“There was never a reason to collect except our love for the art”
An edited interview from several between Sondra Gilman, Celso Gonzalez-Falla, Charles Gilman III, and exhibition curators Ben Thompson and Paul Karabinis. The full interview is available in the exhibition publication on sale in the Museum Shop. Reprinted with the permission of curator Ben Thompson.
Paul Karabinis: Sondra, you have been collecting for some time.You’ve talked about how it is an emotional and physical “feeling in [your]stomach” that draws you to a particular image. Can you elaborate onthis?
Sondra Gilman: The feeling is still the same as when I first started.Early on, there was not that much of a photography world. In the yearssince, I’ve been exposed to a lot. All that input—everything you read,everything you see—is in your brain. But there is another dimension: it’semotional. It touches something in my heart. That is where the feelingcomes from. I just think you fall in love. We try to verbally describe art,and it’s not a verbal experience. The end result is a love affair.
PK: You have led the Photography Acquisition Committee at theWhitney Museum of American Art, where there is a curator position andgallery in your name. Talk a little about the strategies of collecting and of beginning a collection at theWhitney.
SG: A lot of it is just practical. When I was appointed Chair of the Photography Acquisition Committee at theWhitney, it was the start of photography collecting at the museum. The field was so big. It was an open worldas to what we were going to collect and what our philosophy would be. David Ross was the director of themuseum, and Leonard Lauder was the head of the board, and they understood the importance of photography.We searched out people who we knew shared the same interest. Some of the strategy was defined by wherewe were in time. In other words, we couldn’t go back and collect early-nineteenth–century works and expect tohave an in–depth collection; what was really available to us at that point was photography from 1975 on.Works from before 1975 were acquired as the opportunity presented itself, but the concentration wascontemporary. We would go back and fill in if there was a gift or there was an auction and the price wasn’t through the roof.
PK: Your personal collection actually began with the purchase of three Eugène Atget prints that were being deaccessioned by the Museum of Modern Art. When was this?
SG: It was in the mid-1970s.
Celso Gonzallez-Falla: You bought the Atget prints when you added photography to the Gilman Paper Company Collection.
SG: Yes, both photo collections started around the same time. I had seen the Atget exhibition at MoMA. Thisstarted both my collecting for myself as well as my collecting for Gilman Paper Company. I thought this wassomething the company should have. At the same time I would buy something for myself, I would buy something for Gilman Paper.
PK: Were there different collecting strategies?
SG: No, I thought of it as one collection.
CG-F: The Gilman Paper Company Collection changed when Sondra sold her interest in Gilman Paper; their collection became more focused on the nineteenth century.
SG: Yes, when I did it, I concentrated on the 20th century, but the focus didn’t really change until my husband, Charles E. Gilman, Jr., died in 1982. At that point, I stepped away, and Pierre Apraxine continued thecollection, and the focus moved to the 19th century. When I met Pierre, he was the curator for the JuniorCouncil, to which I belonged, at MoMA.
Paul Karabinis will give his talk, “Minor Details and Small Events” at Auburn’s Art Museum on Wednesday, January 22 at 4:00 pm.
Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University will exhibit John Augustus Walker’s “Historical Panorama of Alabama Agriculture” from May 17, 2014 to September 21, 2014. The exhibition is timed with the 100th anniversary of the Alabama Cooperative Extension System and marks the first time the entire series of ten paintings will be exhibited in a museum setting. Curated alongside “Panorama” and running concurrently are other WPA-era art from the museum’s permanent collection in “Picturing an Era: Art from the Great Depression to the Second World War.” Prominent artists represented include Marsden Hartley and Grant Wood, alongside regional artists such as Frank Applebee, Edward Everett Burr, and Nell Choate Shute.
“This exhibition has a little bit of every kind of work that informed 20th century photographic practice,” said artist and co-curator Paul Karabinis. “The collectors are also quite interested in contemporary practice and supporting new talent in the medium.” Karabinis will spend time with Auburn students during his January visit and give a public talk on Wednesday, January 22, 2014 at 4:00 p.m. at the museum. “It’s always beneficial to introduce students to original works and not rely upon teaching the history of a medium through reproduction alone.” Karabinis said that nearly all the photographs in the exhibition were vintage prints; meaning, the print was made at or around the time the negative or image file was created and printed by, or under the direction, of the artist. “With vintage work, you get a glimpse of the individual printing style of each photographer. You also encounter the effects of time and handling, that patina of age, that makes us realize that works of art are not just images, but artifacts of a particular time and place.”
Karabinis teaches courses in alternative photographic processes and the history of photography. Most recently he served as co-curator and catalog author of 
