Spring means Graduation, and other celebratory gift-giving events…and I’ve got an idea
It seems that my family and I have a spring calendar filled with graduations, new babies, weddings and milestone birthdays. For a few of these special occasions I’m going to give artwork—not anything I have made…heaven forbid! But seriously, art is one of the most thoughtful and meaningful gifts I can think of. It is not only unique and original, but if chosen thoughtfully, art will retain its value (and perhaps increase) while providing years of enjoyment and fond memories.
I came to this idea a couple of years ago when my daughters were graduating from college. I decided that I wanted to give them a piece of art as a kick-start for what I hoped would be a continued exploration and appreciation of art, but also, I knew it would be a meaningful gift, and commemorate an important milestone.
When they were young, they spent a lot of time with me at MoMA, especially on the weekends when the museum offered these truly inspired classes and workshops (shout out to the most excellent David E. Little who was the Director of Education from 2003-2008) that were organized into two sections, the first part was with an educator who would take the group into specific galleries and speak about the artist, process, etc. After that, we would head to the Education Deptartment studios where participants had a hands-on studio art class. The Sol Lewitt workshop was a true highlight, and to this day, we reminisce about how much we enjoyed that Saturday afternoon. (Frankly, I still marvel at the high-end art supplies and materials which every workshop participant was provided to create their Lewitt-inspired drawings.)
As they got older, I brought them around to the galleries in Chelsea to see contemporary work and every once in a while, they’d come with me to visit with artists with whom I’d become friendly over the years. Not surprisingly, each daughter developed informed opinions about what we were seeing, what they liked or didn’t and our post-art gallery crawl conversations at the Empire Diner became increasingly thoughtful and engaging.
Now, let me be clear, as far as buying art, I’m not talking about the 6-figure range, or even 5 figures…because there is fantastic art that is reasonably priced and affordable. So I approached their graduation gift of art as I would when working with a new client, and took each daughter ‘shopping’—we looked primarily at works on paper and paintings.
My oldest landed on a medium format color photograph which is mounted on acrylic—an image of a massive rock formation with a barely perceptible split where a woman wearing a cherry red maillot is peeking into the crevice. It’s a stunner and it’s flat mounted onto the white wall above her bed in her “junior one bedroom” apartment in Washington DC. My younger daughter hasn’t settled on anything quite yet, and that’s just fine—she should love what we buy, as it is the start to her personal collection.
Think about it…kind of a great idea, right?
