Judith Chernoff and Jeffrey Bernstein
Based in Laurel, Maryland, Judith Chernoff and Jeffrey Bernstein are craft advocates and avid collectors. They focus on sculptural and turned wood but collect a range of other media, including baskets, ceramics, fiber and glass.
Over the past thirty years, their wood collection has grown to include outstanding museum quality pieces from artists nationally and around the world. With the belief that sharing their collection with the public is what gives it greater meaning, they recently donated 43 objects in wood to the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery. In addition, over the years, they have opened their home to give educational collection tours to many wood centered groups and those new to wood.
Jeffrey and Judith have each held the position of President of Collectors of Wood Art, Jeffrey from 2009–2010 and Judith from 2014–2016. Judith has also been a volunteer docent at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery since 2012.
Fleur Bresler
Fleur Bresler is an international craft collector and patron of the arts. Bresler attended Mount Vernon Jr. College, Maryland University, and George Washington University. She was the recipient of the 2014 American Craft Council Aileen Osborn Webb Award for Philanthropy. With her first love being education, Bresler worked as a teacher, program director, and instructor. Bresler’s memories of collecting stretch back to her earliest days, from the barrettes and bobbles of her childhood to the internationally recognized craft art of today. Bresler’s collection encompasses all media. Her philanthropy goes beyond collecting, to preserving and promoting craft art and artists.
Sonny and Gloria Kamm
Los Angeles residents Sonny and Gloria Kamm have collected teapots for over 35 years. Their interest in teapots began as an adjunct to their collection of contemporary art and led to a passion that has resulted in the world’s largest and most comprehensive teapot collection. The Kamm Teapot Collection numbers over 17,000 items and runs the gamut from historical decorative arts to industrial design icons to unique works of contemporary art.
Sara Vance Waddell
Sara Vance Waddell has built a significant collection of artworks by women, people of color and artists in the LGBTQ community, including the quilts of Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi and Cynthia Lockhart. A media expert, she was brought in to work with the Cincinnati Museum of Art and that association changed her life. She is on the Brooklyn Museums Council For Feminist Art, is a member of the National Museum of Women in the Arts board of trustees and board president of the Carolee Schneemann Foundation.
Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi
Historian, Curator, Author, Lecturer, Artist, Mentor, Founder, and Facilitator — Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi has left her mark on many lives. Trained as an aerospace engineer, Carolyn Mazloomi turned her sights and tireless efforts in the 1980s to bring the many unrecognized contributions of African American quilt artists to the attention of the American people as well as the international art communities. From the founding of the African-American Quilt Guild of Los Angeles in 1981 to the 1985 founding of the Women of Color Quilters Network (WCQN), Mazloomi has been at the forefront of educating the public about the diversity of interpretation, styles and techniques among African American quilters as well as educating a younger generation of African Americans about their own history through the quilts the WCQN members create.
Cotsen Children’s Library
The Cotsen Children’s Library, a unit within Princeton University Library’s Department of Special Collections, is the benefaction of Lloyd E. Cotsen, ’50, and Charter Trustee, Emeritus. The curatorial division administers the research collection of illustrated children’s books, manuscripts, original artwork, prints, and educational toys, hosts academic conferences on children’s books and publishes their proceedings, and sponsors fellowships for research. The outreach division of Cotsen serves children of all ages, families, librarians and educators. Campus visitors can explore Bookscape, a whimsical reading environment with its two-story bonsai tree, Wall of Books, exhibition space, and attend free weekly story hours and special events.
https://library.princeton.edu/collections/cotsen-children%E2%80%99s-library
Lloyd Cotsen
Mr. Cotsen, former chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Neutrogena Corporation, founded the Cotsen Foundation for the ART of TEACHING in 2001. Education is one among several fields, including folk art, children’s literature, and archaeology, to which Mr. Cotsen has made a commitment. The Neutrogena Wing/Cotsen Gallery at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico includes over 3,000 art objects and folk art. The Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University houses his collection of illustrated children’s books donated to the library in 1997. In recognition of Mr. Cotsen’s contributions, the University of California, Los Angeles renamed its Institute of Archaeology the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology in February 2000.
https://cotsen.org
Alexander Girard
Alexander Girard (1907–1993) was a highly influential and prolific interior and textile designer in the 20th century. He designed interiors for restaurants, homes, offices, and aircraft. He created textiles, typography, and tableware. His work extended to exhibitions, toys, and an entire city street in Columbus, Indiana. Folk and pop art were inspirations for his bold, colorful and whimsical artwork. Girard was a defining figure in the history of the Museum of International Folk Art. He donated more than 100,000 objects from his and his wife Susan’s folk art collection. In 1981 this became the museum’s permanent exhibition, ‘Multiple Visions: A Common Bond.’
https://girardstudio.com
Helen Drutt English
Helen Drutt English is a curatorial consultant, art historian, educator, and author. She founded Helen Drutt Gallery in Philadelphia, PA in 1973. Considered to be the “godmother of craft and a global ambassador” since the 1960s, Drutt has championed and promoted American craft internationally and helped to elevate studio craft into the realm of fine art. She has received numerous honors for her profound impact on the field of craft, including Honorary Fellow of the American Craft Council and the Lifetime Achievement in Crafts award from the National Museum of Women in Washington D.C.
Her home is a reflection of her life-long commitment to the handmade at its best. Located in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood of Philadelphia, Drutt’s home connects two historic houses into one formidable dwelling where she displays the major collection of late 20th and early 21st studio craft she has amassed over decades of scholarship and collection.
Forrest L. Merrill
Collector Forrest L. Merrill has a deep appreciation for all manner of hand-wrought vessels of wood, metal, glass, fiber, and clay, as well as for the exceptional artists who create them. But even more important are the personal relationships he forges with these artists and his desire to share his unique collection with a public for whom art education and exposure to art is disappearing. Inspired in 1950 by a high school art teacher, his first purchase was a glass bowl by Glen Lukens, a pioneer in studio crafts. Right then, a collector was born. Merrill’s collection, based in Berkeley, CA, is one of the largest and most important of its kind in the world, containing pieces that span the arcs of entire careers of major artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
