o7
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2004/apr/20/usa.world
Marina, Podesta bros, travel to Rome, art collecting. All mentioned here.
Clinton's backyard
Thank you, PlaneFag, for your service. You are important and needed/wanted here. Don't let the hate-filled slides the last few breads discourage you. It's just the latest shill tactic. That and the Mexican hate. Someone is desperate for those latino votes.
The House o’ Dreams is a large stone and board-and-batten cottage on top of Lavender Mountain. Plans were drawn by Harry Carlson of Cooledge and Carlson of Boston. It was built in 1922 by students and staff as a gift to Miss Berry on the 20th anniversary of the Schools. At 1,360 feet above sea level, 600 feet above Frost Chapel, the House o’ Dreams and its water/fire tower command a superb view of the campuses, the reservoir, the city of Rome, the northwest Georgia area, and neighboring states, Alabama and Tennessee.
Miss Berry's mountain retreat was financed by contributions from Mrs. Emily Vanderbilt Hammond, alumni, and friends. The landscaping was done by Mr. Robert B. Cridland from Philadelphia. The terraces for fruit trees and berry patches, added at Miss Berry's suggestion, were patterned after the grounds of Castle Nemi in Italy where Eugenia Berry Ruspoli, Martha Berry's sister, lived.
Many guests have enjoyed Southern hospitality at the House o’ Dreams. Miss Berry used the house as a retreat as well as a place to entertain. It is still used for meetings and "dreaming" sessions by faculty, staff, and student groups.
The mountain supplied all the necessary materials for the house. The students built the furniture and designed and wove the fabric for curtains and slipcovers. The house and grounds are maintained by a caretaker who lives in a small cottage nearby. A grant in the form of a challenge to Berry alumni and friends was made in 1983 by Mr. and Mrs. William B. Stokely of Knoxville, Tennessee. The challenge was met, and through the Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Stokely provided funding for the full restoration of the mountain-top retreat. Completed in 1984, the restoration has assured the preservation and continued use of this historic structure. The drapery fabrics were copied at the Handicrafts shop for new curtains and slipcovers.
https://www.berry.edu/houseodreams/
Good stuff. Thank you for reposting.
Anons, this is GOLD. Apologies if this has already been shared.
'It's a form of addiction'
What makes Tony Podesta travel thousands of miles just for a gallery opening? He tells all to John Hooper
Tue 20 Apr 2004 06.12 EDT
First published on Tue 20 Apr 2004
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2004/apr/20/usa.world
We've all heard about artists who suffer for their work. Tony Podesta and his wife, Heather Miller, suffer for other people's. When they bought a 2,000lb Louise Bourgeois sculpture for their home in Washington, for instance, it required substantial renovations to the building. "We had to get a structural engineer in to sort out what sort of support it needed," says Podesta. "And we not only had to build support underneath where it was going but temporary support from the point at which it entered the house to the point at which it was placed. I don't think it'll ever leave."
Then there is the travel involved. The couple have unusually demanding jobs. He is one of Washington's top lobbyists, renowned as the man who first built bridges between Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She has joined the lobbying business after a career as a top-flight lawyer in Congress and the Senate. Most people in their positions would spend their leisure time unwinding. Instead, they make what Miller calls "Herculean" trips to Europe and further afield to buy art. It is perfectly normal for them to leave Washington on Friday evening and return the following Monday morning, having visited more than one European capital in the meantime.
Their travelling, and the knowledge of the global art scene they have acquired, has turned them into two of America's best-known collectors. They were meant to be in Rome on vacation when I caught up with them. But the day before they had been out ferreting in Trastevere, where they found a couple of Wolfgang Tillmans photographs, which they unwrapped with engaging enthusiasm.
They are known for purchasing "awkward" works, such as video installations, that many other private collectors will not consider. "It's easy to store them, but difficult to display them," says Podesta. To get round the problem, he and his wife have excavated a huge subterranean vault beneath their house outside Washington - a white space 5m square and 4m high in which it will be possible to show "very complicated video pieces" on all four walls.
Miller, the daughter of academics, still marvels at her involvement in a world and way of life she got to know only after meeting her husband. She recalls one of their first visits to a gallery and how the owner told Podesta he had a work by a particular photographer "going cheap". It turned out he wanted $40,000. "So I'm standing there in front of this photograph and I'm thinking to myself, like, 'This is cheap?' "
Her husband, who looks less like an aesthete than a character from the Sopranos, became involved with collecting no less accidentally. He was helping Ted Kennedy in his failed bid to challenge Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination. When he ran short of cash, Kennedy laid off three-quarters of his staff.
"Those of us who remained were paid in donated art. Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein were all supporters," he recalls. "I ended up leaving the campaign with a treasure trove." Collecting became a "form of addiction".
Today, he reckons, he and his wife have the world's biggest collection of Anna Gaskell ("maybe second to Anna Gaskell"). Other contemporary favourites include Gillian Wearing, Marina Abramovic, Sam Taylor-Wood and Olafur Eliasson, whose work Podesta discovered 10 years ago, when the artist was still at the Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen.
They are always looking out for little-known artists. Asked to come up with a handful of names that are in the second rank now, but that will one day be in the first, they offer a list that ranges across the world: Britain's Darren Almond, Janaina Tschape from Brazil, Mads Gamdrup from Denmark, the Italian artist Loris Cecchini and Patricia Piccinini, a Podesta protegee who is to represent Australia at the Venice biennial.
Agree 10000% Shill as all get out in here. SO much hate sliding. I will dig on this as well. Hoping others see the value. Thank you for connecting as many dots as you have while working. Thank you, workfag.
Was about to post this. Glad I wasn't the only one who thought this was worhty of sharing
Yep. Exactly.