The Sarasota Art Museum’s “Something Borrowed, Something New” show,” which features significant contemporary art works on loan from the private collections of 10 area residents, was years in the making.

When Virginia Shearer, who took over as SAM’s executive director just after the Covid pandemic hit, began visiting the homes of local art afficionados who wanted to talk about their support of the museum and its mission, she immediately noticed the “extraordinary” pieces she was seeing on their walls, pedestals and coffee tables.

“I just felt pretty astounded by the quality of everything I encountered,” Shearer says. “So early on, I thought it would be a great idea if we could convince these folks to lend things from their private collections and put them into the public sphere.”

But she knew better than to broach the concept cold, realizing it would take time to build the trust and relationships necessary to make such an ask.  So she kept the idea on a “slow burn” for several years, floating the idea periodically and gracefully countering the reservations she encountered: “Oh, I’m sure there must be others who have better collections!” Or, “But my apartment will have a big blank space on the wall!”

Eventually, Shearer decided “we either had to do it or stop taking about it” and delivered a deadline: “it’s now or never.”

“And that slow burn led them to believe it was worth participating in because it would really help the museum and open the doors to other collectors so we could do this again,” she says. “So they got behind what we’re doing and were willing to part with their pieces for five and half months.”

It was up to Rangsook Yoon, then senior curator at SAM, to choose which pieces would be included. She selected seven to 10 pieces from each private collection, based on how the works would interact with one another, how they could help tell stories about moments in contemporary art and what would create not just a beautiful show, but an opportunity for people to learn more about both familiar and unfamiliar artists.

Ultimately, “Something Borrowed, Something New” showcases a diverse range of artworks produced by some of the most prominent artists of our time – paintings, prints, photography and ceramic, bronze, and glass sculpture. There’s even a photographic drawing by David Hockney, who died June 11, from the collection of St. Petersburg’s Stanton Storer, the only collector from outside Sarasota to lend work for the exhibition.

Since the show opened in April, several of the collectors who loaned their art have participated in walking tours to give an “inside peak” into their pieces, telling stories about great discoveries or, in some cases, “the one that got away.” Before the show concludes at the end of September, Shearer also anticipates a program that will include an expert from the University of South Florida’s graphic studio (which made some of the prints in the show) and another collector.

And she says, without hesitation: “We will definitely be doing this again.”

“It will take us some time to scout the collections and get to know that community beyond who we’ve been working with, but we’re really excited to have that goal and shared interest in getting eyes on these wonderful works of contemporary art.”

Meanwhile, she is grateful to the collectors who took the plunge for this initial “Borrowed” show.

“They really believe a rising tide floats all boats,” Shearer says. “I think a collecting community is a central ingredient in a place like ours that punches so far above its weight. It means there are people among us actively investing in the making of art and in  their community.”

What follows are stories from three couples who were willing not only to share their art, but their experiences and thoughts about collecting – how they got started, what they look for and why they decided to participate in the show. 

Keith Monda and Veronica Brady

For as long as he can remember, Keith Monda has been a collector.

“Marbles, matchbox cars, military miniatures, baseball cards, comic books,” says the retired corporate executive listing a few of the items he amassed during his younger years. “It’s a fascination with owning something that’s special to you.”

But it wasn’t until much later in life that his collecting interest turned to contemporary art, something he had no exposure to as a child growing up in a “middle class” family in the Midwest, living in a multi-generational home shared with boarders. Art was neither present nor a subject of conversation.

“They knew nothing about art,” Monda says of his parents. “My father liked white walls.”

Before graduating from Ohio State University with a master’s degree in economics, Monda became an “instant” father after marrying his first wife, Linda, who already had a son. That meant supporting a family and Monda was determined to do it in New York City.

He began at Abraham and Strauss and, over years, worked his way through various positions at multiple companies, including Pfizer, J. Crew, and Timberland. His final role was as President and CEO of Coach, where, over 10 years, he helped bring the company public, growing it from $400 million in sales to $4 billion.

“I was very good at what I did,” he says modestly about the success that has enabled his art collection. “And the last chapter was that I really felt I needed to do something more and to make a difference. So I resigned and decided my purpose – which it still is – was to spend the rest of my life in philanthropy and service to others.”

In the middle of his career, he’d decided he needed a focus beyond just number crunching, “something that had to be fun, but also never-ending.” The answer was collecting modern and contemporary art, though his budget initially limited him to prints.

His wife was supportive of his collecting, but not particularly “into art,” Monda says. So he would often go gallery hopping with his then young son, who would eventually go on to art school and become a collector himself.

“We would go to galleries, shows, auctions and he would get upset if we didn’t win at an auction,” Monda recalls. “But I had a budget and I knew what I was able to do.”

His first notable purchase, in 1980, was a print of “Rippled Surface,” by the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, known for his mathematically inspired works. The piece still hangs prominently in Monda and Brady’s Sarasota home, though it has since been dwarfed (in size and value) by later purchases.

Some of the works in the Monda/Brady collection – much of which is gathered in a private gallery space that also holds Monda’s vast assembly of antique windup toys – are by artists who were already household names: Picasso, Miro, Mary Cassat. Others were discovered on the ascendency. A giant abstract painting by Yayoi Kusama that covers one wall of their bedroom was purchased before the Japanese artist commanded the attention or prices she now garners.

Monda has never considered his purchases transactional; while some have turned out to be extremely good investments, that’s never been the strategic impetus for purchasing them.

“It’s never been, ‘Hey, I’m going to buy on the bet the market will get hot,” he says. “My purpose is to find things I like. If I’m going to be married to that piece for the rest of my life, it has to speak to me.”

Brady, who has been Monda’s partner since 2019, was exposed to art enough in her early years in New Jersey to know she preferred modern art to the old masters. And she’s long had an affection for turtles of all shapes and sizes. (Monda surprised her once by putting some turtle figurines at the bottom of their swimming pool.) But the exposure to Monda’s collection has “certainly, expanded my world.” She, in turn, has helped expand his collection.

“I’ve learned a ton from Keith and continue to,” she says. “But now any art we purchase is usually something that I’m particularly interested in.”

While today’s it’s quite possible to invest in art entirely online, the couple still enjoy visiting galleries and shows like Art Basel.  Finding something unexpected is a special thrill. They once purchased a Gauguin at auction that wasn’t identified as such; another time they stumbled on a complete set of the famous, limited-edition oversized playing cards created by the French artist Jean Dubuffet, pristine in the box. (They now hang, in a rectangular mosaic, on another wall of their home.)

The 10 works the couple loaned to the “Something Borrowed” show range from a huge “Untitled” two-panel Richard Serra screenprint, entirely black, to “A Box of Smile,” an opaque black plastic box containing a metal mirror by Yoko Ono, and a Kara Walker photo lithograph titled, “Lost Mountain at Sunrise.”

They say the decision to participate in the SAM show was easy; they’ve previously loaned work to The Ringling museum and Selby Botanical Garden  as well as to SAM, where a curved iron Beverly Pepper sculpture (not part of this show) that they own is also on display.

“I just think it’s the right thing to do,” says Monda, who adds that most of his collection will go to philanthropy eventually. “It gives people an opportunity to see it who have never been exposed to it before. To me, that’s just another way of giving.”

Brady, who sits on the SAM advisory board, is especially pleased to have a show like “Something Borrowed” in her own community.

“You’re seeing such a wonderful variety of world class contemporary art,” she says. “For people who don’t live in a city or may never be able to make it to MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art) or The Whitney, it’s just an incredible opportunity.”

Katherine and Frank Martucci

Growing up in a blue collar neighborhood in Trenton, New Jersey, as the son of a man who left school in 7^th grade and spent his career working in the trades, Frank Martucci was not exposed to art. Music, however, was another matter.

“My mom always had music playing – classical, Frank Sinatra, soul,” says Martucci who, with his wife, Katherine, has split his time for the past 15 years between a 200-year-old dairy farm in Irvington-on-Hudson, a rural area north of New York City, and a condominium in Sarasota, both filled with art. “That to me instilled an appreciation that you don’t see everything through your optics. And that’s been very helpful to me through the years.”

After a successful career on Wall Street, Martucci left the field at 44 to obtain a master’s degree in philosophy. His passion for “a priori” reasoning – following intuition and universal truths rather than coming to a conclusion through a scientific process – has guided not only his outlook on life but his approach to collecting art. Static art, representational art, even abstract art that doesn’t compel a deeper, more organic response, has no attraction for him.

“Art that I’m attracted to has to have what I call volume and weight,” he explains. “And most people don’t even think about that. If I wasn’t ‘seeing through my mind,’ I probably wouldn’t even feel it.”

The influence of his favorite philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, on his artistic preferences cannot be understated. The father of Transcendentalism, Emerson’s beliefs centered on individual intuition, spiritual independence, the discovery of universal truths and a deep connection to nature.

That through line has drawn Martucci to works as disparate as the nature scenes of the preeminent American landscape painter, George Innes, and the work of Kara Walker, whose Victorian silhouette tradition explores the intertwined histories of race, slavery, gender and sexuality. (Four of the 10 works the Martuccis loaned to SAM for the show are by Walker.)

Martucci can’t remember the first piece of art he ever purchased, but he can readily assume the circumstances.

“It was probably sold on the street somewhere, probably not the most sophisticated, certainly not expensive or a well-known artist,” he says. “But whatever it was it made a powerful impression on me. Every time I would look at it, I would see something different.”

Once he got to the point where he could afford to consider work by more recognized artists, he applied his philosophical mindset to the study of each artist’s work, seeking the “purpose of why a painter paints.” He was particularly drawn to the work of Inness, whose spiritual, expressive pieces transform landscapes into poetic visions.

“Inness said, ‘If I could only paint it without paint,” Martucci says. “That drove me nuts. What he’s saying is he wants you to see through his mind, to notice how everything connects.”

In 2013, the Martuccis donated 11 paintings and five drawings – including eight major works by Inness – to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, because Frank Martucci says, “they weren’t afraid of the word spirituality.”

He never buys art as an investment, though many of the works he has purchased have, over time, greatly increased in value. And the Martuccis’ collection is anything but uniform. He’s drawn to the reductivism of Mondrian, to photographs of Black Americans (“I’m a strong believer in abolitionism because if everything is connected, how can you enslave anyone?”) and to anything with circles.

“Wherever I can, I collect circles,” he says. “Because we’re all connected and the idea is to make the circle bigger.”

One of the 10 pieces the Martuccis loaned to SAM for the “Something Borrowed” show captures that sentiment. It’s a chromogenic print, “Shoeshine Boy, After Lewis Hine,” by Vik Muniz. The artist revisits an iconic photograph by photographer Hine of a young boy giving a client a shoeshine by arranging a multitude of small toys and found objects to produce the effect of the original image when seen from a distance. Up close, however, it dissolves into its tiny, disparate components, shifting the viewer’s perception between the macro and the micro.

“All the little toys and then you step back and what do you see? A unified form, it’s holistic,” Martucci says. “I believe in the many and the one. Up close, it’s all these parts of things, that’s the many. But when you step back from it, that’s the one. That’s the way I look at it, everything is related.”

In that same vein, Martucci believes the work he collects is a catalyst for shared contemplation.  So when he and his wife were asked to contribute to the SAM show, he was on board “immediately.” (It was only after consenting that he stopped to think for a moment about his own “blank walls” – easily remedied by pulling other pieces from storage.)  

“For me, it’s about sharing the ideas,” Martucci says. “My philosophy about collecting is that you buy something because it has personal impact, it stimulates an idea in the mind, in some cases it shows you something, in some way, it empowers you. This is an extremely important show because you want to share your ideas and you need a vehicle.”

Warren and Marie  Colbert

Though neither Warren Colbert nor his wife, Marie, had much exposure to visual art growing up, it was their mutual involvement with photography that brought the two of them together and catalyzed their desire to collect.

At the University of Maryland and looking for a relaxing outlet to counterbalance his physics study, Warren Colbert “bumped into photography by accident,” through fellow students and eventually took up the practice himself, building a dark room in his apartment and eventually shooting for publications and within the fashion industry.

Marie Colbert’s connection to photography was through her career at Bonwit Teller, where she came into contact with some of the great photographers who shot for Life magazine. It was also what brought her in contact with her future husband who, at the time, was trying to get a fashion magazine off the ground.

Though Warren Colbert would eventually leave that calling to spend 40 years on Wall Street, their bond and their interest in art expanded from that point forward. Among the first pieces they purchased, in the 1970s, were glass works by Lalique and Baccarat.  

“I was mystified by the crystal, so I began to study it more,” says Warren, who tends to dive into research on any new purchase. “That’s when we really started to acquire.”

Their first major piece was by Norman Lewis, an African American painter, scholar and teacher who focused on Black urban life and struggles. Warren Colbert says that initial purchase was “dumb luck;” at the time the painting “did nothing for me” and he had to be talked into buying it by a dealer.

Today, it still proudly hangs in the Colbert’s home. Despite the entreaties of SAM curator, Ransook Yoon, it was one piece they declined to lend for the “Something Borrowed” show, though seven other pieces from their collection – from photographs, to lithographs to etchings – are on loan.

Another fortunate acquisition that hangs in their home is by the late James Van Der Zee, an American photographer known for his portraits of Black New Yorkers. The subject of the photo is the Colberts themselves. They outbid others vying for a “sitting” with the artist not long before his death; since then, they have collected other images by Van Der Zee, which have magnified in value many times over.  

Warren Colbert says the impetus to add to their collection is not the potential value of any individual work, but whether the piece appeals to them visually because, “after all, we have to look at them every day.” Initially, that was mostly photography, so they have many works by African American WPA (Works Progress Administration) artists, like the aquatint and etching by Dox Thrash of “Boat Workers” they loaned for the SAM show. It was just serendipity when several major institutions confessed, in a 2015 New York Times article, that these artists had been ignored, starting a “major gold rush in pursuit” of their work,  Warren Colbert says.

Often the Colberts develop a relationship with the artists whose work they’ve collected – but only after the purchase.

“Going in the door, I always felt if you like the work, you make the buy, then you try to better understand the artists,” Warren says. “It brings you that much closer to their world.”

Their favorite recent acquisition is by a Mexican artist, Yael Medrez Pier, whose work lies in a crossroads between realism and textiles.

“Her work caught me off guard completely,” says Marie Colbert. “Her interpretation of the textiles is amazing. We had just visited France, saw how Renaissance artists drew textiles and it’s all in Yael’s work. It was love at first sight.”

That’s the kind of immediate attraction that should drive a collection, Warren Colbert says.

“What you like is your collection,” he says. “Don’t be driven by theme or genre or what’s hot in the market. If you are visually attracted to it, make the purchase. You don’t need a dossier on the artist to like the work. You may learn more after the fact, but if it will enhance your life and your home, make the purchase.”

The Colberts rarely sell any of their art, however they are happy to share pieces when the opportunity presents.  In 2020, when Warren Colbert was chairman of The Ringling Museum board, he urged Director Steven High to put on a show of work by Sam Gilliam, an African American abstract painter and sculptor, and contributed not only his own Gilliam pieces, but gathered dozens of additional works from other collectors.

When approached to participate in the “Something Borrowed” show, the Colberts both readily agreed.

“I thought it was a fantastic way to show SAM is a contemporary museum and there’s all this contemporary work in Sarasota,” Warren Colbert says. “When you walk in that gallery, it’s amazing what you see. Any museum would love to have that collection. It’s the hottest show in town.”

“Something Borrowed, Something New” runs through Sept. 27 at the Sarasota Art Museum, 1001 S. Tamiami Trail. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Sundays. $20 general admission for adult non-members; second Sunday of each month admission is free. sarasotaartmuseum.org; 941-309-4300