How much do you love art?

[Artists Unite]

I can't wait to see Megumi Sasaki's documentary on Herb and Dorothy Vogel, who love art more than anybody I know. What other middle class couple lives on one spouse's salary in order to devote the other's to collecting work they love? The Vogels did that with Herb's mail carrier salary for 30 years, becoming friends with many of the creators of the works they own. (Now that they're retired, they do the same with their pension checks.) No wheeler dealers were the Vogel's -- they picked work because they liked it (and had a reputation for choosing "difficult" works) and just kept it in their 1-bedroom Manhattan apartment. Dorothy said in an interview on Leonard Lopate's show today that they paid no attention to the art market and didn't know their collection was "important" until people started asking to come see it. What could make this story more idealistically perfect? The Vogels donated their entire 2000+ piece collection to a number of museums -- the bulk to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.