Herb and Dorothy (2009)

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TRIVIA

"Herb and Dorothy" won both the doc and audience awards at the Hamptons Film Festival.

COMMUNITY RATING

SPECS

• Project Phase: Completed
• Release Date: 2009-06-05 - NY and/or LA
• Distributor(s): Arthouse Films
• Film Genre(s): Documentary
• Country: United States
• 

SYNOPSIS

HERB & DOROTHY tells the extraordinary story of Herbert Vogel, a postal clerk, and Dorothy Vogel, a librarian, who managed to build one of the most important contemporary art collections in history with very modest means. In the early 1960s, when very little attention was paid to Minimalist and Conceptual Art, Herb and Dorothy Vogel quietly began purchasing the works of unknown artists. Devoting all of Herb's salary to purchase art they liked, and living on Dorothy's paycheck alone, they continued collecting artworks guided by two rules: the piece had to be affordable, and it had to be small enough to fit in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. Within these limitations, they proved themselves curatorial visionaries.

After thirty years of meticulous collecting and buying, the Vogels managed to accumulate over 2,000 pieces, filling every corner of their tiny one bedroom apartment. In 1992, the Vogels decided to move their entire collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Many of the works they acquired appreciated so significantly over the years that their collection today is worth millions of dollars. Still, the Vogels never sold a single piece. Today, Herb and Dorothy still live in the same apartment in New York with 19 turtles, lots of fish, and one cat. They've refilled it with piles of new art they've acquired.

RELATED NEWS

 Variety reports that Arthouse Films has picked up worldwide rights to the doc. : 2008-11-03