Many Splendid Things

Chuck Close Sol LeWitt James Siena John Chamberlain Pablo Picasso Mark Rothko Richard Tuttle Richard Long

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Dorothy and Herbert Vogel’s one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan is crammed with an impressive array of clutter. The main room is full of boxes, crates and piles of books that teeter five feet high and eclipse the picture window. Fifteen turtles look out from a series of tanks on one side of this precarious walkway, noisily knocking their heads and shells against the glass. On almost every visible inch of wall, tea towels or tartan blankets hang over picture frames like a series of strange domestic shrouds. Behind the protective coverings, and stored in the stacked boxes, are pieces of one of America’s most priceless collections of contemporary art.

The diminutive inhabitants of this crowded space have lived here all their married life and now rarely leave it. Herb Vogel, who is wearing red Nikes and long shorts the day I meet them, has just turned 86 and stands a hunched four feet seven inches; Dorothy is 13 years younger and two inches taller. She is the dynamo of the pair, loquacious and busy, while he sits back, watchful, in serene contemplation. The Vogels have been collecting voraciously since the early 1960s, and their passion has earned them an unlikely place alongside the Gettys, Rockefellers and Rothschilds in a recent book: James Stourton’s Great Collectors of Our Time. For most of his working life, Herb sorted mail at the central post office in Manhattan; Dorothy was a librarian in Brooklyn Heights. They had no children and chose to live frugally on her salary so that they could spend his on art.

In 1992, after Dorothy retired, the Vogels donated their ever-expanding collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., because they had run out of space for it. "We’re not ones to throw things out," says Dorothy, glancing around, "and we couldn’t fit another toothpick in." According to Chuck Close, a friend of the couple who is represented in their collection, the Vogels had so many pieces under their bed that it rose off the floor.

The museum had no idea of the extent of the Vogels’ hoard. It took three months and five trucks to pack up and remove from their tiny apartment more than 2,500 pieces: important works by Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Jeff Koons, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Julian Schnabel and Richard Tuttle, among others. There is a photograph of the couple taken after the removal process; they are holding their cats, smiling, posing against a freshly painted white wall.

However, their tabula rasa was short lived, and the couple soon refilled the apartment. To thank them for their generous bequest, the museum gave them a small annuity, and the Vogels used this, and what was left from their pensions, to buy yet more art, which will also be donated to the National Gallery. They now own more than 4,000 works; they couldn’t stop collecting.

Christo, an artist known for appropriating vast unlikely packages, has called the Vogels "compulsive collectors, almost like alcoholics." Herb admits, "Sometimes you get carried away." The Vogels’ habit is almost a form of art in itself; they live in the spirit of Picasso’s bohemian declaration: "I am the king of ragpickers!"

The Vogels met in 1960, when Herb read an advertisement in the New York Post about a reunion for people who had attended a holiday resort and decided to crash the party. Dorothy was there. "She looked intelligent," he explains in his slow, gravelly voice, before adding diplomatically, "and cute, too." They married a year later and on their honeymoon went to Washington, D.C., where, fittingly, the first place they visited was the National Gallery. It was there, Dorothy tells me, that Herb offered her an initial lesson in art appreciation. "I learned everything from him," she says.

Herb worked the night shift at the post office and, after catching four hours of sleep, spent his days studying art history under Irwin Panofsky at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. He also took painting classes there and frequented the legendary Cedar Tavern, where he rubbed shoulders with Franz Kline, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Dorothy, keen to share Herb’s interests, also began making art, and their respective styles reflected their different personalities. "Mine was hard-edged, very hard-edged," Dorothy says, "and his was more expressionist. I think a lot of people liked mine better." They decorated their apartment with their creations.