Every human being is an artist, a freedom being, called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and inform our lives.
Joseph Beuys
As consummate patrons of the arts, Acey and Bill Wolgin did not just live with the art that they collected—they lived alongside the artists who made it. Through their generous support of both individual artists as well as institutions they cherished, the Wolgins became widely celebrated collectors known for their friendships with artists—including Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Arman, and Robert Rauschenberg—that were sustained, not least, by legendary parties thrown at their Philadelphia apartment.
Bill Wolgin, who practiced as a urologist, met Acey through her brother with whom he attended medical school. The pair married and made strong roots in Philadelphia—indeed, the Wolgins may be credited for having a significant role in elevating the City of Brotherly Love to the cultural destination that it is today. In the 1960s, Acey was a founding member of the Arts Council at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association, which helped spark the city’s contemporary art scene. In 1974, Acey became one of the first women elected to the board of the Philadelphia Art Museum, where she served as a trustee and trustee emeritus for the rest of her life. When Robert Indiana’s LOVE stamp was released at that museum, Acey’s birthday party doubled as the event after-party. Among the attendees was the artist Arman, who absconded with a piece of the LOVE stamp-themed cake in order to seal it in resin.
The Wolgins would later relocate to Boca Raton, where they became actively involved in the Boca Raton Museum of Art and eventually funded the Wolgin Education Center. After returning to Philadelphia, Bill Wolgin would become involved in the Woodmere Art Museum as a trustee, helping to guide the institution’s expansion. Works from the Wolgin Collection are now held in all three of the institutions where they became involved, including Yves Klein’s Portrait Relief I: Arman at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fletcher Benton’s Donut with Balls and Half Moon at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, and a group of large-scale sculptures by Sam Maitin at the Woodmere Art Museum.
Surrounded by his parents’ collection from a young age, Richard Wolgin recalls meeting many of the artists whose works he knew intimately—especially memorable was the flaming red hair of Jeanne-Claude when she and Christo dropped in one weekend. (When they weren’t celebrating together, the Wolgins kept correspondences with many of their artist-friends, who sent postcards and, sometimes, drawings.) As kids, Richard and his sister would, naturally, delight in playing with one of Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures. When Richard was twelve years old, Acey gave him his first work: Roy Lichtenstein’s CRAK!, which he affixed to his bedroom wall with thumb tacks—inadvertently bringing the work back into the realm of mass media and pop cultural detritus that so inspired Lichtenstein.
The works featured in The Acey and Bill Wolgin Collection represent a life lived through, and for, art—“It’s not just buying something to hang on the wall,” says Richard, “it’s a piece of their lives, that are now part of our lives.”
Joseph Beuys 1921–1986
Known for his pioneering performance and visual works of art as much for his theological teachings, Joseph Beuys is widely recognized as one of the most influential artists of the latter half of the 20th century.
Born in Krefeld, Germany in 1921, Beuys grew up amidst a tumultuous period in German history. At 22, he joined the German Air Force, volunteering as a pilot in the Luftwaffe during WWII. According to his personal legend, his plane was shot down over Crimea and he was found and saved by a group of Tatars. His rescuers, Beuys would later recount, stripped him naked, smeared him with grease, placed him on a sled and wrapped him in felt to keep him warm before nursing him back to health. Whether or not events played out the way Beuys asserted, the plane crash would come to influence his art for the rest of his life, with grease, felt and sleds becoming themes that he would revisit again and again.
After the war ended, Beuys returned to his family in Krefeld and decided to leave his earlier studies in biology in favor of art. He and his family relocated to Düsseldorf where Beuys began his education at the Kunstakademie, eventually becoming a professor at the school. While there, he developed a reputation as a radical and unconventional teacher. He believed that the spiritual could be studied with the same depth and intensity that modern science applies to the physical world but also saw education as being instrumental to political engagement. His lectures became his first, and what Beuys later considered his greatest, works of performance art.
Beuys and his students engaged in deep cultural dialogue alongside creative instruction, organizing their own political group while practicing the concept of “social sculpture”, the idea that life was one ongoing work of art. By this time Beuys had become a key figure in the Fluxus movement and was deeply involved in the avant-garde art scene of the 1960s and 1970s. Through his ties to the art world and his position at the school, he ushered in a new generation of German artists that sought to abolish the boundaries between art and life and who viewed art as a conduit for social revolution.
To this end, Beuys used editioned works to disseminate his ideas, ultimately creating more than 600 prints and multiples. Today though, he is best known for his performance pieces including How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965), I Like America and America Likes Me (1974), and 7,000 Oaks (1982).
Joseph Beuys passed away on January 23, 1986, but his legacy continues to influence contemporary art and thought. His innovative use of materials, dedication to social and environmental issues, and his belief in the transformative power of art have left an indelible mark on the art world, making him a pivotal figure that continues to fascinate viewers and capture the public imagination.
Auction Results Joseph Beuys
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Photographs from the Polaroid Collection
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