The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection

When a museum is offered a collection of outstanding art objects, and the donor stipulates that they should be kept together and displayed as a single group rather than be allowed to mix with the rest of the museum’s collections, the institution faces a difficult problem. Professional opinions remain divided within the museum world regarding whether gifts should be accepted with particular sets of requirements. Should artworks only be accepted, for example, if a museum will be permitted to exhibit them freely in the “museum setting” of the standard exhibition galleries? Or should they be accepted if the donor specifies that they can only be displayed “in a domestic setting- in a living environment and architectural context” as Director Harry Parker once described it.

The Dallas Museum of Art was confronted with precisely this situation in the early 1980s when Wendy Reves offered a collection belonging to her and her late husband, Emery Reves, with several important stipulations: all of the paintings, sculptures, works on paper, furniture, and objects would have to be exhibited separately in a new  According to Mrs. Reves, she and her husband never considered themselves collectors in the sense of buying objects for a museum the way a curator would. “We just wanted to make our home beautiful, and that’s why the art and the house can never be separated,” she said, explaining the stipulations she made when offering the Dallas Museum of Art the 1,400 objects from her collection. Yet, considering the artistic quality and the importance of the works, as well as the stunning enhancement that the gift provided for the Museum’s permanent collection, the decision was made to accept Mrs. Reves's offer. The Reves wing opened in 1985 and remains among the most popular areas of the Museum.

Accepting the Reves gift was a difficult decision for the Museum to make, even considering the spectacular quality of the works being offered. The trustees had to agree to display the objects from the Reves Collection together in a recreated domestic setting, completely separated from the display of the rest of the Museum’s holdings; they were not to be intermingled with works from the permanent collection, nor rearranged within the new wing by medium, date, national school, etc. The presentation of the objects had to reflect the “living arrangement” of how they were displayed and used in the couple’s home. It was a type of exhibition program generally shunned by American art museums, which typically favor separate galleries for paintings and decorative arts rather than a mixture of objects of different types from different cultures and time periods. Museums also usually prefer to retain the freedom to mix objects from within their collections to allow for art historically instructive displays- to keep, for example, impressionist and post-impressionist paintings and sculptures on display near each other. The Museum realized, however, that the home setting for the Reves Collection could work as a brilliant celebration of a rare personal adventure of collecting and living with works of art of the highest quality. “I think my wing will delight people who might be bored with gallery after gallery of paintings,” Mrs. Reves said as she prepared for the opening of the new wing on November 29, 1985. “It’s a diversion to see fine paintings and furniture in a cozy setting.” Director Harry Parker concurred, noting that the eighty-seven oil paintings and works on paper were, after all, intended for homes. “In that context,” he said, “I think seeing them with fine furnishings in a glamorous setting is an unusual experience.”

In the end, despite all of the concerns, there was never any question as to the quality of the objects the gift brought to the Museum. It was a remarkable package. The paintings, sculptures, and works on paper present a stunning array of objects by impressionist, post-impressionist, and early modernist masters, including Auguste Rodin, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Honoré Daumier, Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Edgar Degas. Together, they helped establish the Museum’s now well-recognized strengths in the late 19th- and early 20th-century European art.

The gift’s significance at the time may be difficult to appreciate without thinking back for a moment. A museum that didn’t own a single work by Renoir suddenly owned eight. All at once, it gained not only a ravishing watercolor by Cezanne but two oils by him as well. A masterful van Gogh reed-pen and ink drawing accompanied a subtle and beautiful late landscape in oil plus an etched Portrait of Dr. Gachet, the only etching ever made by van Gogh. The Museum acquired a beautiful Toulouse-Lautrec pastel nude, a haunting vase of flowers by Odilon Redon, and a floral still life by Manet, one of the last paintings completed by this enormously important early modern master. The Reves Collection set a high standard for the modern galleries of the Dallas Museum of Art as a whole, which the Museum has lived up to ever since.

The gift was also instrumental in inspiring the Museum’s now esteemed activities in the field of decorative arts. Given the presence the Museum enjoys in that domain today, most people find it something of a surprise that prior to 1985 the Museum did not actively collect decorative arts. The stunning objects in the Reves gift, however, were among the elements that brought the Dallas Museum into the field in a very active and ambitious way.

The decorative arts segment of the Reves Collection includes some 363 pieces of Chinese export porcelain; eighty-four pieces of European furniture dating from the Renaissance through the Victorian period; fifty-two textiles, featuring carpets from Spain, Portugal, Anatolia, the Caucasus, and India, as well as 17th-century silk ecclesiastical vestments; 162 pieces of European iron and bronze work, ranging from locks and antique keys to doorknockers and strongboxes, some dating back to the late Gothic era; a collection of rare 17th- and 18th century carved frames from France, Spain, Italy, and Flanders; thirty-eight decorated fans, primarily from the 18th century; and 164 silver objects, including 17th- and 18th-century English serving wares and candlesticks, all of high quality, with many of the pieces set out as they would actually be used in a living environment.

The installation recalls Wendy Reves’s comment, made shortly before the opening of the reconstructed villa: “It is my desire to preserve the unique environment of the villa and the integrity of the art collections in an American institution capable of providing for its proper care.” The popularity of the Reves galleries confirms that the general public enjoys viewing these magnificent works of art in the ambience of the rooms, just as the specialist appreciates the art historical significance of the individual masterpieces themselves.

Carl Wuellner, "The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection,” in Dallas Museum of Art, 100 Years , ed. Dorothy M. Kosinski (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2003), Pamphlet number 55.

VIDEO ASSETS  

Set operator as OR

apply to objects where provenance contains Reves

apply to objects where credit_line contains Reves