Judith Goldman

Robert and Ethel Scull were to art collectors of the 1960s what Andy Warhol was to the artists. Pioneer collectors of Pop art (known as the Mom and Pop of Pop), they were everywhere in the 1960s, a constant presence on the New York social scene.

The Sculls began acquiring major works by leading Abstract Expressionist artists in the mid-1950s (among them, Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman) and assembled a distinguished collection of New York School paintings. Motivated by a taste for the new, they soon moved on, becoming the major collectors of Pop art and the first owners of many works now considered masterpieces including James Rosenquist's monumental F-111, now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art; Andy Warhol's 200 One Dollar Bills, which sold this last November for $43.8 million; Police Gazette, 1955, by Willem de Kooning; the iconic Ethel Scull 36 Times, Andy Warhol's first commissioned portrait; and Jasper Johns' Map, a gift from the Sculls to the Museum of Modern Art.

The Sculls' greatest passion was for Jasper Johns. Among Johns' earliest collectors, at one point they owned 22 major works. Seven are included in the exhibition, among them, the iconic Painted Bronze (Ale Cans), 1960; the 196l sculptmetal The Critic Sees; and Double Flag, which Scull commissioned in 1962.

"The Scull's collection spanned three generations of American art from Abstract Expressionism to Pop art and Earthworks. They had an eye for it all. It's quite extraordinary and unusual," says curator Judith Goldman. By the late 1960s, in his lesser known role as patron, Scull commissioned important works by Walter De Maria and Michael Heizer. In 1968, he could be found in a helicopter high above the Nevada desert looking at Michael Heizer' Nine Nevada Depressions, which he commissioned.

The high-profile Scull auction of 1973 and the estate sale after his death in 1986 afforded only brief viewings of what he and Ethel owned. Now the public can see the great works they acquired, often straight out of the artists' studios. The exhibition has been organized by writer and former Whitney museum curator Judith Goldman whose selection of key works, borrowed from major museums and private collections, presents a comprehensive portrait of the scope and quality of their taste.… (meer)