Enduring Voices Catalogue (6-21-23) - Flipbook - Page 13
Susan S. and David R. Goode
on Starting Their Collection
I
n one way or another, we have been collecting art
as long as we have been married. We met at Duke
University. Duke had a small museum then, which is
much larger now. We later lived in the Boston area, and
started spending some time in New York City as well.
Having had some stimulus from our interests in art, we got
acquainted with an art dealer in New York named Sylvan
Cole. He was the founder of an early print organization
called Associated American Artists. Of course, we didn’t
have two nickels to rub together — but they sold prints for
only five dollars!
When we moved to Roanoke in the late 1960s with the
Norfolk and Western Railroad, the Taubman Museum
of Art was then the Roanoke Fine Arts Center. That was
even before it was the Art Museum of Western Virginia.
The organization encouraged young people moving to
town who had an interest in art, and we got involved. Our
collecting just kind of grew from that.
We bought what we could afford. In those days, we
acquired works by Roanoke artists such as Ray Kass, Joni
Pienkowski, Ernest Johnson, and Jim Yates. Their works
are in museum collections now. A watercolor by Don
Harris was our first purchase. We still have it hanging
even today — and we still like it! Many of the works we
bought then are today hanging in our apartment in New
York and our house in Norfolk. So with the help of the
Roanoke Fine Arts Center, we got started collecting and
pursued it from there.
Art collecting is a disease for which there is no vaccine
to our knowledge — except for perhaps running out
of money. We acquired a lot at the Museum’s annual
Sidewalk Art Show. We still go there every year, and
almost always buy something new. It’s a classic collecting
story of how your interest grows and grows. Pretty soon,
you find yourself in New York art galleries and auction
houses, and that sort of thing. Then we moved to Norfolk
in 1990 and continued our art collecting there.
We first became involved with the Board of what was then
the Art Museum of Western Virginia because David’s
employer, the Norfolk and Western Railroad, nominated
him. It turned out to be a really great experience! The
leadership of the Museum’s Board became open just as
our involvement began. Being the youngest and least
experienced in the room, the rest of the Board members
looked around and said, “Well, David, why don’t you chair
this thing?”
So there is a long history of the Goode family with the
Taubman Museum of Art. Our philosophy as collectors
is that if you have something that you think is worthwhile,
it doesn’t do to keep it in a vault or where no one can see
it except your closest friends. That’s why we are happy
to share our collection with the Roanoke community
and beyond.
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