Class Notes October 2005

Two major class collectors are in the greatest exhibits of their lives as this note appears. Bruce Hasenkamp and John Friede have made arrangements assuring permanence for what they have collected. Both have made major contributions to the institutions in question, and both have received partial payments as well.

 

Bruce is the latest  to report. As a young Army officer stationed in Korea, he began a collection of Korean ceramics, initially investing about $4,000. Over the years, his holdings increased to 250 items ranging to 2,000 years old, and now, they have gone to the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

 

Bruce says he contributed 40% of the value of all the items, but sold the other 60% to Michigan for "the low to mid six figures." They have been on an extended exhibit at the museum  lasting through November, and Bruce has now taken steps to make the gifts permanent. Two prominment persons of Korean descent at the University, Sang-Youg Nam and his wife, Moon Sook, helped Michigan make its purchases.

 

John Friede has long been involved in shifting major pieces of his collection of New Guinea art to the new deYoung Museum in San Francisco. He had an exhibit of numerous New Guinea pieces at the Palace of the Legion of Honor some time back, and as an arrangement with the deYoung they purchased the seven most important pieces of the collection for "the mid seven figures'".He then gave seven other major pieces, to the museum as a contribution, plus now the rest of 350 pieces to make a permanent collection, along with a promise that the rest of several thousand pieces will go to the museum when he dies.

 

Friede and his wife, Marcia, who now live in Rye, N.Y., will be buying property in Berkeley, so they can be close to the exhibition and family members. A major opening was scheduled for Oct. 14.

 

These are not the only ways, of course, that 1960 class members are involved in the art world. Three members of the class, Jon Cohen, Paul Cantor and Allan Glick, are currently overseers of the Hood Museum and Hopkins Center at Dartmouth, and Rick Roesch is an immediate past overseer.

 

Most recently, Jon has promised to gives the 1888 painting, The Chrysanthemums, by J. Alden Weir, to the Hood.

 

Meanwhile, I've been on a protracted trip to Alaska and northwestern Canada, and in Denali National Park was surprised to run into Rick Lyman and his wife, Hila, staying at the same wilderness lodge complex as I was at the same time. The three of us ran into each other on the bus trip 90 miles into our four-day stays at Camp Denali and Northface Lodge. Both Rick and I simultanteously thought the other looked familiar.

 

Also, I had dinner in Anchroage with our classmate, Bob Sanders, who has done both tsunami and Baghdad duty with the Army Corps of Engineers, and hopes to return to Baghdad.

 

I missed another classmate, Larry Mayo, who was on vacation from his job with the U.S. Geological Survey when I passed through Fairbanks, his home base.

 

--Ken Reich, 5522 Nagle Ave., Van Nuys, CA 91401, 818-994-9231, kennethireich@yahoo.com