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ON LIVING WITH ART This page: Judy Pfaff, The Snail (1990, wire and glass) Tony Cragg, Bestuckung (1987-'89, two cast-steel vessels at right) Sol LeWitt, Untitled Wall Drawing (1993) "I keep coming back to this sense of mystery in life. That's what interests me the most. Things that you think are one thing turn out to be something else. "Risk is a very important part of living with art; you never know what the work is going to look like, so you have to trust the artist's genius. But it is that risk that is going to keep your collection alive! I have to trust the artist, and even if you know the artist's work and have done all your homework, it doesn't matter — what you get may be a complete surprise! You are going to end up living with it anyway! But these works can be gifts, because eventually they will present themselves to you and allow for understanding." permanent," he says. "If I had my way, the collection would stay just like this, conversing forever, and I would give the whole house as it is to the Speed Museum." Financial concerns make this impossible. So instead, when the time comes, he will bequeath the collection to the Speed and to the people of Louis- ville. Te dinner party will move on to another part of town. He is not sad about this. "I know that museums can be dusty and staid, but I know that this work will invite you in and entertain you," Shands says. "You will be able to gaze at the works for hours on end; I know, because I have done it. And how wonderful that you will see things in the art that I have not seen, and new meanings to the work will develop. Te art will be reconstructed in ways that are not relevant here in our home, and because it is you and I who enliven art, new complex interpretations will occur." Shands becomes delighted when he speaks of this legacy, and like a host shar- ing a secret, he whispers what he loves most about the future of his collection. "When I am gone," he says, "the collection will change, and I love the fact that it will all dissolve and dissipate and go into new places, and that gives me hope. Change is what keeps us alive and moving forward." And isn't that what a really good dinner party does, changes each participant just by the time spent in conversation, circumstance and proximity? And, in- evitably, the greatest gift of this magnifcent art collection is that all of us, each and every one, will be invited to this party. Tese pages show the Shands collection at home — in its natural habitat, as it were. Te curator, Julien Robson, has edited a book titled Great Meadows: Te Making of Here, which will be published this month. Opposite page: Sol LeWitt, Wall drawing # 1082: Bars of Color (2003) "There are artists who deal with art as an idea — they are called conceptualists — and how the idea is manifested is secondary to the idea itself. (LeWitt) would come to the house and spend weeks with you, then go back to his studio and work it all out on a piece of paper. And in the end, all you really had was a piece of paper that he had drawn for you, and for him the details became less important than the idea itself. "All he needed was a photograph of the room. The geometry of this particular room is so odd that my frst thought was, 'He can't possibly.' And when it was done and painted, I realized that the man was a genius. As far as I know, it is the only work of LeWitt's that includes the ceiling and completely surrounds you. To this day I fnd new things to contemplate about the work, and every time I am elated." ~ "The house is a sanctuary, and every time I come back here I think, 'How wonderful!' We hired David Morton, Mary's frst cousin, who we commissioned to create a house for an art collection. He understood the direction our taste was going and the kind of things we liked. In a way, an architect has to be like a psychiatrist. He has to know the difference be- tween what you think you want and what you really want. David worked on this house for two years and he made some wonderful decisions. I can remember I was talking to him about door panels, where the light switches go on and off, and I just didn't get it. And he said, 'You realize I spent a whole day decid- ing where those switches were going to go?' "After that I shut up. "I've found that there's a similarity between build- ing a house and commissioning a work of art. You have a general idea of what you want, you've seen other examples of the work, and you're convinced about the artist. Then you want the artist to do what they want to do and not what you want them to do. That tension is what makes it interesting. I might not have designed the house exactly like this, but the fact David did, and that he knew us, and it was made for us, makes it special. I'm still discovering details about this house even after 25 years of living here. It is like a great work of art." — Shands, in Great Meadows Continued from previous page 32-37 Al Shands.indd 34 4/18/14 10:52 AM