kline. But I couldn't get out of the gallery. You see, that was my problem when I was married. For those years—that's why even today I don't get out enough. I'm happiest coming to work [they laugh] at 10:00 and staying till 6:00. And I think it may help something. As I think about it even at this moment with you, just the discipline of always going to work and staying.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, go and do it, and that's what you do, yeah.     

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, so people came to me. I passed word around that I was doing a drawing show.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, and things would appear.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And all these artists came. [00:08:00] Hundreds of artists of which I chose 35 drawings with prices like $30. My highest‑priced drawing, I think I remember looking at that drawing show was, say, Edwin Dickinson at $100. But I didn't have any money to buy drawings. You know, we sold a few for $25. Wolf Kahn bought one out of that show. He bought a drawing of Lester Johnson's from me. And I think how you could sell the Wolf at $30, and then he took his money and Lester.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah. Well now, where did Lester Johnson come into this?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Lester somehow was—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Because he seems to be an early—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —a matter of getting that group, and he had come. Joe was working at Artist gallery, and he had had one show in Artist's before he had his first show with me. But he really did not fit in with that Vinnie Longo, Ed Casarella, Pat Adams, [inaudible]. There was another. There was a lot of—Marvin had had Philadelphia print cut crew. So it was Vinnie in those days, in that first years, since they were all paying $100 each. Vinnie often times would hang the shows in his house. There where was absolutely no place for Lester's pictures except behind my little desk. The gallery was a half a shop on Madison which made it about 15 feet wide by 40 feet in length with a storefront window, which I made a little store space in the back, and I sat right up front so that anybody who walked in I talked to. [00:10:06] And that was not too much talking [they laugh] because there was nothing else to do. Marvin had given me his mailing list, which I think had been based out of the Museum of Modern Art, which he had gotten. But sometimes I feel I still have [inaudible] very discouraging, [they laugh] my mailing list 20 years later. I think the nucleus of it still may be Marvin's mailing list.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  One year later?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  [Inaudible.]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, that's horrible.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  [Inaudible.]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Now, how did—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I saw people like Dickinson and people [inaudible], these people. I knew Martha early on—Jackson. She had opened up a couple years before me, two years. And she was on, before she built her gallery here she was on 66th Street, and Harold Diamond was working for her. That's how Harold came to make his first money, was getting [inaudible]. And Harold I knew quite well at that point because he was moonlighting. He was working as a social worker, while he was working for Martha, and I somehow got to know Martha. I knew Lou was across the street. I knew Martin Woodfield [ph] at that point. I knew our galleries in the neighborhood. There was Martin. There was Lou Pollock. There was Martha. [Door buzzes.] I knew Allen Poindexter, and I had admired—I started you know, in some way—excuse me.

[Audio Break.]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, what did this mean now that you were meeting with some of the other dealers in the neighborhood? [00:12:02]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I felt insecure too. I mean, I felt certainly with those women. They were older, Billie, Betty. Martha. Rose Fried I had met very early on because she had—see, I had done my graduate work on Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp, and she had done very early shows by herself. So Rose was one of the Ms. Fried until Walter—it was only the last two years of Walter Pach's life that I called him Walter. It was always Mr. Pach. So I did have some experience, you know, I met dealers.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Did you learn from them?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, I learned—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Did you talk—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —from everybody.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  —business , would they tell you how they did things or how they had learned? Was there communication?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, not really. I guess because I wish I ended [inaudible]. [They laugh.] Although that's probably fairly obvious. Simply, I opened up a business and ran it pretty much like I thought a store was run. You have things in your store. You kept your door open. People would walk in. That's what they did. I remember the first time I saw a woman walk the street in a mink coat. She came in. She liked a print. She bought one from me. I simply thought this—you have—you open up your door.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do some advertising.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  But, and very early on I had—at that time Dore was writing for the New York Times.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Dore Ashton.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  She came in the gallery, and she liked me. We were contemporaries, and my first show, my first group show, she said, "Virginia Zabriskie has taken over from the Korman Gallery which ran last year. [00:14:08] She's had a few artists of her own and has put on—you know, seems to be carrying on," and she gave me, right from the very beginning for some reason, the New York Times began to review my shows. So my very first exhibition which mentioned, my name, which mentioned my taking over the Korman Gallery, was reviewed in the New York Times. And I remember—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Did the reviews attract people in those days, if you got—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I don't know. I mean, when I tell you people did not—I used to have a calendar on my desk, and I had one, two, three, four, and then you draw a line through [inaudible]. Sometimes five people on a Saturday. Occasionally if I wasn't there on a Saturday I would consider a good Saturday 11 people. That would be the artist's mother [laughs] and a friend.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And in fact, at that point there was a very nice woman next door to me who had a lampshade shop, and Marian Ambrose [ph], had silk shades on the other half of 835 Madison. And Mary, [inaudible] she tried to teach me how to make lampshades because she felt I would not be very [inaudible] elderly, and that it would be a very good business for me [laughs] to go into because she knew Paul, and I couldn't possibly survive, and if I learned how to make expensive silk shades for Madison Avenue customers, but perhaps I could take over her business. But she really saw the number of people [inaudible]. [00:16:03] But we shared a bathroom. You know, it's a flight of steps up, and she had the shop on one side, and I had the shop on the other end. Our doors were open, and Marian Ambrose often times tried to inherit me.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But I'm curious about the museum. When did the museum people discover you, or start?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Let's see. This guy—I don't know whether they had to pay. First person, maybe that I ever knew was Jack Bauer [ph], who has been a good friend of the gallery. I think he probably came in to the old Korman Gallery. I'm trying to remember if any museum people—well, I knew Harris Pryor [ph]. I actually was a very good friend of Leon Arkus's. Leon is now at Carnegie. When I knew Leon he lived upstairs from me, and he ran Raymond and Raymond, the picture group, reproduction house downstairs. And he dated my friend Betty. He liked her, and he helped us in our research. And then Leon went down to Carnegie many years ago. I don't know. I think Bill Lieberman even came into the old Korman Gallery, though I've never known Bill well all these years, but I had print makers, so he came in. Carl [inaudible] probably came in early on.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  And did Una Johnson ever appear?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Una Johnson came because they were all Brooklyn Museum people. Una came, Vinnie, Ed, Pat, had all studied at Brooklyn, so did Una came very, very early. And I knew her for—let's see. [00:18:01] I'm just trying to think of who else might have come at that point, Jack. I remember Jack very well because he was very nice to me. Anybody who was nice to me was very [laughs]—I would remember. But Dore Ashton reviewed shows here. Carla Rose [ph] came into the shows here. Reviewers were—Bennett Shiff [ph] came in New York Post. At that time he was [inaudible]. Larry Campbell came in early on. Fairfield came in often because I remember with Fairfield he was reviewing—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  He was writing for [inaudible] right?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And he was such a strange man, and I had this little desk, which I still have, and the door was one side, and Fairfield would sit and talk to me, and in the middle of a sentence, without finishing his sentence, he would get up and walk out. [They laugh.] I never—I mean, he would be right there. And it was as if a little bell or alarm had rung. Fairfield would get up from his seat, and he would walk out. I mean, he would just not be there. So people—I talked more in those days. First of all I had no voice problem. Talking was easier for me, and I listened, and lots of people liked to talk to me because what else had I to do? So there were lots of people who came in, in a wave. Artists.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Now do you think that you accumulated useful knowledge, information from all the—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh yes, I think that's what I was doing for 20‑odd years is accumulating all this because oh, I mean, I had very little. [00:20:07] I mean, I had interest. I had as much background as anyone 24, 25 could ever, but I accumulated it.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But you know, I want to sort of move along a little bit, and I think that if we continue from the time Schoelkopf appeared because—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  That changed everything.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  —that changed everything.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  It turned it from what was contemporary gallery run by a very young, inexperienced woman—I used to think every year well now I had been in business another year I'm established. I used to count the years to the time I would look older and being in business longer. So by the time Bob—I could say I've been in business three and a half years or four years, three and a have. Bob and I put on this show which was the turning point of—called The City.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Why did he come into the business, do you think?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Because he had no plan [ph] what to do, because I said to him one day, "Bob, would you like to be my partner?" He said, "I'll think about it." Bob was terribly shy. I mean, I was a dynamo compared to Bob. When Bob and I were first in business I would have to leave the room if he made a phone call. You cannot believe he was still at that point living at home with his mother and father. I mean, he had not moved out to his own apartment.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Really?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And when he was with me, I made him get his own apartment. I said, "You're 26 or 27. You can't live at home with your mother and father." Very, very smart, oh, but he's just so incredible. From the beginning I think people were impressed with Bob's knowledge and information, and if he liked you, very funny. [00:22:04] I mean, he has enormous wit, if you can—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  It's always the—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —get through to him he is so delicious. And I liked Bob, and I looked around, and I thought he had a little money. And I thought, well, whoever I go with they had to have some money or somebody. So I though Bob Schoelkopf seemed to be the answer to this thing. We signed partnership papers. We were full legal partners. We drew up papers. And then he disappeared for three days. I couldn't find him. And I kept calling his mother. I said, "Mrs. Schoelkopf, have you seen Robert?" And then finally he turned up. And we moved the gallery, and we moved to 32 E 65th, where we took over Charlie Bauer's [ph] lease, and our rent there went from $185 to $325, but it was a big space.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  That's a very large space.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  It was a large space, and we inherited Charlie Adams' ladder, the lights, the fixtures. Allen [ph] had put a lot of money into that space, but he—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Now what was he going to do?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —he had a new lease. He went across the street, so we took over what we knew was low rent for large space, but eventually it was just a matter of time, so we were there three years, two and a half three years, till the building came down. So we did our first show, which was the show called City, 19—I don't know, 1900 to 1930. And there were marvelous pictures in that show and great prices. Everything was borrowed from other galleries. [00:24:01] So then we went to Lerner's [ph] and borrowed the Bellows. Even today I'm trying to get hold of the pictures by Luks, uh [inaudible]. He [inaudible] a great picture that I borrowed from Marjorie Bell. People told us about people that had things, and that was our first contact. Our days with Walter helped us. He [inaudible] we borrowed Sloan. We borrowed—we had from somebody else we borrowed a great picture by Maurice [inaudible] of New York Harbor. We had the Bellows monument on—you know, the Bethesda monument. It's in Hirshhorn's collection. It's hanging now by Bellows, and after that always hung in Al's office. We had a Prendergast that I borrowed from Walter for sale. We had Walter Pach's St. Patrick Cathedral at Night. We had a great Reginald Marsh of the interior subway, a thousand bucks—from John Clancy. So we had some really great first-rate pictures.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But from that exhibition you continued kind of showing people in that area.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, because we knew we had a Lawson [ph] We had gotten tremendous amount of publicity. It was the first show. It was summer. It was July.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  It was right in the middle of abstract expressionism.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  It was right in the middle of abstract, but it was July. That was the best part. Nobody had anything to gripe about. So Q magazine wrote it up, reproduced a Luks, Herald Tribune reproduced our Lawson [inaudible]. [00:26:10] New York Times gave it two reviews. And on a hot July Saturday there must have been 30 people in that gallery.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  [Inaudible.]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  [Inaudible], you know, and we sold things.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah, I mean, this was a whole new—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  We sold things to Glackens [ph]. We sold the Joe Katz [ph]. Hirshhorn came in with Al, bought the Bellows but not before he knew it hadn't come from [inaudible]. [Inaudible] arranged the price and [inaudible] gave us 10 percent commission. So we decided that selling earlier things was easier than selling contemporary things, I think.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Now, how did that go because you did continue showing contemporary pieces.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  We always showed contemporary [inaudible] both. We still do. And as Bob said to me yesterday, "Oh I've got next season, a whole season of contemporary artists." Says it sounds like disaster, well it is, it sounds a little like disaster. But we knew that if we were to keep any of these customers we had to choose earlier pictures for them.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh I see. So sort of the effect of that exhibition gave you ideas about—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  The effect of [inaudible], of who bought what. There was a man who came in. What was his name, who bought Arthur B. Davies who went to a lot of new people. Walter Fillen [ph] introduced himself to us. Paul McGreal [ph] came in about that time. All kinds of—Ross [inaudible] who collected nothing but Davies pieces. [00:28:02]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Who would come in?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  A Boston collector who bought nothing but Arthur B. Davies. All the Arthur B. Davies in the world he bought, up out of Boston. All sorts of people we met at that point. We heard about different people. You know, I don't even remember who they are now. Then our next contact outside of that was meeting Regan Kruger [ph], getting involved with all the Stellas.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, now how did that work out?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Bill [inaudible] came in. Bill told us about these two dealers at [inaudible]. Bill was here was he not at [inaudible]. I'm not sure. Was he?

PAUL CUMMINGS:  I think he was at the museums too.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  He may have been at—yeah. But somehow he—it was the first big show. We got a lot of attention. And therefore people came in, and, well, we met people, which is what [inaudible] about somebody else. And I remember I never met Katz, but Bob went to Baltimore and met Katz, at that point just a year before he died. I'm trying to think of other collectors who came, you know, for the earlier American things, because we sold four or five pieces out of that show. And even though they were all consigned to us we knew that we had come upon a good thing. It was not disinterest in contemporary art but rather the success of hailing earlier things. It made the whole idea of [inaudible] even running a gallery. [00:30:03] I mean, here we had a little money. So why not pursue?

PAUL CUMMINGS:  So that was really almost the first time you had any cash in the till?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, well, we never. I mean, we never, not to this day. [They laugh.] That was the problem with Bob and myself in business is because, as I said earlier, I really know what I have in the bank at any one moment. Bob never knew whether we had $30 or $3,000. He has a less practical approach to selling and business.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah, what did you do after that? I mean, your show—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, for encore I'm sure it's all on the records, I mean, but we—in those together, which were, say, three and a half years, right? From '58 to '61 when we dissolved our partnership. We showed Jewish [inaudible], [inaudible] Friedman. I did let [inaudible] show American Collage [ph]. I did all two or three Stella shows we did.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Was Stephen [ph] still there when you did the American Primitives?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Did we do any American primitive?

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah, well there was once.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I don't know what the dates are.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Sixty-one, '60, '61, something like that.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, we probably did because the American Pri—yeah, well, we did Pop Art, and then I continue to do Pop Art because we got into American Primitives again, through Regan and Kruger, who has bought Branchards and introduced us to Emile Branchard's work. So we had handled things that Bernie and Nat [ph] had got.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Were they one of the first galleries you started working with in terms of—[00:32:02]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  They were absolutely the first. It was on my own. It was also there that I met Fred, who then became my friend. Fred Price. Somebody had told me that they had been getting a lot of pieces from Faragill [ph]. And I only knew him as Frederick Newland Price. And he called up one day. It was during the World Series, whatever day that was, and the Braves were playing. And I picked up the phone. He said, "This is Fred Price," and I didn't know who he was, so I had written to him a couples of times, and I said, "Oh, I thought it was an artist." He said, "Fred Price." I said, "I'm sorry, could you [inaudible]." He said, "Oh, that's too bad about you," and he hung up on me. And then I knew that Fred Price must be Frederick Newland Price, and so I called him back, and I said, "Oh, Mr. Price, I'm so sorry." He said, "You like baseball?" [Inaudible] and he said, "Come meet me. I'm in my hotel room." So I said, "Oh, I love baseball [phone rings]." He said, "Oh, I'm watching the World Series." Well, I didn't know much about it, and [phone rings] Schoel[kopf] called me [phone rings] because there are certain areas of information that Bob is just absolutely [phone rings] reason was one because he didn't even know who was playing. At least I knew what that [phone rings]. Well, Fred wanted me to come in the hour. I forget. It was a little hotel [inaudible] a park in it. And so I got out the newspaper, and I learned all about the batting [inaudible], and I read the New York Times for 20 minutes. I rushed to meet Fred, who later inscribed his book, "To VA. Hurrah for the Braves. Love, Fred." And from that time on he gave me his Lawsons, I put on my Lawson show. [00:34:04] He gave me most of his pictures to sell. So that way I was able to do eight [ph] shows, gave me [inaudible]. He gave me the Davies bronzes [ph]. He gave me all his Lawsons. And I used to go visit him in New Hope. He gave me a picture that I love to this day, an Arthur B. Davies because he said it looked like me [ph], and he was a very testy kind of grouchy old character who lived with his sister at this point, and you know, I liked very much, but later on I heard had some shady practices with [inaudible] and things like that in the end.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, he did all sorts of incredible things, yeah, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, but with me he was very nice. And again, it was this old man, young girl relation which was so [inaudible]. There was a lot of old people. It was [inaudible]. It was based on a whole [inaudible]. It was Charlie Daniel [ph].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Did you not know Daniel [inaudible]?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I was the one that took care of Charlie. I was the one—[inaudible], who was very good. I met Daniel very early on. Daniel had walked into the Korman Gallery through Marvin, and [inaudible] and I had a game. [Inaudible] would give Charlie Daniel a drawing. Charlie Daniel, up to the day he died, lived with his nephew up in [inaudible]. It wasn't till the end of Charlie's life that I ever visited him in [inaudible].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Who was this nephew?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  A man named John Bixby [ph]. [00:36:03] And I didn't realize conditions Charlie lived in until I finally visited this dirty, dirty apartment with this unbelievable filth and dirty. I knew Charlie for at least 12, 15 years.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Really?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Until—and [inaudible] and I—[inaudible] would give him the drawing, and I mean, that's an awful story—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Then he brought it in to you, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And then Daniel would bring it in to me, and I'd—Daniel always loved to sell, so I let him sell it to me. He'd tell [inaudible] drawing and how fine it was, and I'd say, "Okay, Charlie, how much you want for it?" "Well, it's worth at least $150." I'd say, "All right, I'll give you a hundred and a quarter." We would play this game so that every Ray Field Sawyer [ph] I owned that I hadn't sold is one that I got from Charlie. I saw people like Walkowitz give Charlie $25 out of pocket. When Charlie was in the hospital and needed money, I got Hirshhorn to give him $200. I got Charlie Simon to give Charlie Daniel money. So in some ways maybe it was because he was—and by the time I met Charlie Daniel he had no pictures for me. I bought a little Man Ray from him once. I bought it off of Sawyers, but he didn't own anything.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah, everything was gone.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Somehow, you know, he would come. He came up until the last year of his life when he couldn't get out anymore to—visit with me, and in the last year of his life I saw him probably a month and a half before he died. [00:38:06] And he would talk. Of course he got very repetitive. I made—I think we talked about it in terms of getting him on tape didn't we?

PAUL CUMMINGS:  There was—somebody did do a not very good interview with him.   

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  But I knew him for those 10-12 years.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, what was that like? Because he was kind of a mythic dealer from generations before.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  [Inaudible.] Well, even what you have to remember is that I knew [inaudible] only in his old age, and when I talk about whether his [phone rings] Pach, all of my experiences [phone rings] young man, but they were all old.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But I mean, did Daniel talk about his galleries and all what it was like and people, collectors—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  He talked constantly about himself because by that point he was old. I like a man like Walter. He loved contemporary art. He still was open to looking at things, looking at de Kooning, to looking at—but again, he had that old man syndrome of telling his life story, which by the time I had met him was already accomplished. He was not projecting youth or present [ph], or really even as I sit here I talk about what's happening in art gallery world today [inaudible] my feminist point of view is saying, my future. I mean—I can hardly remember 20 years ago. I mean, my past is not that interesting to me. Charlie's past was all he talked about. [00:40:02] Walter was more interesting in that way because he had a present, and his present was his painting. I mean, he was concerned with [inaudible]. He was hardly interested—"Look at this picture that I have just completed. It's one of my masterpieces," and if he told me about the past it was only in passing.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How do these people influence development of your own taste and your own interests and you know—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  What I have learned I have learned from my peers and my contemporaries. My relationship with people like Daniel or Pach, or even [inaudible]. Oh, it's too much age separation. It was too much, always playing the young woman to a grandfather figure. I only admired with that [ph] learning. I think it's too hard in that it's just I think we learn not at a distance. At that distance I think we really learn. I learned more today when I walk up and down Madison, and I pull information, as I did yesterday, from Bellows and [inaudible]. Or Bob. I mean, I walk up the avenue and I talk to them and I visit. And I come back with more information having felt them out a little bit. I pull the information on Cornell from Sidney [ph]. I go up to [inaudible]. [Inaudible] and his $4 million collector who was fallen down the drain and how we're not going to hear from Larry so much anymore, where I walk to Bob and we talk photographs. I think in these relationships it's only [inaudible]. [00:42:03] I mean, it would be nice to say that I learned from Walter or I learned from—I think what we learn from—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  —so your learning process of your discovering of artists really was in the exhibition.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I discovered because or learned because people would come to me. I mean, my own contemporaries, my own peers, [inaudible]. I would figure things out. I think it's nice that I met Marcel Duchamp, Hopper, Sloan, even—all those people, Madame Focillon. I think I was very fortunate to have because as we do [inaudible], I think history or human history is that someone's head is far back. I think it would be extraordinary when I [inaudible] get to be 75 if I can say I knew Charlie Daniel and have some [inaudible]. I mean, I will be the oldest living—I will be the oldest living person who has had some contact with someone on that other end. That will make me historically interesting because I will have that human history of being 17 and knowing someone 80. That's about as far as one can go in remembered history because before 17 or 18 your memory is not that good.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, you don't focus.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  You don't focus.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You don't realize.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  So if I get to be 80 and remember somebody who was 80 but I was 17, it will be an enormous art history span, and I may—I mean [they laugh], if I had one thing of having been the youngest art dealer, at that time I may have the longest history, living art history span. [00:44:12]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Now, you know one thing that interested me about the exhibitions you've done and how the gallery has developed and changed over the years, is this word "history," are you interested in this so-called history of where these people fit?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh yes, I really love history. I loved, as you said, what did I learn from all those old people now, and I tell you, we can go back. I mean, whether it's Man Ray or my first meeting with Billy Zorack [ph] or whatnot, I'm fascinated by that kind of human history. I mean, my great thrill in Rome this time was just to see de Chirico past—cross the [inaudible]. And there he was. I said, "Oh, Arthur, look who's walking across the street." Now, nobody else [inaudible] because nobody else looks like him, so I'm fascinated. And my favorite celebrities are art celebrities.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But let me ask you a question. Do you read books on history or art history?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, I read. I love biography. I mean, I love—you know, I went off to the Whitney show yesterday. Can you imagine how that show [inaudible]?

PAUL CUMMINGS:  What do you think of the Whitney Studio Club exhibition?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I mean, I love—that show?

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I mean, of course I think it is—all history is created to make our own living history more interesting. But that show took—was, I mean, I thought, oh, where's poor old [inaudible] had first reached out at the Whitney Studio Club, and Gertrude supported him. [00:46:02] She loved his art. I think her taste at that show by Lloyd was made to coincide with a little more of what we really want to see. But that's what human history is all about. I think all of our shows of that nature are done to satisfy what we—now, I don't think John—I think there were people in that show who had nothing to do with Gertrude.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  [Inaudible] they must have had some—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  John Cobb, you know, covered some of the future [inaudible]—she was not involved with that group at all. That was Lloyd Goodrich's panorama of art history, of American art history. So in a way, even though it is the salute to Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, it really had not much do to with her. Has to do with the Whitney, [inaudible]. Would have been much more appropriate for them to have [inaudible]. Those artists whose work she financed— she supported art with [inaudible], Whitney owns seven [inaudible]. There wasn't one in that show.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, that's fascinating.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Go back to the Whitney and look, and see what she actually bought, see what's in that show.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  I'm curious about her—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Now Morgan Russell and John [inaudible] and all those people did not have anything to do.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Nothing—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, nothing!

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But was she interested, do you think, in the personalities as much as the art, or?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Uh, who knows, I mean, again, it is interesting. I mean, I keep bringing me back to 1975 and women's involvement in the arts. [00:48:02] And I mean, you take all these people, might have been art dealers, might also have been real artists. Behind every collector is an artist. I mean, all of us start in art some way, and it's not usually because we're interested in money. Now art dealing, whether it's Wildersteins and [inaudible] or old Kennedys or whatnot, has always meant money [inaudible]. Contemporary art dealing has never been money until—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Recently.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —the last 12 years. And you take women who might have been successful artists, Katherine Dreier, Julie Hannaford [ph], Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Peggy Guggenheim, the dealers, I mean, they were motived. Even the collectors, I mean, [inaudible] was marvelous woman comes in today she is an artist. Most—I don't know if the—you know, take our five big galleries today, [inaudible]. Even Sidney. Were they artists, or what was their background? [Inaudible], certainly Frank Lloyd at [inaudible] was motivated. When art became money there was no question that galleries on that level help are—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, Sidney went into it as a business too.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  As a business, as interested as a collector—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Pays people to—yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I'm just getting back to women's motivations. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was two things: She was an artist, and she was a wealthy woman. [00:50:04] Now, what does one do when you see the Layman connection? I mean, art if one has any inclination at all, it's the best way to spend extra money. I mean, it has always been that way.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, because there's also no end.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  There's no end, I mean, you can just simply—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You can always buy another piece.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —go to more expense and buy another. And also, when you look at the Layman collection or the Whitney Museum or the Hirshhorn Museum [inaudible] Gardener or whatever, or Philips, it's the easiest way to immortalize yourself. If you're going to spend money [inaudible].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But do you think that works with the collective contemporary art of living artists? Would they—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  See the—look at Vogel [ph]. Is he not—I remember when Vogel [ph] came in my gallery, at the Korman Gallery.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, this is what's his name—[inaudible] Vogels, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, he was married to Dorothy. He would say to me, "Mrs. Zabriskie, [inaudible] someone has a retrospective at the Whitney in 20 years from now. Will, this picture could use—" I mean, he would [inaudible] by, and he has created a kind of immortality for himself. People without much money see this sort of thing. Somebody used to buy from me—the Momases [ph] Arthur and Ruth Momas. I don't know if you know their collection. I remember when Arthur—they have a nice collection. He worked for Willoughby Camera store. He would pay with post money orders. He did not have a checking account, so one  can immortalize themselves on [inaudible] whether it's Skylar [ph], Hirshhorn, or, I mean, Herb and Dorothy Vogel have no money. [00:52:07] They have [inaudible] these pictures have, dealers, artists, people have made their lives. My good friend Matilda and Fritz Loewe [ph], whom have cultivated artists, the most natural thing for someone who is rich, right? And also an artist is to involve himself or herself in the art. I don't know—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Have you had, over the years, many collectors who bought from you consistently? Or do people buy certain—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I don't think—Hirshhorn has bought from me regularly. [Inaudible] I mean, I sold him his first [inaudible] when he couldn't deal with Charlie Regan [ph]. I've sold him things when he really was unable, for whatever reason, unable to deal with other people or did not want to. He always liked to buy in quantity. He could buy that way from me. A lot of dealers who would not put up with him, perhaps, didn't need him.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you think he treated you different because you were a woman?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, if I knew—one of the amazing stories is I would guess after my experience, you know, after [inaudible], and sometimes I would wait for him desperately. He used to come in like he—before I'd close in the summer and often times around Christmas. And I waited for one Christmas Eve, and we haggled all the day long, and he may have bought 40 Walkowitz's and I don't know what else. Finally we arrived at our price, and suddenly he pulled $100 out of his pocket and said, "Now go out and buy yourself a dress." [Laughs.] [00:54:08] Now I'm not sure, but I took it, you know, but I'm not sure he would have done that with—[inaudible], right? He told me to get out of there and buy myself a new dress for Christmas. [Inaudible.] I'm not sure, Paul. I just simply took it as part of my bargain. Or yet I've seen other dealers give him presents and pictures, and it varies. Now, ours has been much more [inaudible], yet I know to this day he is very fond of me. We visit with them in Florida. I care for him. I really think he's quite extraordinary in what he's done. People ask me about him because I know him. People still feel that Al picked the pictures, but of course he did not. And maybe it would have been better if he had, but Hirshhorn's problem was, as I see it, was simply he was always there when people needed him, whether it was me, whether it was [inaudible] Paris, [inaudible]. He bought artists that would never have been bought to support.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Why do you think he did that?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  He loved it. He loved the moment of buying, the power, the—you know, I don't know what motivates a man, and I look at these men, he's wealthy, he's—I mean, it's what motives anyone to arrive at—I think these things are too subtle. I don't know why art rather than backing shows on Broadway. [00:56:02] I mean, you don't know. An early art experience or associating, maybe, wealth with the acquisition, possession.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you—are there other collectors that you've gotten to know as well as him over the years, or don't you get—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, because I don't feel that—I think even when I worked for Mr. Seligman, dealers at that time had their—I mean, Charlie Daniel had one collector. He talked about poems, and Charlie would say to me, "My monument is a Howe [ph] collection." I never had one collector. First of all, any success I have had simply is because I'm an exhibition gallery. I'm not very convincing as a salesman. I would not more be able to get one collector to buy from me like Fleicher [ph] can get. I've had people who have said, "Oh, Mrs. Baum has her [inaudible]. She says this is my Virginia Zabriskie wall." But I never have, really have always thought, wouldn't it be—I would love to put together a collection personally. I would just adore that opportunity.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But are there people who have bought frequently from you over the years?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, very regularly, yeah, yeah, but nobody who buys exclusively from me.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, well, few collectors buy from one exclusively. I suppose—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  From anybody, yeah. Yes, I would say that was Hirshhorn. He's the one person who has bought in any scale from me.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You think that's also partly because you've shown so much sculpture over the years?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, I mean, the sculpture, really, in full scale is only since I've come here with money. [00:58:03] Though in the other gallery I showed Nadelman, and I showed Baizerman, and I showed—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, and they've always been—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I couldn't do in sculpture what I'd want them to do and how I physically—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Have the space.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —have the space. And yet that's where my own particular feeling about art is much more [inaudible] I'm with it [ph]. And I think because we do well with something, that's how I continue, and that what happened with The City show was that I didn't want to continue to show Lester Johnson. Bob and I did well with that City show.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  So it was a logical—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And also because some of the bigger name people were already tied up with [inaudible]. We had to discover [inaudible] the art of Friedmans, the Jeffs [ph], the Stellas, the Branchard and the [inaudible], oh god knows. It was fun for me to see that [inaudible] Gailer [ph] painting hanging in the Whitney show of Adelaide and [inaudible] together.

[END OF TRACK AAA_zabris75_8188_m.]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  —okay, this is side three. It's the sixth of June, 1975. Paul Cummings talking to Virginia Zabriskie. One of the things that you had mentioned was the—your personal involvement with the works of art and your interest in what you were showing. I was curious, has that changed over the years, or do you think you've been consistent in your interests?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I was thinking of it today and reading the article on Betty that appeared in the New Yorker this weekend. In some ways—but I feel I've been maybe, to the good or bad, I've been very independent of other people's opinions whether they are—I'm reminded of it in reading what she said to Calvin Tompkins about art is really getting together as they did, both Betty and [inaudible] and in the '50s they were sort of saying, "Look, we will make a gallery where you will make an art dealer out of you." As far as hanging my shows, I have never not hung an exhibition. After Vinnie Longo gave me first business of who and where this should be hung, or who I should look at. I don't think I ever really listened. Maybe if I had listened a little more to artists who opinions I do respect to what is the tune of the time I might even have had even more success with the gallery. [00:02:07]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How do you means? Success in terms of what?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, success in being a rather mainstream rather than showing artist whose visions or talents are sometimes eccentric or sometimes may even look conservative who are not—I mean, I never had op artists, but op art artists—I never really showed abstract expressionism. I never showed minimalists. I never showed pop artists. Somehow in 20 years, I have never shown what I might have shown.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But I was wondering—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Not because my judgment is so good but rather it's because I think it's been independent, that's all.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you think it's changed over the years? I mean, it seems—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I don't know whether—of course it changes because your experiences, your artist [ph] changes. I think it solidified. I was thinking about it the other day in that I was up at an opening at Rose's, and even in the—you know Rose Esmund [ph], and even in the time I had been able to observe her gallery, there is a real thing at work. There's a real—I can now say—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  An aesthetic, almost.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —oh, that's something Rose Esmund [ph] would like. And it's a very happy combination between what is very formal and what is intuitive. And maybe not intuitive enough for me and not formal enough for me, but something that comes out as tasteful. [00:04:08] I mean, good art, when it is good. I was struck the other evening by how well everything looked. But I mean, it did not have the real intelligence and formalism of [inaudible] or the intuitiveness of a de Kooning or some artists who might be [inaudible]. Personally, interest in sculpture has developed—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How did that—it has become such a major aspect of the gallery, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Part of this gallery. I don't know. There's a kind of reality and non-intellectualism and non-abstract quality to sculpture which has very real appeal to me. I think it is this [inaudible]—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You mean the object [inaudible]? Yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —it's another reality, another dimension. You know, even as I look around at the sculptures that I handle, when we look at Caro and the whole idea of two‑dimensional sculpture, for a sculpture gallery I still represent a lot of volumetric or dimensional people who are working not even in tune with what is happening. Mike Todd is the only one here who is pictorial. Gabe Kohn is not pictorial. Stankiewicz with his new very volumetric things is not pictorial. Mary may be pictorial on the surface, but she is not. And yet we are definitely in a time of Caro. [00:06:02]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, I mean, you have people like Baizerman, you know—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, that's very sculptural. Very in‑depth. I mean, there is hardly any sculpture that I have here like [inaudible] but I'm thinking of two-dimensional sculptures that you do not have to walk around. But even new sculptors like Robin Lowe [ph] you do not know what's happening on the other side. And that's a special taste on my part for what is going on. Still not sure today.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How do you think your interest in sculpture developed? I mean, did it—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, interests have always developed with possibility to handle or do something. I mean, at 835 Madison I had a storeroom space that was probably locked. I would guess there was about four‑and‑a‑half feet by seven feet. Two painting racks. Money, success, enlargement of space, physical health plus what I feel is very genuine interest in sculpture.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  I know that, you know, one can open a space as large as this gallery, probably now would be—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And they handle paintings.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  And just handle paintings—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh yes, it's really not even ideal for a sculpture.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You seem to have more and more sculptures [inaudible].

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  That is what I would like, yeah. I don't know. I mean, I really—I mean, know where it began in first sculpture shows or [inaudible] as I have in the last 10, 12, 10 years or more now. [00:08:07] I think people are afraid of sculpture.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Really? Why do you say that?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Physically, if you're a dealer, I mean, there's very—people are afraid sometimes to buy a picture for what to do with it or where to place it or how to handle it, for a dealer, often time not having it on the premises. I mean, it was hard to sell things for a picture. It's hard to move 600 pounds, but it's hard to figure what next to do with four-and-a-half tons. I think once you overcome a fear four times and know that you can really only lift 75 pounds anyway, and anything over 75 pounds you can't do yourself, so doesn't matter whether it was 500 pounds or four tons.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, it's the same problem.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I mean, the same problem. It's one of logistics and moving pieces, and handling them. I think maybe we're—basic thing, I think I like physical things. I think the gesture, the physicalness of abstract expressionism attracted me to that kind of painting. I really do not go along with Greenburg's or no surface. I love surface. I mean, I really hate denial.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Just flat, bland, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah. I mean, I understand it, but I don't enjoy it. [00:10:05] I love the gesture. I love the arc. I love the performance. I love knowing how something is made, the making of it. [Inaudible] the artists. I don't know, maybe that's why prints are hard for me. That's what I've never had any interest in prints.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  It's too removed.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  It's too removed. Even bronze casting is a kind of a removal thing. That's why I like Mary Frank's ceramic sculpture better than her bronze. I love welding. I love Baizerman's hammered pieces. I love material.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, you know, one thing that I find interesting is that frequently a gallery will—there's such a similarity, but your sculptures are all quite different.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I mean, you say they are, but then I have just surmised that it's [inaudible] that there is something that they have in common, but it was—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, they do, but I mean, it—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Material involvement.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  —like their personality. You don't have three artists who are like Mary Frank or somebody else. They're all quite—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, no, I think they—the personalness of the artist—I know Gabe's constructed wood pieces are like Mary's, romantic. I mean, I think somebody like Stankiewicz  in these new pieces comes out of the Brancusi tradition whereas someone like Mary comes out of the romanticism of Rodin. [00:12:03] These are two opposites in sculptural tradition. Richard is cool, intelligent, where Mary is intuitive, sensuous feeling. I mean, I don't think Mary would like not to hear herself described as intelligent or Richard to be without feeling, but I think these—however, the similarity between them, which I view as their—they don't fabricate things [inaudible]. They are concerned with material, concerned with handling things themselves. They are out of mainstream.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, how do you find that? You referred before in the previous tape about being out of mainstream? Do you sense that in any way?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I don't think we find it. I think the best we can ever do as dealers is show the best that's available to us. So on many levels there are artists who are not yet available to me. I look around. There are artists that—and I can name a half a dozen artists that I would handle that I would find sympathetic to this gallery who are not part of this gallery either because they are connected with other galleries or I cannot offer them what they would want. And they range a whole gamut of, I mean, they would reach from some of my modern [inaudible] whose drawing—I would show someone like Myron [ph] if he had more work and was interested in this gallery. [00:14:04] I would also show Ellsworth Kelly, his sculptor. Let's see I would, in sculpture, let's see, haven't thought recently. I certainly feel that Mark di Suvero is a sculptor that I would be very pleased to show. Vakian [ph] is a sculptor whose work would be absolutely sympathetic to what I show, what I feel about art here. In earlier sculptors I would show [inaudible] or [inaudible]. I would show—off the record I would show Flannigan and [inaudible]. There are other contemporary sculptors whose work I like.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  So I find it interesting that you—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  So I show what is available.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But you still kind of keep your eye open to—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, that's what it's all about. [Laughs.] There are a lot of—they have their day because I don't think people feel I really look. We probably get 30 to 40 artists every two weeks whose slides we look at. I probably look at actual work maybe only 20 or 30 a year, maybe 200 slides, 200 portfolios of one kind, maybe more. And I think that maybe artists feel I don't look. The other day a woman came in, and somebody had sent her, and I said, you know, my policy, which it is, is to ask her to leave material here, and then I will look at it within a week. [00:16:01] I said, "Are these slides yours?" I wasn't looking at them. She said, "Oh no, they belong to a friend of mine, an 81‑year‑old woman painter living on a ranch in New Mexico." I said in my usual way, [inaudible] I handle most of the sculpture, and an 81‑year‑old is not someone I'm really looking for. I'm sure I won't be interested. I'm sure that if she had better have done whatever she's going to do by this time. And this woman's name was Elizabeth Campbell, the art is her friend. Ms. Kress [ph] came back to me two days later after I looked at the slides, and I apologized, and I said, "They were marvelous at least as far as one could see her slides." And I was quite taken with them, and I asked her to send a few pieces. Now I don't know if anything will come of this, but at least there were enough slides to show that this woman was a very sophisticated artist with a very, what I could tell, I mean, sometimes slides make things look more attractive rather than less attractive. But there was a real body of work, and there was a highly sophisticated point of view, however, and very interesting.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Another thing since we're talking, really, about taste and feeling, have you collected much art for yourself?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  By default, yeah [they laugh]. No, I think—first of all, I think Paul, as I may have said on the first tape, I have never owned a work of art but three or four years. [00:18:03] First real purchases were made in giving Lester Johnson $200 a month three years, which even at this point leaves me with about 60 Lester Johnsons. I've bought artist's work. I receive things as gifts. I've taken things in exchange for debts. Generally my—I think that makes me a bad salesperson whereas Suzanne who works here at the gallery, a collector, is a good salesperson. I don't think I've ever felt that art is something that one—well you need art, but you need not possess it. I don't ever feel like—as I said, when I first met Fred Price, who was awfully nice to me even though others [laughs] may say differently, he said to me, "Virginia, if you're going to be a dealer, sell and then repent." So anything I generally buy now is bought for resale. It is bought with the idea—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  It's really part of the stock.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —of reselling, or else it's bought to help an artist. The most recent purchase—I even sold an ottoman I had given my husband as a wedding gift. [They laugh.] I grabbed it off the fireplace and split the profit with him—see, really what I feel about art. I had given him one when we were married. [00:20:01] And then last year when I did my [inaudible] show I borrowed it back. I was only going to borrow it, and then I sold it. So I split it with him, and then I gave him a Mary Frank, which I think really prefers to the [inaudible].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, that's adorable.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  So, no, I thin as far as collecting goes, is collecting does not—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Things just come and go.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —personally interest me. It never has. And I know that there are many dealers who have come to art dealing out of being collectors. I was never—I mean, there is nothing—I think in all—in every sense there is very little that interests me in retaining it for myself, I mean, whether it's furniture or jewelry. I mean, just the way I move, people say they can't move their closet. I can. I like physical things, but I like—that's also made it easy for me in business is that when things got difficult for me, if I had to move I've always been able to pack up my gallery, which is terrifying to some people, pick everything up.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  And go into a new—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I've already moved five times in business. I picked my files up, my books, my paintings, my everything. And I always enjoy it. [They laughs.] I enjoy the one thing of starting over again every time. And this will be the longest time I've been in one location.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah, because you've been here since—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I have another four years. I have a lease for five, whether I will continue with this location [inaudible]. [00:22:03]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You've been here how many years?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Four years.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Four, four.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  But I can always move. I'm never terrified because when I threaten landlords with—they say we are not a retail business in that sense. We take our business with us. So you cannot hold me because, I'm not here like a grocery store or a local diner.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, which you can't move so easily.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, I can.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Have you found business has changed as you've moved from different location to different location?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, my business, of course, has gotten better. I mean, it could not be any worse than it was in 1954. My best year in business was not this year but last year. My gross was half a million was more than it had ever been. Simply my business until this last year, which has not been a good year for people, has been better every year. It has grossed more every year for 20 years. It has been constant—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Constant growth.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —growth. [Inaudible.]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you find that as the gallery has grown in terms of business and size and more costly works and things that your methods of doing business has changed?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Of course, I keep trying to change them, Paul. [They laugh.] I come in. I talk to somebody upstairs. I say—or another dealer, "What do you do when you come in and the morning?" I get on the phone, and I make one dozen calls. [00:24:00] I have—it was interesting for me to read what Betty said about her doing business, that she didn't call up people. I hear dealers who get on the phone and say to them "Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones, I have this. This is for you, and you must get in and see it." I have a hard time doing that. I mean, I never do that, very seldom. I think my methods have been pretty much the same. I have less public contact than I did at one time because when I first had my gallery I used to sit right in the gallery. People would come in and they would talk to me whether it was Dr. Wilson Beck who would come in, and came one day and said, "Do you know who I am?" And I said, "No, who are you?" And he said, "I am the father of Donna." Or whoever would walk in, now I have a little less contact with artists, with public. I don't run out and talk to people that I don't know. I send other people on the floor to take general inquiry, price, you know, that kind of thing. And I'm dealing with people that I know. There are people that I enjoy talking more with. There are other people who simply do not interest me.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Have you had people who—collectors who become clients in the sense they bought year after year?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, there are people who feel easy with me. There are people who feel, I think, that, I don't know. [00:26:02] There are all kinds of people. I deal with dealers, I deal with—there are groups of people that I even—all those names that I won't even mention whom I sort of call the mafia, who I enjoy dealing with, not that they are, but they're sort of tough—you know, businessmen are more dealers than they are buyers, who are interested in art, who have gotten, "barred" from me who have made money off what they have bought from me.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Are there many people like that who really invest in things?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I think this represents a real part of my kind of selling. I mean, I called a man yesterday, when I say I don't call, who had bought two or three works from me in that area of geometric abstraction, in which you introduced me to Paul Calpi [ph]. And even Paul Calpi says you must know that I sold to [inaudible] or I sold other people, other dealers have sold for much higher prices. I mean, those are watercolors that I saw over $90 and $100. I see are being sold for, you know, $800 and $900 and $1,200. Charles—the Charles Shaws [ph] that are now in view at the Century Club. And Joan Washburn will be selling next or showing—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, is she going [inaudible]?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  [Inaudible] works that Charlie Carpenter inherited. Simply there was not enough there for me to deal with. [00:28:00] They're going to price those paintings at $3,500. They were paintings that I sold last year for $1,000. People are happy with you if you've made money from them. They're very pleased. They love that idea that they bought an artist [inaudible] for you from—I mean, I have been in business long enough not only to see prices go up but to see things that have sold cheaply go up and not come down as with American impressionism. I've seen—that first Lawson show I had and I sold a Lawson [inaudible] for $750, a Lawson, I mean, the average sale price on the Lawsons were $700. Saw those Lawsons go up to $8,000, $9,000, $10,000. And now come back to $4,000—$3,000-4,000. So even in 20-year period—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  There's a great shift.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —you see a shift from low to high to back down again. And this is very true of American impressionism. And there are no other collectors who are sort of dying off for it. There's a re-interest in that Stieglitz group. There's now an interest in the kind of art that just simply could not have been sold 10 years ago, the kind of constructivism, the structuralists, that kind of thing.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you have many people who buy something and five or six years later bring it back for resale or?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I've resold, bought, resold things from people over the year. There are lots of things. [Laughs.] Usually what they bring me back is not what I would love to buy back. [00:30:01] I can write you a list of 100 pieces right now that I would two or three times pay the price for, and people often times don't understand that if they buy it from you for $1,000 and it goes up to $2,000 that you can really only give them their money back. I mean, it almost has to—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Triple.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —triple value. And they save themselves finding private buyers. But there's lots of things that I would not only buy back, but, you know, which means they doubled or tripled back, or doubled again back. And then I'll go for [inaudible].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you ever call collectors and offer to buy things from them, or not so often?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I do very little of it because, Paul, I usually—the best time to have things bought cheaply so that I'm always in a better position [phone rings] if they come to me. When people—I am an exhibition gallery. People often times walk in off the street. Best things I've had are those people that have just simply come to us through the having our doors open. The private dealer has to do that. He has to call. He has to go out. We get a lot of traffic in by talking to people. People—I mean, everyone here is alerted in one way or another to find out what people have and if they are interested in selling. [00:32:00] We are—you know, I take things, often times the two Pollocks I had were simply consigned where we then worked on 20. You know, if I buy [inaudible] Noguchi behind me. I buy them very cheaply. You have to have a lot of capitol pool to buy outright that picture at $100 and have the buyer right there at $120. To make—I don't have that kind of money.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  And then you might something and it will be here for years.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, do I have—I do. I mean, there's that Noguchi there that I bought that year that hasn't been—I mean, as you look around, there's room. I own a lot. I own that Nadelman over there. I own that Conrad Kromberg [ph] photo. I happen to own that particular [inaudible]. I own that particular Nadelman. That goes back to the Rubenstein sale.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Sale, right.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  This is a good jackpot this year. Another thing, there are a lot of other things in the room as you look around. I own that Nadelman drawing. The Bauer's consigned. The [inaudible] are consigned [inaudible].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, uh, speaking of consignments, you haven't really gotten into the estate business as much as some galleries seem to have, but you do have a few.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I do have estates, and they in many ways have supported me. I do have the Walkowitz estate, which I've had since his death. I represented him before. [00:34:00] I have Baizerman estate. I mean, estates are funny things. Sometimes there are no estates. I mean, as long as they're resolved. I mean, there are enough things.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  There's nothing left sometimes.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I am sure that in five years there will be no Baizerman estate. We have maybe 20 to 25 pieces left to sell.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh my, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I have sold over 32 pieces, 35 pieces in less than 10 years. So it seems like five years there will not be an estate. I can't say I have [inaudible]. I have Zorach estate. This is a very big estate that [phone rings] for many, many years. I mean, there will not—unlike Baizerman, it cannot be exhausted. Simply the method of making positive bronzes and filing out additions.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  He was very prolific though too.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  He was prolific. He was not that prolific, Paul. You must remember that as a stone carver, which is probably where his reputation rests, all of the bronzes are simply base for the most part. You know, our last exhibition there was only of animal sculpture, there was only one sculpture there, which was of a fish which was made for bronze. Everything else in the show, which has bronze [inaudible] with some variation, often times Bill would take a stone, and when he was going to cast it into bronze you could see slight turn of the neck. [00:36:11] He would make a variation on that plaster, on whatever he made, but very, very close. So the works are really variations or adaptions of bronzes that—I mean, stone. He says they were carved by him [inaudible]. Therefore if there are additions of six or 12, this makes [inaudible] inexhaustible.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you find it's very much different handling estate in terms—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, not really because you're really dealing with people. I mean, once the artist give you how work it's probably a little—I mean, I've had estates that were difficult to handle and artists who were difficult to handle. I've had estates that were very easy to work with and artists who, for one reason or another, were delicious to work with. I think your intimate personalities—in all cases in my business I have remained very distant from both my artists and the people that I work with.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You mean socially?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Socially, uh-huh [affirmative]. We're very—I mean, I suppose Pat Adams, who's been at the gallery longest, is my closest friend in the gallery. But otherwise I have felt very, very strongly that it is a business. I cannot get involved with personal lives, which in the case of an artist is very real. [00:38:12] I always felt very often in the case of the estate, I mean. Mrs. Vanderbilt [inaudible] through this gallery, and collects her work, has become very, very involved with her as a human being. So this involvement goes so far as Thanksgiving dinners and Christmases, which is, [inaudible] and helping her. I feel this humanity, but in many ways I kept away from it. So I—more likely even people that I've been closest too and have been able to open up to more are to go back to the quote old men of [inaudible] Charlie Daniel, Walter Pach, people in business, Bob Schoelkopf, people I've worked with in business.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you, like some dealers, have arrangements with other galleries across the country to show your artists, or do they artists—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  [Inaudible.] When I pick up things like [inaudible] and I say, "Hm. How are they showing all these artists?" Yes, I mean, dealers come. Also, you must remember that until your artists get very big and very strong, a dealer outside of New York has his choice of anyone. Mary is now my first artist that is really being taken on by other dealers so that she'll have a show next season, [inaudible], whatever that [inaudible] name, Rosenson [ph] Boston.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Boston, right.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Krakow, Rosenson, she'll have two other shows. [00:40:07] Otherwise you usually have to take someone to give someone, and I don't want to take anyone to give someone. And this is true of the European situation. Until your artist is that well‑established, oh yes, I have Walkowitz shows all over. I have other kinds of things, but pieces look richer now. Sculpture is also very, very difficult to move around. I mean, it is not easy.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Back to four tons again.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I mean, you really need to have a name like Anthony Caro to make it worthwhile shipping pieces, and in many shows outside of New York the fragility, the cost the— also, the bookkeeping the inventory, the amount of—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  The paperwork.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  The paperwork involved for the financial—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Rewards, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —rewards. I mean, unless a show is important, unfortunately I say to people we really cannot put on a show of Mary's work at Goucher, Goucher [ph] Thatcher, Thatcher, Collin, because we can't do it. It's too time consuming, too dangerous for the work.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you have many of your artists that show in Europe? I mean, Sugarman?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, Sugarman has shown in Europe. His big pieces recently sold in Brussels. He has the kind of look that I think people associate with American art and American art, I mean, it often times has that kind of Stuart Davis jazz business. [00:42:07] I think his work was successful in Europe more so than it was here, but again, it's big in sculpture. I stopped to see Claude [inaudible] in Paris. He said, "I'm not handle sculpture, the—business of moving it." But as you know, as you look at Paris galleries, you wonder how sculpture could have survived at all. They're all teeny—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, with all little pieces.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —little rooms.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Little tiny pieces of sculpture.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I mean, artists are often time motivated to create work for spaces. Certainly I sometimes think that's why sculpture has not blossomed in France. There's no place to show it. Maybe with this new Centre Pompidou and this new [inaudible], which is helping space, sculpture will have a flourishing in Europe because artists see things they make for spaces. Sculpture is very American. It's been made for the loft space of America, for the—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, and for outside.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —for outside. I mean, [inaudible] and they looked ridiculous.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Really?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I just came back from Paris they didn't belong—one piece look all right, the [inaudible] piece, but, you know, [inaudible] said they—that's why perhaps the English countryside, the English gardens, this is the first time I've ever thought of this, have inspired in the sculptors more than the French salon formal nature, formal gardens, perhaps.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Why do you think that the di Suveros look so strange here? [00:44:02]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, maybe it's my particular prejudice of my sort of Proustian ideas and theories that my idea—simply one of the things I have discovered as I've s[phone rings] setting sculpture out of doors is that volumetric sculpture looks better in landscape than open sculpture. Just doesn't look right.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Gets lost sometimes.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  [Inaudible] looks better outside. They fill a space. The Rodin pieces and the artist that I handle had a linear early piece of Richards's just lost out there, and it doesn't go outside with trees. Robert Lowe, whose work is solid and volumetric goes best, it's wood but it looks best in the trees [ph]. Mike Todd looks terrible in the [inaudible]. It doesn't—it's very hard, sculpture in setting, landscape at least, and sculpture maintains a different scale. I had more of an idea of with it [inaudible]. I have to bring the landscape to the sculptor rather than the sculptor to the landscape. It must be framed. It must be set in a setting. And the [inaudible] setting is not appropriate for di Suvero. The di Suvero—even with di Suvero scale, somebody must create something to put the sculpture in. The sculpture cannot be put into the setting. It's destroyed by it.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Have many of your sculptors been commissioned for outdoor pieces or things like that?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, it's terrible. Here I am known as one of these sculpture galleries in New York City, I've have sold some large pieces. They have never—I mean, I hate to admit it [laughs], for record, I really do, I've have never gotten a commission for any of my artists, never. [00:46:01] Now, whether it's because [phone rings] you may know I'm taking on three new artists this year who I call side sculptors who work outdoors and whose work has more to do with the landscape than the environment.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Who are they?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Anne Healy, Lloyd Hamrol. He's best known—I didn't know—as Judy Chicago's husband. And Athena Tacha. All of these three artists who are young [inaudible] are much more involved with the landscape, with art for the environment. Art—I have never doubted what we sold art for. You know, the kind of art that is art for art's sake, art for collector's object art. I've now extended the idea of the gallery at this point in my career as a dealer to include things which are not gallery things, which is art for something else. It's public art. It's hard for people who are not necessarily visually‑oriented who come upon it, therefore you must look differently. It's not conceptual art. I mean, I don't want to be a dealer who sells byproducts. I sort of disapprove of selling  [inaudible] posters or documents of projects. I also believe in huge [ph] and scale art. I mean, I believe in accessible art and—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, di Suvero makes enormous art.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh yeah, but that's still available. I mean, it's public art. Before you add the art that's underwater, or wrapping around. Both Smithson's pieces, I mean, I admire Smithson, but it's not available to me. [00:48:03] It's only available to me in documentation. And after talking to me, I mean, you must know that documentation does not interest me. Probably took me from not being an art historian to an art dealer. I mean, I like being with art. I like the object, I like [phone rings] accessible art. These three sculptors represent that sort of thing, except it's not to put in the gallery.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, you know, to go back to what you said before about independence, you know, during the '50s, say, well through the '60s when abstract expressionism and all these things are going on most of the people you were exhibiting were figurative people. Were—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I was wrong. [They laugh.] That's what I said to Willy, I was very wrong [they laugh].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But in a way, you were carrying on a kind of tradition which had been going on for—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, yeah I was carrying on a tradition, I felt that these artists had gone beyond abstract expressionism, and they were younger artists, and they were using a kind of—in all of them there was none and they weren't photorealists. They weren't realists in any sense of the word. Each of them was involved, whether it was Jan Muller or Lee Bell or De Niro or Lester Johnson, or some of those artists that showed then or Paul Beecham [ph] were involved in a kind of gestural painting that could not in any way have taken—their kind of figuration was not a continuing of a 1930s kind of—like I represent [inaudible] before the estate of the Kennedy's [inaudible] had nothing to do with that. [00:50:06] And they were all younger than the Pollocks or the de Koonings, or the Kleins but probably more than of our generation. I call our generations the [inaudible], but they were probably even younger than that a little bit, 12‑15 years younger.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, how does somebody like Beecham, who you show—you know, so many artists admire his work, and yet it seems he's terribly difficult for anyone to sell. Why is that, do you think?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, first of all, as I have observed, most—you could always sell [inaudible]. Most new collectors—maybe collectors are not quite as steadfast as art dealers. [They laugh.] Although, [inaudible] collectors, is when they usually come in, young ones, come in because they come into a new movement. I mean, they get excited about abstract expressionism, or they get excited by pop art or op or minimal or earth works. They come in on that new thing, and for young artists not to be part of that—it's all right if you get older and you're established and you're still—Milton Resnick's still painting his pictures or de Kooning's still doing his thing, but you cannot be a new artist, and you cannot show new artists or [inaudible] first artists. It's terribly dangerous for a dealer to take a young artist who is not part of the—what's happening. I mean, otherwise you have to find collectors who are almost as independent as an eccentric, and that usually isn't fun for the collector.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, do you think that reflects the influence of criticism and art writing? [00:52:03]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, it reflects everything, art writing, criticism, the scene, one artist talking to another. When you asked me about those dealers out of town, what all those dealers out of town are showing. What the magazines are writing about. It's maybe a little bit easier today because—than it was, say, pop at its height or abstract expressionism at its height, people can now see that, well, lots of ways open that are viable.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, there's no strong school now.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No strong—except, yeah, but you look around and there are things. I don't care whether a kind of quiet or grid of, I don't know, weird is the word for some. I think the photorealism is going to fast disappear too.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Beginning to already.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Already, I never feel I have my ear right there. [They laugh.] Because sometimes things come, and then someone like you comes along and tells me well, [laughs] that observation is not really—you know, I've already seen it.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You know, we just mentioned critics. What about the reviews your exhibitions have received over the years? Have they influenced the market, or do they bring a lot of people?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  You know, it's so strange because people realize that I get awfully good reviews at the gallery. If you were to go back to the New York Times, for example.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You get lots of space.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, the last 10 years. I mean, I have—even from the beginning, as I said, I met Dore first when she came in and reviewed. My first group show was reviewed by the New York Times in 1954, and it has continued. Now, I don't get a lot of article writing because I've never had young artists who have caught the fancy. [00:54:07] I mean, a critic also, if he is to be a good critic, must hit on something that is unique to him. He's got to be there where it's it, and he's simply not interested in writing about people like Beecham, who we all admire. Earl Kerkam's whole estate, I represent. All the artists admired as an artist who's absolutely neurotic to no end [ph]. I mean, has gotten. I mean, it's just the way of all things [ph].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Hm. No.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Kline thought he was going to be one of the great painters. Everybody [inaudible]. Kerkam was one of the, you know, [inaudible] artists. Maybe they all like to like artists who don't threaten. [They laugh.] Who are doing their own thing.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  [Laughs.] Yeah, because Kerkam did these nice little quite things. Mm-hmm [affirmative].

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, yeah, a lot of these artists who are not in their territory. Who are not trying to do what they're trying to do, you know. I mean, I think Kline should admire Kerkam.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But you know, the Times say, as they have done so often, do a large story with a photograph about something for you. Will that bring a lot of people? Will it affect business?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh yeah. Oh of course, of course it brings the people. It sells things. It brings in people. If you noticed that most of the Times pieces that have been done on the gallery, usually there has never been a Times piece who has—where they've discovered a first artist [ph]. They've never said, "Now here's Joe Smith." I mean, they've always given good reviews to Joe Smith, but I mean, all of my artists have been treated, it seems to me, with very—lots of respect and certain admiration. Also, magazines, the magazines have been through it without writing big feature things. [00:56:06] I never know how to—I met a dealer once who said I'm cultivating writers.  

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  [Laughs.] And every once in a while I think, well, maybe I should put together a foundation and it should be called "Writers [inaudible]," you know.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Who writes, I mean—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Does it make a difference? Some of your people have been written about in magazines, but—or is that—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, that's a much more long-range kind of thing. That's something that you pull out and you show Mr. X, and you say, "Look, Mr. X, here is this article. It's just appeared on Y. Isn't that nice? You bought his piece last year." Or you send it to—simply to get back at the fact that none of my artists are representing a thing that's happening. I don't know why. I mean, I sort of would like to be part of a mainstream. I think if you're living in a time then you ought to [inaudible]. [Laughs.] I don't want to talk to you 20 years from now and say how did I miss in this abstract expressionism? The whole figurative thing with Anthony Caro is popular for showing volumetric sculpture. I took on the side people, when concept art was really in, you know, [laughs] how have I—where did I go wrong? How did I not see what was going on? I showed John Kacere and John Saulter [ph]. The other thing I made out of John Saulter [ph] was I gave him a first show. He hadn't sold anything, and he owed me some money, and I had a painting. I never sold one of his paintings. So two years ago I sold this painting where I make $4,000 with a gallery in France. You know, those were the photorealist Kacere and Saulter. [00:58:06]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But you know, speaking of critics, I suppose the next topic is curators and museum people. Who were the ones who have done things for you? Were they easy to find, or did they find you?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  They liked me. They always find—the other day I went over to a fine arts appraiser. I have a friend who's working for Mr. O'Toole [ph] who's a fine arts appraiser, and I went into to this little two- three-room, and there was a museum director there. Around this room are all kinds of things. I mean, they were bad. They were good. They were indifferent. It had that marvelous feeling of discovery that if you look behind this fake [inaudible] you might find something that was good in the way of a [inaudible]. All sorts this. It was—and this gentlemen, I think he's in his 80s now, and—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, he's got to be.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, okay. I mean, it's another kind of thing. I think often times museum directors, now they have told me this, have found things here. They have found what is unexpected. In fact, I would say I have sold a lot more in that way on a regular basis to museums than I ever have to private collectors.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh really?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  In that they are often times looking to fill in, looking for something that represents a period. I mean, they're not generally looking for Frank Stella or Rauschenberg or Johns.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, well, institute collecting is different.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I mean, they'll find—institute collecting is very different.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  A lot of them want a Moran, Thomas Moran watercolor they find here. [01:00:00] The Louis Lozowick drawings that they were able to buy at $150. I mean, they know American art history. They were only talking about American art in this—and they know American art history. And because they know it, they have found things here.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, they're a different kind of audience though.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  They're a very different audience. And actually I love them as an audience because if it's not generally selling it's a lot of talking, you know. It happens. No, I love that kind of audience. I love Milton Brown [ph] when he said, "Why are you still holding that Louis Lozowick drawings six years away from [inaudible]?" You know, I like Weatherspoon when they buy or University of Georgia, or University of New Mexico, or Norman Geske from Nebraska has bought a lot of things over the years. Those kind of university collections that have American things and things [inaudible]. Arnie Friedman who you mentioned earlier came in very early to the gallery.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do these people just come in, or did you put them on mailing lists?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  They come. It just happens. Like—don't ask me how it happens. Well, and people often times ask me, how do you run a gallery? They come in, and the next year when they're in New York they come in. Yeah. They come.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But I mean, would they find out—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I don't know how.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  —through advertising, or word of mouth, or something?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, well, we had—well, while I'm being interviewed is 20 years, right? It's 20 years. And your name is repeated over and over again. Somebody says, "Stop, look at Zabriskie."

PAUL CUMMINGS:  So the longer you exist the longer—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  The longer you're around, I mean, it's just, as I said, oh time, strength, cash, and patience. [01:02:05] I mean, it's sitting. I opened up my door, and I just sat, and that's it.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  And the world has come to you?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  [They laugh.] I would have to be—I'd hate to have to go out to that world. I love sitting. I love sitting and seeing who's going to walk through. I could no more be a private dealer. I mean, I could be a policeman. [They laugh.] I could do all sorts of things in life. But I know I could never be a private dealer. I can work in an office. I could do lots of things. I can manage other people's businesses. I can work in a bank. I could only be a public art dealer. I could never be a private art dealer. I would not know what to do. [They laugh.] I simply would not. I know what to do because I opened up my door every day of the week at 10:00 in the morning, and I close at 6:00 at night. But if I had to stay home, Paul, I simply couldn't do it.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  It would be impossible.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  It would be impossible.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Okay.

[END OF TRACK AAA_zabris75_8189_m.]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Okay, we're on side four. But staying, again, to curators and the museum people, some of your—many of your artists have had museum exhibitions in various places. Are those generated because they teach or because they—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I think, no, again, back to this question as to how things happen, how do collectors come to you, how do critics come in, is more, you know, for example, with Mary's most recent, it's always easier to go to the most recent thing. Mary had a very successful show this year. The success just did not happen her last two to three shows at the—I would call very successful—people then. You never know. It's the chicken and the egg. I mean, I have not gone to get Mary a museum show, whether it's next year she'll show at the Chicago Arts Club, Mr. Alstorp [ph] who is a Chicago collector, I think, brought in our—or, I'm not even sure whether it's Rue whatever, that nice lady. What is her name? Chicago Arts Club? Wonderful woman—it's Shaw—who's been there for 60 years, and have a Nadelman show at the Chicago Arts Club. And you never know where these things come from. It's one thing simply starts off another, and it's back, finally, for the artist. As I said about myself, it has been 20 years in business. Certainly I initiate things. I mean, with Mary I will keep a list this year. I not only kept—I kept a very interesting list this year, Paul. Usually I keep a list of museum people and people whose opinions I respect and feel are influential in the art business who like one of my artists. [00:02:05] This year so many people liked Mary that I kept a very, very special list of those museum people who do not like Mary. And I realize that she certainly was not Bill Rubin's cup of tea. Everyone came. There was no museum person from Thomas [inaudible] to Bill Rubin to Alfred Barr came in for the show. I mean, everyone came this year for Mary's show. They came from out of town—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, it was a big event.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —they came from—this year I kept a list of critics and museum people who did not like Mary because when you have everyone else who loved it, and you have Tom, and that was the first time I had done something like that. In most people's cases I keep a list of whether it's Jerry Nordling [ph] who likes Gabe Kohn and Nadelman and Richard Stankiewicz. I usually keep the names of people who admire my artists.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, let me ask you the next obvious thing, I suppose, is when one of your people has a museum exhibition, what does that do? Does that generate more interest?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  It depends where it is. If it were at the Museum of Modern Art where none of my people have ever had a show or the Guggenheim, it of course, in New York City, would generate a great deal of interest. You do a show at Kent [ph], at the University of so-and-so, at Texas, San Francisco, wherever, you don't know what sort of interest that generates. Sometimes I wonder.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  I mean, there's no—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I mean [inaudible] to shows. I go out sometimes it only means the catalog. We've had a Walkowitz show out circulating and it's been a disaster. [00:04:03]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Really?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Absolutely. It means nothing. I don't [phone rings] think people have seen it. It will only mean something in that a catalog will remain from it, which will show that it was at Kansas, it was at Utah—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  One place.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —it was here. Otherwise it doesn't—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, are catalogs useful selling tools like that?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, art, again, is very long [ph]. Yes, you know, I suppose they are. I think it's really too naïve to even say a catalog this or that.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  It just—it's another brick in the wall.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Also, there are two ways of selling. There's long‑time selling and short‑time selling where reputations and selling have got to be done in an art generation, in that decade where there's highly speculative art, which is short‑time selling and short‑time buying and selling, maybe a decade or less, maybe five years, maybe three years where the money has got to be made in that time with reputation, money exchange.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, like some of the photorealists.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And then there's long‑time selling, yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, what's an example of long‑time?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, no better example than like, Walkowitz. [They laugh.] I mean, I feel that that is long‑time selling. Here is an artist who is represented in every American art book whose prices have not gone up with me as fast as inflation. [They laugh.] They have not. I read the [inaudible] 10 percent in New York City in the last year. No. Walkowitz has not increased, not [phone rings] [inaudible] '62. [00:06:00] I think it's very long‑time [inaudible], you know, in the terms of the history of American art. I have very strong feelings about pre‑population explosion, pre-1940 yard‑quality art. And there's only so much art and so much—so many people, so many museums.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, like the Baizerman estate. There are only so many pieces left, and—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Except that has less chance than Walkowitz.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Why?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Simply because unless you rediscover, like you rediscover [inaudible] 200 years later, art and money, you know, sometimes there is a correlation and sometimes there isn't. When you're interviewing a dealer, there are dealers, there is a gallery system, Walkowitz would even have a market for books because there are 5,000 people [inaudible]. The more there are, unlike certain rare things, I mean I think things do reach a point a rarity in art often times becomes period of the artist. I mean, once historical period in time and aesthetics, sort out things so that eventually if we stick to case of Walkowitz, who was a tremendously prolific artist like Picasso or de Kooning, these artists have much more of a chance of making a market than the Baizermans and the Louis Lozowicks and the—I keep naming people who I represent or handle because there isn't enough there to work with. I mean, in order to make a market you have got to have something to market.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh, it's true.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  And it's—you only have six things to sell nobody's going to bother. [00:08:00] You asked me why am I not showing Charlie Shaw, because there are only six things that are really interesting to sell. There is not enough there to deal with.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  The late paintings don't really interest you.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE: The whole period of his abstract expressionism does not interest me. They're pretty awful. The very late things of his interest me because they are constructed pieces that are really quite—I mean there are hard-edged things that look more interesting, at least in terms of our own history, our own time. And as far as money goes, we're always dealing with our history at the wrong time. I mean, art loses—we'll change. It's sort of my thing once our—but we make our own money history.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you think that there are collectors who kind of wait till prices reach a certain level before they come in to buy?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I don't know. I mean, I don't know how it's done. I would think not [ph].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  When they appear they appear.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Someone ought to interview you [laughs] and find out. I don't know whether they—I don't really deal with that kind of collector. I deal, as I said, to go back through, I deal with the museum man who comes in, certainly in terms of buying National Endowment has helped galleries, as you mentioned here, [inaudible]. I don't deal with that kind of collector because I'm simply not selling that kind of art. I never have.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But do you think that some of your art might say, in five years or 10 years—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  You're like Herb Vogel [ph], always come back on the scene again and once asked me and said, "Virginia, if I buy that, will it be in a retrospective 10 years from now?" I have no idea. I haven't got a clue. [00:10:00] I mean, obviously exhibiting art is—wants to succeed otherwise you wouldn't want to exhibit. I mean, you are here to sell, and you are here to sell, to exploit, to promote. The reason I have—Richard Stankiewicz who remained off the scene for a number of years. He came to me one day and he said to me, "Yes, I would like to show again. I want to show because I need to sell my work. I have a family. I need to supplement my income. I need to sell my work. You must sell my work." Rosen [ph] writes me in a letter today because of his bad health proffered [ph]. He says to me, "Virginia, it isn't that I want money." He said, "There will come a time when I need money." I quote his letter, and he said to me, "I do not want to die in New York, and I don't want to be in a rest home. I want to have that money when the time comes to give me the care I need." Yes, your obligation is to artists, and it's a financial obligation. [Phone rings.] And I've had artists, I think, women artists who get to the women's movement. People have come to me and said to me, "Well, I just want you to exhibit my work. I don't need to sell." I said, "Well, that doesn't interest me." This is a business where we sell. I mean, in order to run this business I'm going to sell. So I'm really interested in the straight on artists like Richard, like [inaudible] who, you know—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  It's what it is.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  For me, this is what it is. If one of the ways of selling my work is through the promotion of it, through the successful—I think publicity, the article writing, the shows, that kind of thing, this is all—and I sell. [00:12:07] I mean, I certainly sell for Richard. I certainly have because he would not stay with me.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Oh sure, right, right.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Lester Johnson is very obvious—Lester liked me, but he had a very good offer from Martha. He had two children. He had no [inaudible]. It was a—it's a business, and once you lose sight of that you're not in business anymore.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you think the fact that you sort of have what I call "backroom dealings" since you deal in works of the period that interest you but not necessarily an artist you represent. Is that an aid in supporting the exhibition of artists who don't sell?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, absolutely, without that, if we did not sell that backroom we would be in big trouble. Oh, oh, there is no question.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Because of what, it took years for Mary Frank to get—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, Mary left Stephen Radich because she was not selling. First pieces of Mary I ever sold were to Hirshhorn. He's really the only museum that bought her sculpture in the beginning, and he does not have important pieces. He simply has her [inaudible]. No, I mean, it's got to. I mean, I've got to sell those things back there. I mean, yesterday we sold a Franz Kline that we had had here for at least three or four months, a very early Stankiewicz piece was sold yesterday. You know, we must—I mean, if I were to count on like any [inaudible] it's not going to show, now we've sold three prints at $175 each. [00:14:00] They're not selling.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Doesn't pay the phone bill.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, we have not. Perhaps Storm King [Center] will buy. We have been successful in selling Baizerman, but we've his show up now, and we sold that piece behind you there of Baizerman's the small Song of the Earth [ph] bronze, and Storm King may buy that piece. But we can't count on our exhibition.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You very early—[coughs] excuse me—very early on started having a back room in some way.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I've had a back room as soon as I got something after my first three years when I just sold at exhibitions, or maybe I sold one or two things. I mean, back room is always there. It has always been selling in the back. People, as I said about Mr. O'Toole, people like to be in the back situation.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, kind of digging around.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  They just—when you were with me in the building on 65th I had a basement, didn't I? Thirty-two I had that basement situation.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Sixty-fifth Street, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, 32 and 65th, you know, people used to love to go in that dirty basement, and they still love going to the basement. I mean, I don't know what they think is there.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Magic.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  But I've sold to dealers, and this year I made a very big sale to Harry Lund [ph]. I got rid of, out of inventory, 100 prints that I had pilling up.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, but you see, since you don't handle prints—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Instead of I keep them, I mean—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  It might have been a bargain.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, it was. It was, oh, absolutely. It was, yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  And now you have all that space.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I have now—I mean, I have set a—I would rather leave all those leftover things to the archives and my papers [they laugh].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, do you have warehouse space this size? [00:16:07]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, I have Beach Street. Beach Street is a bit of a nightmare. I have storage space down 10 Beach which I took maybe three or four years ago, which has all those old Lester Johnsons, all those Beachams. And I've made money on things like Lucas Samarases and I bought 12 of them in '63 for $35 each. But I have a lot of things that never will sell, never. I mean, when I say never, I mean never.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, what to do you do with material like that?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, you can't destroy it. You don't want to. I'm certain you would never do that. You hope maybe you can give it away eventually in some fashion. I mean, some days it makes me—when I look at it it makes me all very sad, and other days I say, well, you know, it's not all that bad. I probably at this point in my career, I own 900,000 works of art. I mean, those art, or whatever they are, they're early [inaudible]. They're Lester Johnsons. They're Peter Pasadenos [ph]. They're Milton Resnicks. They're old prints and drawings of artists that I've seen some way, some place. There are all kinds of things, and I've picked up here, there, Henry Muhrmans that I got from John [phone rings] [inaudible], an American artist that I don't think anybody will discover or rediscover. They exist. But they're serious. I mean, they are that. I don't think anything I have ever bought, somehow underneath does not have—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Some—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —some feeling of seriousness. [00:18:06]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Something [inaudible], yeah, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I mean, not bad art. It's just not saleable art.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, do you think some of those things might become saleable in five years or 10 years?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, well, look at Louis Lozowick, those pastels. I guess I gave away or sold the first six. My ideal profit is to double my money. So I think I sold my Samarases for $70, $100, or gave away. You know, I understand now they were 2,000 [inaudible], but that's more than not having any.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But, you know, what do you do as things accumulate that don't sell? I mean, you put them in that space?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, I just put them in Beach Street or somewhere and they—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  And they just sit there then?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —yeah, they just sit there. They just sit, just sit, you know.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You could have a warehouse sale.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I have, yeah. Well, you can't have that either. You can't sell an artist's work too cheaply.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, what do you think of Findlay? He does that, Roy Findlay.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I can't do that. Well, I don't know anything about him. He's not me.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  I mean, you know all those big ads, you know, 10 to 50 percent.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, well, you know there's no 10 to 50 percent off, that everything's 10 to 50 percent off always. [They laughs.]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Right, right.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  For everyone. Someone said to me once, "What's the discount for a collector?" I said, "Who is left?" I mean, where are we? I'm not very good at it, and I don't usually like to do it. But certainly the idea of giving, you know, with non-fixed prices on unique things are [inaudible] sale.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Have you had an easy time or difficult time increasing the price of things over the years?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Uh, I used to work in that art research business for Mr. Seligmann, and, you know, he would just automatically, when something stayed in stock increase his price. I mean, I don't run that kind of business. [00:20:08] I mean, an artist and I, we will together establish a price. Mary's prices have certainly been increased over the years, so she gets very excited when she goes to the Museum of Modern Art and sees that her print is $150 or less, and somebody else with more—less reputation has $225, and I say, "Mary, remember you're selling the work, and your drawings only sell for $250 or $300, so you have to restructure everything." And most of all it's just an ego trip for her to see her things [inaudible].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Prices go.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, uh-huh [affirmative], but she, at least on paperwork, is prolific. That's good, sculptures are great [ph].

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, it's always better to sell than not, you know.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh, I mean, this, of course, is—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  When you're young.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —my feeling too. It gets out. I mean, I've seen too many artists who have lost work in tragic events of fire, of damage, of moving things, of leaving studios, of—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, Janis [ph] always says that when he sells a painting it means he will sell three more because other people will see that.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well when it's out, it's out. Yeah, but it helps. Many of Mary's pieces the settings have been sold because someone had seen something somewhere. I mean, it's the best advertising you can do is to get an artist's work out there, get people interested.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. What do you think, generally, about American art and where it's going from your point of view?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  You know, I want to go back to what I said, I don't know. You know.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, but I mean, you've had 20 years' experience of watching things grow and shift. [00:22:05]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I'm curious about—it's marvelous to me to watch things and to realize how much they have changed, how the art image has changed. I mean, I think that's one of the exciting things about being—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  What do you mean the art image?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I mean, that what artists are concerned with, what their image—I mean their image meaning the content—content is a funny way, their way of painting, what concerns them in the way of formal problems. You know, I've seen a lot of changes, and I have seen much less change in my city. I think that's one of the marvelous things about being involved in something as deeply as one becomes involved in, in art, working in it on a daily basis. I don't think there is any other area of my life where I am able to observe change because I'm not as involved in politics and economics, and social situation, perhaps if I were—I think it's because of this deep involvement in one thing. I think that's one of the pleasures, is that I am able to observe, see, whereas in other areas of my life I don't notice it as much as social condition, economics, government, the world. I mean, I know there have been wars. I know there have been depressions, obsessions, inflations of changes, corruption, non-corruption, but I'm not as informed. I am very informed as a—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you read the art magazines, or do you look for them? Do you read them? Do you read books?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh yes, I mean, I read art magazines. I read books. I look. I see exhibitions. I mean, I do more in art than I do in any other area of my life. And I have stored up a lot of knowledge, a lot of information, a lot of experience. [00:24:03] I'm very professional, and I think being professional means having a lot of experience and using that experience. You know, I think I've learned a lot.

[Audio Break.]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  But where does it go? I mean, my concern of course is sculpture. I see changes in, you know, in—of course, in these last few years in government involvement and state involvement in arts, and in public art.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  What do you think about all that? Do you think that—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, I think that it's been marvelously helpful as whatever Nixon did. I mean, the one thing he did do is make us a—you know, a fine arts program, fine arts has always [inaudible] except when you're really right in it and non-controversial because people don't know. I mean, they don't really care.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  The broad public.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  The broad public, it's a non-controversial subject. It becomes controversial when Tom Wolfe writes an article, and he'll make a specific commentary, or Greenburg [ph] has his thing or someone else, but otherwise, it's not awfully controversial. I mean, it's nice [inaudible]. You know, as the state, as the federal thing, as—it's, the arts have been subsidized.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you think that the state and federal programs like that influence private collecting in any way?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Well, not what's in private collecting [inaudible]. I mean, in most areas in federal and in state things there, at least on certain levels, there are people whose opinions and things I respect involved in advising, I mean [inaudible]. I don't know if we get out of New York City or remote areas whether local city or town thing has sophisticated advisor, or  information available to them. [00:26:15] But certainly on federal, and I think on state level, even in our city, there's sophisticated information available to them to cover—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  [Inaudible.] Well, what—you know, I'm curious again about those programs and their influence. I had one dealer one time telling me that he does 10 percent of his business in New York City and the rest of it is all over the country. Do you find that a lot of your business is local or is it—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, I have a lot of business—I mean—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  —quite national?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —if we are to take over the country, many of the museums that are located in a university situation.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah, private collectors.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yes, private collectors all over the country because I think I have more than 10 percent of my business from New York City because New York City is an art center and a sophisticated art center, and collecting—one of the reasons that there are so many collectors in New York, because art is simply available. I mean, it's awfully—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, the money's here too.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —hard to be a collector if you live in Des Moines. I mean, you've got to at least get to Chicago or—I mean—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Minneapolis as well, I think.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —art cannot come to you. I mean, that's what makes it much more particularized in some ways, than music or writing, and all of that, because you have got to go to it. That's why if you live in New York and if you have that kind of sensibility and are so inclined, I mean, it's here for you to look at. It's here for you to make judgments, to make decisions, to be influenced, to be encouraged, to be advised. So I would say that a large part of collecting is, you know, there aren't many collectors, and New York is a city with wealth, whether it's corporate collection or whether it's private collection or whether it's any [ph] or whatever. [00:28:11]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you have much corporate buy?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, I mean, RCA was in here on Annie Albers [inaudible]. There is less corporate buying today and the corporations have, Chase Manhattan, and we all know of collections that we've sold to. I mean, [inaudible] has bought a great deal from us.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  They've become very active gallerists over the years.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I mean, they buy regularly. I don't know how many sales I'm making, but I would—sure that there are 20 things in the collection which have gone through this gallery too. Chase Manhattan or [inaudible] RCA, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how many really—you know, whether I have them all, I don't think they've all gone through here but a few have.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Have you had collectors who—like Hirshhorn in terms of repetitive buying, or is he such a unique—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I think he's so unique. Don't you find that other dealers have either pro or con feeling is unique?

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah, but then some people he doesn't buy things from.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Oh yeah, yeah.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  You see, I mean, there are certain galleries he seems to go to, go from around.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, none to that on that level. I mean, I've sold to lots of I suppose who you would call collectors. Whether they were [inaudible] Baker or Lawrence Bodel [ph] or [inaudible] line of collectors that I have sold to over the years, and simply more than one thing. But nobody like Hirshhorn, nobody in that quantity, nobody with that—at least I don't have anyone. [00:30:00] You know, I've sold to Vera [ph]. I've sold to them all. Maybe not to them all, but a lot of people were involved in American art. I'm not selling to people who collect Cezannes and that kind of—and Matisses and those people. But I think any of the American collectors have come here from Neuberger on through. I can't compare Neuberger with Hirshhorn at all.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But he's built an enormous collection.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  He has a funny collection, to me, and his method of buying isn't very different. I don't see, but I've sold. If you name the collectors that I sell to, I'll tell you I sold once twice, three times. I mean, and still I'm never sure right away when you say collectors.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  What's a collector?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I mean, what's a collector? Is Margaret—Margaret and Ray Horowitz [ph] collectors with their American impressionism? I would guess so, yeah, sure. I've sold them four or five pictures. Ray helped me move. He got me a loan, so I've had lots of—when I desperately needed money one time Margaret Horowitz came in and I said I need—I can't do anything. I was selling one thing and [inaudible] the houses, and I had no money. I said, "I've got to borrow $10,000. I have no money." And Ray came the next day. I go to the bank. Everything was—he said, "I've got a loan for you with the [inaudible] Midland bank." So I've, you know, had—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Things like that.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —all sorts of contact, very, very good contact with people who have liked me, you know, in different areas of collecting. But none that touched more like Hirshhorn. None that would have bought my contemporary art and buy my earlier ones. [00:32:01] Then they would buy my sculpture as well as my paintings. None of one—none that would buy one or buy 50, you know, nothing like that.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Are there many younger dealers that [phone rings] have begun to show interest at galleries that have started in the last five years in the people you represent?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  You mean in New York?

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, around the country, particularly.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:   I don't know. Jared Sa—we're talking about dealers who were in—Jared Sable came in. And I've shown Mia Westerlund, and these shelves are now open [ph]. I suppose, but then again, he came in, he bought three John Grillo [ph] drawings from me the other day, but then I went for the first time, if you can believe me how far out of the [inaudible] picture I am in my whole life till [inaudible] for lunch. I had never been there. I had never, never been there before, and of course, there was Jared Sable sitting with Leo at the table. I mean, obviously he's not dealing with me he's dealing with Leo. I mean, David Mirvish is young. He bought all my Nadelmans from me. But he's not handling my artist. He's handling Greenberg's artist in Toronto. You know, people like Noah is an old friend.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Goldowsky.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Goldowksy's, I mean, I don't mean to brag, but there was my dealing—the first museum show I ever arranged for any of my artists was one in Minneapolis in '58 for Lester, '59. And I went out to Minneapolis, and on the way back I stopped in Chicago, where I met Noah Goldowsky and Bud Hollander [ph]. And the next thing I knew, Bud and Noah were representing Lester with Martha Jackson, and he had already gone [they laugh]. [00:34:00] So you see? [They laugh.] I [inaudible] all these early experiences. It sort of made me feel I want to do it on my own. [Laughs.] I'm not going to let them know what I'm doing. No, I mean, there's this woman, now I forget, oh, Barbara Okun, who has been handling some things for me out of the warehouse and—I mean, although that Dick has put on shows for me, but I don't think of him as a younger dealer, Dick Gray.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Dick Gray, right.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  From Chicago. He's contemporary, certainly. But it was Noah before he went in business, before Dick went in business, Noah brought Dick Gray to the gallery. Dick bought pictures from me before he went in business.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  What kind of business was he in before?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I don't really know what he was doing. He had bought pictures. I know he has a summer camp in Michigan somewhere, and it was really Noah Goldowsky who got Dick interested in opening up a gallery. And must have been in the early '60s, and Dick—I've always felt it was easier, a bit easier, to be out of town in that you could really have name people. I mean, in town you must realize that I have had to compete—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  With 300 other galleries, yeah.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —all the museums, with 300 other galleries with more money for names—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you feel a sense of competition with all of those people in that way?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, I mean, when Pace [ph] comes in here for my show when they send guys in from [inaudible] all of my sculptures are being looked at for Sugarman, yeah, all of them.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  That big hand of money is still up there because—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  The big hand of money, yeah, because as I said before, that is what it's about. And if you forget that you're in trouble. It's got to be there because it would be silly even for Richard, who's doing well, not to have—I mean, Noguchi went to [inaudible], as I understand it, simply because he was not able to compete or could not meet $100,000 a year guarantee. [00:36:09] I mean, it would be like saying I'm leaving such and such a corporation as vice president to be president of General Motors at twice the salary, with all things equal. I mean, people will say to me, "Well, so-and-so is so disloyal," and I said, "Well, what is loyalty? That has nothing to do with anything."

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Self-preservation.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  It's a business. I mean, it's a business.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  How many of the collectors, I mean, because there are people I think you've sold to over the years, think in terms of buying for institutions or having their collection eventually go somewhere? Is that hard to tell?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Wow. I mean, I think [inaudible] had the idea that—I mean, it is [inaudible]. You know, [inaudible], even when I look around and whether it's Hirshhorn or Frick or Phillips or whatever collection, I mean, it is one of the easiest ways to gain a kind of immortality for one's self.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  It's those little brass plaques.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  It certainly works better than [inaudible]. I mean, the idea of the rich, I mean all the very rich, after a while, what do you do? One must spend—one has an obligation to their money. They must use it wisely and with it, hopefully, to achieve something either in your own lifetime or afterwards, and it's impermanent. And art collecting, what seemed to me, to be one of the best ways of doing it. I don't know a better way. I read about Mrs. George [ph] this morning, and somehow horses do not—if you read that little bit on her mentioned in the New York Times.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  No, I didn't see it.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, that place on 61st and Fifth has been closed for years and years. [00:38:06] It was owned by Mrs. George, and they're selling the estate, and it's on the market now, but apparently this woman was known as the dog lady. I mean, she had kennel and [inaudible]—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Dogs on top of a thousand other things.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —things here. Well, I mean, she could have bought art, and she could have left something that was—

PAUL CUMMINGS:  A collection.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  —yeah, or something, you know, a little more than her reputation [laughs] as a dog fancy, you know. So I think art is a nice way to do it, if you have any sensibility for it. Look at the collections that were—have names we remember, and also [inaudible] name on collections. I mean, it's not that great a collection. Look at that man with not too much money got a—I mean, he had a lot of money.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  But what about—

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  So, I think ever—never, never, never, never if anybody has any senses, and that building is incredible. It's so beautiful. I mean, the collection itself is terribly disappointing. I wanted to see it soon after we returned to New York after going to the National Gallery, and places like that. And it was—it's all this experience. Again, we go back to Walter Pach. He had a little watercolor [inaudible]. It was a watercolor that [inaudible] collection, and it just was not as good. I mean, it's this marvelous experience with art that you can always touch on and say, "Well, this is or is not as good or as interesting." Pictures were meant to be supported. I mean, if you look at Western art. [00:40:00]

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Yeah, yeah, but don't you—do you think that the collectors who buy from you think in all of these terms?

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  No, because most of them are not very rich. I mean, I think about this very often in thinking of the extension of my gallery. I think I may have said to you one day, but this take of in the gallery now, its overhead, its costs, its expenses, are such that I must sell expensive works of art. Now, if I look at my collectors, there are not very many of the very, very rich among them. They're all kinds of people, but they are not necessarily the very rich. They're not the people who will easily spend $50,000 on a single piece. They have no more [inaudible] they can spend $50—I mean, they haven't. I mean, their top price may be as high as somebody else's might be $100. Theirs might be $5,000. I may not have the collectors whom are very rich. I don't know. But I never know how many of these there are. I've always wanted to guess for American art, for contemporary, are there 300? How many are there at any one time that don't spend more than $20,000, say on either contemporary work of art or early pieces in American field? Hundred?

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Well, 2[00]‑300 maybe.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Two or three hundred.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  I mean, it might vary depending on the economy or particular thing.

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  Yeah, and the moment, time.

PAUL CUMMINGS:  Do you think that as a dealer you've been able to influence the taste of people who buy from you? [They laugh.] Or is that a difficult—[00:42:00]

VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE:  I have been able to—yes, I've been able and no, I have not been able to influence the people. I've been able to influence in terms of the gallery. I'm waiting. I'm waiting for a few things in life which 10 years from now you continue with the tape we'll tune in again. I'd like to put together one or two collections. I would like to, you know, influence taste, yes, in some ways more directly. I would like to do more with public things, more with environment in terms of accessible art, if the artists who are making—I mean, I'm not going to make the art. I mean if that's what they're into then I'd like to extend it. Right now I find myself taking every opportunity to place things, to set things in public spaces myself, to seize public spaces, to think about landscape, to think about art for people who are not art‑oriented. Art made by artists. But I love setting things, whether I—you know I'm doing Bill King out in Amagansett in the green, I set things out at Benson in their space. I want to see how things work outdoors. I want to work with Wayville [ph] setting things outdoors. I hope to do more of that. I don't think I'm a tastemaker, only in that—or whatever that word means—only in that I don't—I never really believed in general taste. I believe in the object in the specific thing in the art but not in a whole. I don't know what that's about. Are we [inaudible] here? [00:44:00]

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[END OF INTERVIEW.]