Dorothy & Herbert: An Ordinary Couple and Their Extraordinary Collection of Art

Dorothy & Herbert is a delightful celebration of love and selflessness, not to mention art, creativity and vision. Exuberantly written by New Yorker Jackie Azúa Kramer and ecstatically illustrated by Julia Breckenreid of Toronto, this picture book will captivate children and adults alike. It’s an example of a book that can educate for the story it tells and be used as part of teaching units on art, biography and social values.

Dorothy and Herbert Vogel were New York art collectors, but they were unlike the stereotypical high society art collectors. Instead, they were proletarian art lovers – he a postal clerk, and she a reference librarian – who lived together in a rent-controlled one bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side of New York City.

Kramer jumps into their life story, showing their enthusiasm for art:

He grabbed his drawing pad and dashed to catch a subway DOWNTOWN. She checked her bag for her sketchbook and hurried to catch a subway UPTOWN. Dorothy and Herbert Vogel didn’t want to be late for their painting class.

Married in 1962, they honeymooned at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and then spent their lives buying art they liked, never vacationing or moving to a bigger home, but filling their apartment with several thousand pieces of Minimal Art, a genre that examines monochromatic surfaces and essential forms.

The only criteria for their collection were that they had to like it (their first purchase was a small, crushed-metal sculpture with geometric shapes), and it had to be portable enough that they could take it home via subway or taxi. In their journey through the vibrant, intense New York art scene (Art was everywhere. And so were Dorothy and Herbert), they befriended little-known artists.

Unlike other collectors who cashed in and sold the early works of artists who became well-known, the Vogels refused to sell their art because they had purchased it to enjoy it. They lived on her salary, devoting his income (it topped out at $23,000) to art purchases.

Their stuffed apartment, also home to multiple cats, fish and exotic turtles (but no sofa), became a gathering spot for artists where Dorothy and Herbert served them scallion pancakes and fortune cookies and inspired CREATIVITY, according to Kramer. A video found on Youtube shows how surprisingly crowded it was.

Through simple sentences, Kramer records the couple’s decades of fostering talent: Word got out to the art world of the librarians and the postal clerk’s EXTRAORDINARY collection, and after a display of their collection, Dorothy and Herbert were all the BUZZ.

When the Vogels donated their massive collection in 1992, it took four moving vans to make the transfer. In the spirit of sharing: They chose the National Gallery of Art, a museum they had always loved and where everyone can see the art for free.

Julia Breckenreid’s illustrations plunge the reader into the energy and the liveliness of New York in the 1960s. The pretty cover will bring a smile to any reader’s lips, and that’s only the beginning. Vibrant colours, copies of paintings they owned or that hang in galleries, playful representations of their pets and the various geometric shapes of the artwork they preferred make the illustrations a study in themselves.

Breckenreid’s representation of the Vogels’ travels through the variety of New York galleries is an engaging map of the streets of SoHo. Brushes and palettes pop out of the corner of Mercer and Grand, a hammer, oil can, nails and a file emerge from Broadway and Boomer. Dorothy and Herbert are seen walking down Broadway, hand in hand. This was their world.

Not to be outdone, Breckenreid has drawn many different examples of the art being created in that neighbourhood on two fold-out pages. They are alive with colour and action, people on the move and artists on the make. For readers interested in pursuing clues, there are many people and works of art included that can be identified by reading Breckenreid’s website.

Herbert Vogel died in 2012, but Dorothy still collects conceptual art and has written a postscript to the book: “You don’t need lots of knowledge of art to look at and like a painting or a sculpture. Just like you don’t need information to pet a cat. What you need is an open mind.”

Dorothy and Herbert Vogel are examples of people who care for others and who wanted to expand their world. Dorothy and Herbert will provide young readers the example that it can be done.