 Thank you. For the perhaps handful of you that I don't know at this point, I'm Arnold Lehmann and I certainly couldn't be more pleased than I am today to be director of the Brooklyn Museum on such a special occasion. I'm truly delighted, as I always am, to welcome you, whether it is for the first time or many, many times. And actually, today is our 12th anniversary of the annual Women in the Arts celebration. So welcome and thank you. And thanks to so many of you who have supported this event and the museum year after year after year. It's very important to us and very special indeed. Today it gives me extraordinary pleasure to honor and celebrate two outstanding women who just happened to be related. And who are also my very good friends of many, many years. The visionary art collector, Miru Rubel, and extraordinary artist, Jennifer Rubel. Over the past decade and more, I am extraordinarily proud of the museum's accomplishments, particularly engaging a richly diverse audience, becoming central to the singularly active artistic life of our community, and then our focus upon and celebration of feminism and the exceptional creativity of women artists of the past, present, and of the future. Today's important program has yet another indication of the museum's commitment to our mission. And I first want to again thank our honorees and express my gratitude to our great friends and co-chairs of today's event, Mi-Yong Lee and Mary Jo Shen. Mary Jo, I know they're here. Of course, with the continuing activity of our Council for Feminist Art, I would also like to thank collectively all of the members of our host committee, two numerous to mention individually, but all deserving of our great thanks. Again, thank you for your hard work today in the past and for your advocacy, which has made everyone of these events such a special occasion and great success. For the continued support of the museum's dedicated trustees, I'd like to extend special gratitude to Elizabeth Sackler, our board chair, to Stephanie Grazia, our president, and to every member of our board for their sustained commitment to the museum. I know many of them are here with us this morning, and I appreciate all that you do. As many of you know, Women in the Arts Celebration supports the museum's exceptional education activities and the groundbreaking programs of the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Your support, your commitment today, and on many other such occasions, helps the museum to maintain a leadership posture in presenting diverse, dynamic, and engaging exhibitions and public programs to the youngest and most diverse audience of any major museum in this country. Many thanks to all of you who are here today for that passion and that dedication to the work of this museum. One housekeeping note before I introduce Elizabeth, I get to ask all of you to be kind enough to silence all electronic devices, as I know no one wants to miss a word of the program ahead of us. Thank you. And one more special note. We were silent to extend the opportunity for a private viewing of the exceptional exhibition, Judith Scott, Bound and Unbound, exclusively for you. This afternoon at the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art, located on the 4th floor of the museum, is an exhibition that should not be missed. And it is now my great pleasure to introduce our friend, my great friend, our board chair and visionary leader, Elizabeth Sackler. Thank you, Mark. Thank you very much. And good morning, everybody. It's wonderful to have you here. I would like to echo thanks to co-chairs Ian Lee and also Mary Jo Shen and the host committee for putting together this wonderful morning and lunch. And I am delighted that the women in the arts had broken this on-ring mural bell in Jennifer. As Arnold mentioned, your attendance here today is absolutely vital to the continued programming at the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art. We have artists, we have activists, we have programming with authors and scholars and much, much more. And we really strive to create programs for the arts, about the arts, and I like to say beyond the arts. In addition, of course, the Brooklyn Museum has an extraordinary diverse program of education. We serve 400 public schools in this vicinity every year. And we have hundreds of adult and children, young people's programming. And this again helps to support that. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of talking to a woman who was a oral historian. And she was doing an article and interviewing me for the volunteer newsletter. And it was really fun speaking with her. And we have right now 200 dedicated volunteers that serve this museum. As docent, they serve the museum in education. And they really assist in the entire visitor experience at the Brooklyn. And they help staff in old departments in education and exhibitions. And I'd like to thank them especially. Under Arnold's very strong and visionary leadership at the Brooklyn Museum, we have changed. The Brooklyn Museum has changed. In addition to our great collections of art and exhibitions and world culture, we excite the institution in celebrating diversity. We educate and celebrate creativity of all kinds. And I would personally like to thank Arnold for his years of partnership with me over the last 10 years in securing the popularity and supporting the power of the Elizabethan Center for Federalist Art. Without you, it wouldn't have been possible. Arnold, can I thank you, please? Our women in the arts reasoned the past thousand years having included and many of you have been here. C. Myelin, Annie Lebowitz, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, Sharon Nassat, and Yoko Ono. Last year, of course, it was Simmons and Lena Dunham. And we thank you, Arnold, for helping put together and make this event as staff center is so strong here. And so now it gives me a great deal of pleasure to introduce the museum's dedicated shining star. She is a wonderful friend of the museum. She is a friend of artists. She is a friend of mine. And she is the brain and the bone behind the Brooklyn Artists' Fall. Please welcome Stephanie O'Rousey, who's our president. Can you do it? So how about another hand for Elizabeth Sattler, our very current museum stage today, among such fearless women. And it is truly a privilege to introduce to you these two recipients for the Women in the Arts Awards. Born in Russia to a family of Polish war refugees, Mira Rubell arrived in New York City at the age of 12. Without knowing a word of English. As a young woman, Mira's characteristic thirst for discovery led her to Brooklyn College, where she received a bachelor's in psychology, and later to Long Island University, where she received a master's in education. As a young teacher for Head Start, Mira met a theoretical mathematician, soon to attend med school, who would later become her future husband, John Rubell. We're happy having her, John. The two quickly discovered that they shared two powerful passions, each other and the love of art. Later, they would go on to build a beautiful family of fellow art lovers, and a thriving business of boutique hotels in Baltimore, Miami-H, and Washington, D.C., not to mention one of the most important private contemporary art collections in the world. As pioneers of young, strung-loop artists in the 1980s, such as Keith Herring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, the collection has grown over the years to occupy a 45,000 square foot museum quality facility in Miami. The Rubell Family Collection is known the world over for its groundbreaking contemporary art exhibitions, and time and again for its incredible eye for discovering a new generation of art rock stars. This year, Don and Mira celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, also marking the founding of their collection, and 20 years of influential exhibitions. To commemorate these milestones, a 700-page collection catalogue will be published, titled, Highlights and Artist Writing, featuring 250 artists, so exciting with the publication, the Rubell's have commissioned multiple large-scale artworks and historical exhibition spanning the breadth of their collection, with artists such as Marlene Dumas, Jeff Koons, and Cindy Sherman. I, for one, cannot wait to see what you do with that. The daughter of an exceptional woman and art lover, and nurtured her entire life by art, it is no surprise that Jennifer Rubell has emerged as one of the most respected and original artists working today. Jennifer creates singularly unique and unforgettable participatory artwork, a wild fusion of performance art, installation, sculpture, immersion, and major cultural cabinets. Let's just say that Jennifer has made a strong case for food as a medium. So much of the art world is defined by its unusual context for social interaction. Jennifer's career was founded on these ideas. Her deconstructed approach to feeding big groups resembles but also defines the practice of conceptual art known as relational aesthetics, where the artwork creates a social environment in which people participate in a shared activity. Since 2001, Jennifer has organized an annual breakfast at Art Miami Basel at one such breakfast in 2007, one that I will never forget. Jennifer had laid out three large bowls. One had over 2,000 hard-billed eggs, one had a heaping mound of croissants, one had a heaping mound of bacon, and a box of latex gloves. And once people sort of figured out what to do, it was amazing. I'll never forget that. In 2010, Jennifer created a series of out-of-this-world food cabinets right here at the Brooklyn Museum for our very first Brooklyn Artist Ball, forever changing the way we think about the gala experience. Picture it. Duchampian urinals dispensing champagne, a 20-foot tall piñata made in the likeness of Andy Warhol, filled with dessert. Not many people can hold that off. Jennifer directed a food performance at the city's hottest ticket, Queen of the Night. A dinner party turned live auction opera from the creator of Sleep No More, and I'm thrilled to announce that at this year's Art Miami Basel, our trustee, Nicole Ehrlich, will be producing a one-night pop-up version of Queen of the Night to benefit the museum. So stay tuned for that. Needless to say, Jennifer creates once-in-a-lifetime experiences out of our wildest dreams and memories that we'll be sharing with our families and friends for years to come. We are in for a real treat this afternoon or this morning, and it is with great pleasure that I welcome our own Sackler family, curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Catherine Morris, and our two wateries, Jennifer and Miro Rubel. Thank you all for being here. And thank you for being here. It's wonderful to have this opportunity to talk about Mother and Daughter duo again and to, um, we're going to have running in the background as we talk. There are a series of slides that document both the bulk collection and also Jennifer's projects as well. And I hope you'll excuse Jennifer, but I feel like we need to start before you are around, which means it broke them. Wow. Thank you for hiding this. Thank you for having me for the interview. And thank you all for coming here. Well, so Brooklyn, you know, sometimes the place and the event, you don't know that it's the critical moments in place in life. As it turns out, Brooklyn turned out to be the critical place in life. My family arrived in the 50s, and the Brooklyn Museum and the Potanical World was the only place my family hung out and did something. Because being goosebumps, thinking of the photo, as my father was a Canadian photo taken through a door, and he loved finding this perfect tree in Boston, you know, that name Brooklyn. And of course, walking through this museum was a highlight of every weekend. And then Brooklyn, of course, is where, you know, this person that I was sitting obviously for three months, and I was saying the word, thinking that he could even notice me, the time he said, ask Eugenarian, first of all, he's asked the person that said Eugenarian. And it turns out, the first thing he said was, yes. And congratulations on 50 years. It turns out that we were honing in our ability to feel, you know, to feel things beyond words, you know, like that experience where you're actually learning along with not really talking, you know, or the usual thing. And yeah, we kind of fell in love about saying we're to each other. And I think it maybe is, it says something about collecting contemporary art. It's often a feeling, an intuition, a suspicion, a possibility, you don't know where it's going to go. I mean, who sent it, who you are? The thing that I walk with is my family in the 30s and Brooklyn Museum, and today I'm sitting on stage and talking to my daughter about art with your cat. Thank you. Thank you. It's a lovely, it's a lovely way to start. And did you start looking at art together? With your husband or had you started looking for, in terms of thinking about an actual possibility of learning something? There wasn't really a big plan. I mean, he was always a collector. You know, he's the kid that collected baseball cards, he's the kid that, you know, collected stamps. My family, my family's survival was based on giving up on a ship. You know, my father in 1939, he was on the front against the Germans, the Polish soldier against the Germans, and he left his unit to run back to his family to tell them unless they left at night it looked like Hitler was going to leave Warsaw. So every, so my brothers and sisters, my mother, he was not married to my mother yet, and he convinced his nine brothers and sisters, including his parents, including my mother, to that night leave everything behind. And there were those of the family that said, well, we can't leave everything behind. Somebody's going to say a bunch of things. So my whole life is about leaving things and certainly not saying, keeping things and being responsible for things can really keep dangerous and life threatening. So the idea that we would become collectors, I mean, somehow I was just answering the question about, yeah, we could look at it all, but we believe in it to collect, and that's the whole of the legal thing to talk about, and I realized how that happened. There was no grand plan. You know, it was really no grand plan, except for the fact that I don't understand the audience. My co-conspirator for 50 years played tennis with this kid whose parents had made a drug collection, and in some weird place in his head, he said, wow, it wouldn't be amazing, but it was like an impossible dream. But I wasn't totally aware of that. So he was the question about both of this. I know, so you started the game, but I can't even move forward. How do you, what were the first things you caught up to? Well, well, we had this Don, so Don comes down for a corporate meeting, telling him he was a steward and mathematician working for equitable, and it was a big job together, and he was at this corporate meeting at the executive young training meeting in ASF 10. If you want to be successful, this is the meeting to talk about lifestyle, and we're going to tell you exactly who you should marry to continue your forward success. Now, this is, I don't know if they still have corporate meetings like this. Maybe this is the downfall of corporations today. They don't tell you who you're marrying. But on those days, he came down, and he's like, why does it, what happened? He said, I think I have to quit this job, and he took it very seriously. This is who you want to be married? You don't fit the bill. So... Have you heard this story before? I haven't. I've tried to have a shortage of men on a birthday. What was the question? What were the first things you caught up to? Oh, yes. So, we had this, so Don says that I'm at school, and then in this fourth floor wall of apartment, we get, it's a deal, you know what it's a deal. It's like, I'm earning $100 a week as a teacher, we get this apartment, and there are holes in the wall, and the place is a wreck, and we decide, okay, we're going to pay, this is the continuous rate of collecting, okay? We're going to spend the money on painting, plastering, clothes, whatever, or art. And of course, at that time, we decided, we're going to go and lose a lot of art, and we're going to buy all these posters, and we're going to hang a poster on every hole on that wall. So, for the price of plastering and the painting, we created this incredible collection of posters so that we can come out and art. Don't laugh. We learned about contemporary art. I mean, we learned about art. I didn't really know about the concept. I didn't know about the taste. I didn't know that old people, it's really decisions, you know, like spending $20 on a poster and earning $100 a week was a big deal. So that was our first thought, you know. That was a big deal. It was a big deal. It was a big commitment, and then I, it's interesting how it got into my teaching because I was so excited to learn about this art. And he thought I knew a little bit more because he grew up, okay, not like me, he grew up with a poster. A starry night. Do you remember when he sat next to the woman who donated the Starry Night to the museum? And she had a way. Lily Bluth. Yes. And he came in. He said, well, okay. Yeah, sorry. This is too good. I'm sorry. I'll tell you. He is too good. I have to share this with you. He said to her, who did you work with? I didn't know who he was sitting next to. And then I said, well, it was a starry night. And she said, that's funny. Good story. You didn't grow up with posters. I did not grow up with posters. No. No. No. Do you remember what you grew up with? What Starry Night was when you were crying out in the collection? Yeah, I mean, for me, everybody sort of distills their childhood into some series of memories that lead them to the end that they were at that, I think, more or less. And so I feel like more than growing up with certain objects, I feel like I grew up in a certain world. And so the objects were constantly, the objects were really changing because at that time, my parents didn't have a collection of it to the public. It was the living room and the dining room. It was never big enough and there was never enough space and they never wanted to pay for storage. So it was literally like the collecting was in a very real time on the walls. It was that kind of experience. And so I feel like I grew up inside of the dynamic of collecting, inside of the dynamic of having artists at the table talking. And you have very much inside of the contemporary art world. So for me, that's the part of my childhood. The pieces, I mean, they were, you know, what I might remember would be schnapps and key herrings and Francesco Clemente's and some of the European artists like Don Compil and Don. I'm trying to think what was, this is very super intense homoerotic painting in the living room. My parents complained to my parents about their kids seeing it or whatever. So that struck me strongly. And then on my personal, in my personal room, I removed everything from my room and I had just a bed that I built, white walls, and then these Alan McCollum surrogates. That was all I had in my room. So that was kind of, that's what my space was. You built your own bed. Sorry? You built your own bed? I built my own bed. I had Alan McCollum surrogates on the wall and I would just, I took everything else out of my room and it was just a carpet, a bed, and Alan McCollum surrogates. Is this a rebellion? Yeah, I think it was like definitely rebellion within the the picture of the language of the household. He had a shovel. Yeah, exactly. What about like your then, it's how I dressed? Oh! My daughter, I put on some some outfit for today and my daughter rejected it and I changed. So, I think my mom took the same approach. What? Well, yeah, when you, it is, I think it came out okay. Okay. Tell me something about the ways about my daughter for that change. I don't know, but I'm sure, you know, as mothers and boys, there is a moment when your daughter's really changed the way you think about things and that's how I, I'm at that point where more and more I feel that way. Did you feel like she didn't know you were going to address me? I feel like the skin type of black parachute jumpsuits to parent-teacher games is great. It was a legitimate complaint. And that was always my cover. I can't come to life, possibly, being one of the oldest people in the audience in the room. I always, I don't know what it's about, but having ignorant parents, I always thought you were a Paris, it was no point to be a Paris I've never been with parents. You know, they didn't speak English or they had accents or they weren't educated. I was, I was proud of my parents. I loved them, but I was also kind of, you know, I knew their place. Like, I don't know if Dawn didn't want to meet my parents on the first date or I kind of influenced that. But yeah, they actually can get to meet him for a while. So my point is I always thought that kids were embarrassed of their immigrant parents. I didn't realize that kids were embarrassed of their parents. Period. So in case I came to me as a big shocker to know that here I am the Americanized educated person, right? And my kids are embarrassed of them. So because we're going back 30 years back, you're really not knowing over it at this point. We're going back to growing up and having hearts and whatever. Because it's not just the art and the wall for us. There's a way of life moving forward. So the art world then was not what it is now. It was not like every hedge fund guy in your child's school collects art. And the art world was not a mainstream world. It was actually a world where people were doing what they did. But they did smoke a lot of them. They did smoke a lot of them. They did smoke a lot of them. After every opening they had 100. I mean sometimes the house was like full of cigarettes. Yeah. But it wasn't the idea of the art world as a legitimate world. It was not it was only legitimate to people in the art world at that time. Yeah. So the way that you guys as a group collected or collected is that after that you vote you decide a group on what I was just going to make and to be told about that story. Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always Jennifer was always I mean, in a way, I don't know, I don't think he married today, he didn't. I mean, I'm looking at you. You don't know, Mike's been just a while. We can deal with that later, but... Jason has a collective gene. He liked on even the oldest ever collective gene, there's this pleasure in the search and the discovery and the ultimate pleasure and the choir. There's a gene that don't have a gene, and I leaped into it in a way. As it turns out, it became a way for me to understand my life and my condition being kind of an immigrant. It's like, you're never comfortable. It's like, you're always somehow, you don't know where your home is. You just don't know. So art became a big way of learning about myself and how being different people you will celebrate. Now Jennifer, Jennifer being unique, was her way of life, was who she was. She and I used to be a vegetarian nation only. Jennifer has always had a very strong mind. Not to mention a very active mind. Very hard, you know, the parents, you know, it's not easy. You can just do as they tell you. So it became very easy. It was difficult. It was challenging. We decided very early on, before the kids were around, that because we had no started penniless, dominant in medical school, we had no money to start a collecting mark with $100 on the salary. So we would have voted 25%, which is $25 a week, to five artists, $5 a week. When we decided artists, after we had the posters of Ringolda plaster, we would walk around on a table there to make that, give the flowers, just in those days the artists were, in those days the arts could live in the ground floor and paint and work here. And we realized, wow, $5 a week, they would have to see us and they would have you for us to start collecting their work. We didn't call it collecting. We wanted to have an original work of art, next to our collection of posters. And so that's... But then once you have the children in the family. Well, Jason, so the idea was that since we, since so many resources were going towards that end, Don and I, it was okay, we'll collect, but we're not going to like, he's not going to spend money on this one and I'm not going to spend money. It's not like, oh, passion, my passion, we're going to do it together. And we made a deal, it was like written in blood, although violated by my husband sometimes, which was only once. Talked like we were talking about mistress, but it looks like having a mistress, really, that it was going to collect and it had to be a consensus. And that consensus is not easy to agree. It was not easy. But building the consensus was the way we learned how to collect together. And when the kids were born, Jason was very natural, but very, very soon, as soon as he had an opinion, we valued his opinion, and very soon after that, he participated in the selection of work and the payment consensus. Basically, to this day, do not buy unless we agree. Now Jennifer took a left turn. She then, with her, it was just a question of time when she was going to commit herself and identify as the prisoners. That took a huge leap. That led to a whole other, because you don't know too many artists that are collected. Children of collectors do not become artists. That's all of the conversation can happen. You know, taking away. I would imagine that would be a difficult thing to make. If I consider me just in the lightest way, not knowing any, I would dismiss me too. It's amazing how strong and inclination you have to dismiss the children of anyone. And I don't really know where that comes from, because if you're the child of an art collector, the bar is so high that if you just make bad art, you probably won't do it, because it'll kill you to not get close to that bar. If you feel like that bar is out of reach, you just won't try to grab it, unless you're totally clueless. It was an incredibly difficult thing to do. And of course, like, let's say slavery or being a woman or any of these things, it's very easy to internalize that message. So it's very easy to internalize the message of being worthless or being a dilettante or whatever. And particularly the type of work that I've always been interested in, which is this kind of, it doesn't fit neatly inside the definition of art, is already a kind of marginalized experience. So yeah, I can't say that it was easy. I can say that I'm very happy that it wasn't easy, because the level of commitment that's required to constantly ask of yourself something that you are not entirely sure you can actually create is having that kind of negative message as practice for that, I think is quite a luxury. So yeah, that's sort of how I run. But my work is so much about where I come from also. It's so much about having been deeply on the inside that I can't even imagine that there are no other conditions that can give rise to the work that I do. So it's kind of perfect. And I should say just so it's clear, I absolutely love growing up with my family. It's aside from the art, there's a lot of art and there's a lot of love. There's a lot of antennas, but that's awesome. But there's a lot of art, a lot of love. There's a lot of antennas for those who are interested and then there's not much else. So that's kind of what I do. What about cooking? Yeah, and cooking for some, including you. My mother was fantastic. No, but we spent a lot of time in the kitchen. And what was the first project you did with this sort of social practice? I can't say that was the first project because I kind of, because I'm so subconscious about being an artist, I essentially made art in situations and conditions where it was clearly art but I might have been the only one who knew it. So I worked because I was a stealth artist. Yeah, so I worked with my family as a hotel business, for instance, and I would leave these anonymous love letters on guest pillows, for instance. So, yeah, to me, it was art. To the modeling company, so I contrast with a hotel that was stalking, but you know. So there was no first project. When did you start thinking about the food? Well, I was always really involved in food. I mean, I always cooked and I always, and then I started writing about food shortly after college. And then the food world, to me, kind of, I thought there was a possibility of doing what it was I used to do in the world inside the food world and avoid the art context altogether. Except when I tried that, I mean, it's a clear memory that I had a tradition of the food network and I really did everything I could to pass as a normal person. So like, I studied all the people on TV and realized that all of them wear short sleeve v-neck-brain T-shirts. And so I wore that, you know, and then they said, you know, talk about how your grandmother gave you this recipe and where you were at the time. It's like, it was so far from my experience that I talked about some fictional chip to the south of France and my grandmother and my mother on Selma. And then, so I really thought that I was passing as a very mainstream kind of cooking person. And then they called me in like a month later and they said, yeah, you cook really well and you're not on TV, but you just feel like you're a little alternative for us. And so it was interesting because that meeting, of course rejection is like absolutely fueling for me at least, but that meeting was really, I walked out of that meeting and I was completely fed up with myself because I felt like my need to avoid being defined as an artist and to avoid the scrutiny that would come with that was making it possible for me to do what I had to do in the world. And so I walked out of there and it was like, okay, there's no road there that will lead me to where I want to go. You know, but it's interesting, watching Jennifer allow herself to be born as an artist has taught us so much about really understanding art. For the old years that we did, our contact with artists was so much different from the days that we met them in the studios, you know, in the retail shops in the Fowler district. Watching Jennifer being internet and inside that, becoming an artist has taught us so much about what the courage that takes to become an artist. I mean, we've always respected and understood how powerful it is for someone to put themselves out there and make the powerful work out there is total vulnerability. I mean, we've always been vulnerable. But watching the birth of an artist who happened to be outdoor so close up gave us the big push to really picking out the entire studio with a more clear understanding in the same way that, well, that, it's an innovation. I was just going to say, you know, a son who actually, with the collection at some point over the gallery, that gave us an insight into what it means to be a gallery. And that was very valuable to all of that. When you describe your entry into collecting something, and your personal, and your exploratory, so how was it difficult to come to the point where you wanted to get a transition into this public space that has become such a huge part of the community in Miami and is so instrumental in the world? Well, that's becoming public as a whole, because we couldn't collect the work that was allowed, keeping it, you know, in our non-private space. And plus interacting with the public in the way that our collection does, it is profoundly altered to the way we think about ourselves. All the kids that, and we've had thousands of kids that visited the collection a year, the impact that art has on people, and kids in particular, understanding that there are alternatives and choices in life, and being unique is not something to be embarrassed about, but it is a gift that art endlessly makes that point. And watching our children go in these two different directions gives me tremendous and deeper, deeper, deeper insight. For example, just the other day, said, Jennifer, you're such a shy person. One of the things that Jennifer would know now, like Don was right, I mean, you know you were shy, because you didn't say a word to me except to go out and frisky, upset, and rehearse, say would you marry me? To have three months to rehearse that. So I knew growing up was a shy person, but I came to understand that Jennifer was very shy, and she's doing work now that just shocks me about how shy person makes work like this. So I can't even address that. Why do kids, why do... What we just said about China the other day just blew me away because finally, and it depends that here I married two men for 50 years, and what she said about herself being shy in an insight into my husband's shyness, which I didn't get to understand. I never really thought about that way, and then we have about five grandchildren, and one is really, really shy. Got the shy gene. And so now I said, wow, this really began insight into my grandchild's shyness, which do you know a shy person? It's like something you don't really, like, you know, I've never, you know, what you said. Well, that was not going to sound that exciting, but I know it's talking about being shy is a lot about having... being very, very attuned to other people and being so sensitive to what they're feeling and what they might be thinking or feeling in relation to you. That you kind of can't... Is that what I said? You can't really... Is that exactly what you said? I did read this book called Goodbye to Shy. It doesn't change my life. I know your projects are all about being in the social. Yeah, my projects all create a context for people to engage with not just the work, but also each other. It gives them a way of being there that isn't going to kill them if they're shy. It's actually a means to social interaction no matter how you feel about yourself. They all kind of take you out of yourself because you become a kind of protagonist inside the projects and not a seeker. You know, the amazing thing... I mean, I'm sure this isn't just for people to look at them hard. It's just amazing that there's always something that's being shared in a way that just blows you away in terms of, like, it deforms you in a way that you never thought of before. I mean, it's something about this visual experience and what artists give us that just blows us away and suddenly makes us live our life in a different... I just don't... I can't even imagine the life I was living with. It wasn't for a long night, day in and day out. I mean, I was practicing medicine for years, but, you know, and we had the two kids, but we still managed to stay on the very two wheels of lead, you know? It was like the activity, it was like the out of life that would do the self-hospital. But I'm just... but being so close to... But this is different. This is so intimate now. It's so intimate seeing it. We're so up close. Yeah, I mean, the catalogue for this exhibition, celebrating the 20 years of the collection and 50 years of my guys being married, in the catalogue, all of the artists were asked to submit. Not at all. Not at all. I'm sorry. Some of the artists... Do you want me to talk about it? No, no, no, no. Because it was really our director's idea. He said, this is an important anniversary. Some of these artists, I've been in the collection for 34 years, why don't we ask them if they will say something about the work that you've collected? And Don and I thought, this is ridiculous. They're not even going to remember. You know, like, you went on a date with, I don't know, a movie star, you know, who came on the star. I think they'll remember you, George Clooney, at the end of the day, if it's either a member that you and I used to have, you know, you went to the prom. I mean, maybe he wouldn't remember. So he said, though, we've got to ask these people, let's ask the artists to share with, would they share one sense, two sense, whatever they want to share the first piece that we collected of theirs. Okay, so let me just say, because I think you probably won't want to say. So, for instance, all this to say that I think that the level at which my parents collect, it means so much to the artists that it's, it's something that's like, it's beyond, it has nothing to do with the transaction of like money for art, you know, because it's about this kind of validation at a moment that, because the moment before you're validated is usually the moment where you just can't take it anymore. Do you know what I mean? It's like that. One naturally follows on the other. And so, like, for instance, Richard, I've been reading a bunch of them as they've been coming in. Like, Richard Prince wrote how he went, my parents used to have this party after the opening of the Whitney Biennial every year and it was this kind of legendary party. And I think it was still legendary because my parents were the least excluded, exclusive people on the planet. So they let anybody in and the house was packed and artists would bring their friends or tell their friends or whatever. And so Richard wrote about how he came to this party and they had just been to the studio and involved this piece from him. And he went to the party, he didn't know a person there and it was literally the first time he ever saw a piece of his hanging anywhere other than the studio. I mean, it's unbelievable, you know. It's truly unbelievable. And so that spirit, I mean, that, you know, that experience with art, I mean, I feel like that's what I wrote inside of it. More that, you know, like, today there's kind of, it's like, they still have those experiences all the time but it's like, there's an idea that there's a museum and a collector and whatever. But that constant belief in young artists who were doing what they were doing was like the metronome of my childhood. Well, Jeff Cooley, I have to share with you with Jeff Cooley. So another experience that we had with Jeff Cooley was we had these pretty spontaneous calls. It wasn't like we never sent out an invitation, which we kind of still don't do. The truth is that any time you're ever having a party, chances are you can come. You can come. You're officially invited. Because we don't even know, I mean, but anyway. So one day, the day after, the night after there's one of the winning by any of the parties, I think it was in 1979, the doorbell rings. We moved in this tent house close to a Whitney which made it very convenient after the winning party to just walk over. So the doorbell rings and we said, well, who is it? So this is Jeff. Well, Jeff Cooley. Jeff Cooley. Jeff Cooley sends things to ask, so Jeff, yes. Can we help you? This is, well, I'm here for the Whitney party. We said, well, wait a minute. So Don and I went downstairs, opened the door, and said, because you knew this isn't an honest coming for the Whitney party, they lay it and they're very disappointed. So we, sure enough, weQL stand and he was, and he said, I'm here for the Whitney party, There was a party, you know, the door would be open and hundreds of people would be coming in. I'm sorry, really, Mr. President. You sure, Mr. President? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You said, you're in this department. So this is the point, it was so heartbroken. We said, oh, well, we were practically in our pajamas. We were, we were so muddled from the night before. But we invited him in the house and we said, well, we're just about to sit down to have pasta. I can make pasta in 20 minutes. So we ended up having pasta together. And the next day, he sent us this beautiful piece, which you can see the way it is. It's one of the first inflatable, individual inflated flowers that, as the piece, was sent to us as a thank you for there and the far more. So we were telling the story, thinking of the story, for years and years and years, since 79, right? And I thought, well, did it really happen that way? I wasn't really like that. So when I was about to send out this request, would you write something, you know, for the first piece that, you know, the bus collected? He wrote, he repeated the story, and I thought, wow, we had a date, and actually we had a date. And in some way, I became, you know, we became pregnant, you know, because we really own this amazing piece. So there you go. Well, one of the reasons I think people remember you, obviously, is the way that you do connect. And you have this long vision of collecting depth and really committing to people. And that's something that just came naturally, and even you're sure about going to the same studios with $5 or $5 people over the course of time, it seems like an actual donation to sort of go hand you. Well, now that we collect, it's really, we're always thinking about, like, the story we're going to tell, you know, like, what are we going to do? We try to do the rules of our artists, what we do, for those of you who have come to see our own collection. We try to tell a story, so it's easier to tell a story with more than one piece. Although many years before, oh, we have a piece, so that's it. Now, we think in terms of stories, and artists' work changes and progresses. So, and also in the case, and now, like for the story with our immersive thing that we decided to really do something about, like, what, which is, we never really commissioned artwork for a sec. I mean, we flirted a little bit with it, but it always felt right. We want to know the piece, and we don't want to take it to you. We want to know this piece. But we've come to understand that if you believe in your artists, sometimes it's kind of interesting to say, you know, rock yourself out, you know, is there some inspiration that you have in the space? So this year, we actually commissioned six artists who are, who, we said, like, you can make us up when it's over, or you can keep us engaged in this process. And, but just to say, we've been to this one, you are, like, this is the fourth visit. We asked, he wants us to be involved, and then we're going to be, and tomorrow I'm going to a studio all the way out and came to New York because they're always choosing us to be engaged in the process. And it's, it's so exciting. It's so exciting. And the one artist that we gave six, well, one artist, I mean, flirted with this, this is something fresh new to us. Two years ago, we gave this young artist from London that we met, Austin Marilla, who said, you know, we're going to be away for six weeks, take over our house, which is right next door to the collection. Just live there and use one of the galleries as a studio. At first, the staff thought, oh my God, this is going to really disturb, you know, we had so much work to do during the summer, you know, the installing, catalog, and we had so much to do, why wouldn't an artist into it? Well, it was extraordinary, you know, to have an artist living and working in the States, and it turned out to be so, so vital, so risky, so engaging for one thing, it's a great cook. He made sausage for the one he said. Colombian sausage, you know, the very kind. So, so we don't know what's going to come off. All the galleries on the ground floor will be all commissioned work of young artists who we've never shown before. And this will be open during our fair. Yes. So when you start installation? Well, it's still making it, I mean. Oh, and that isn't nerve-wracking enough. In addition to the 700-page catalog, isn't this what I'm talking about with these crazy people? I don't feel like I'm talking about myself. In addition to the 700-page catalog, we invited these artists to knock themselves out of the catalog. So, so far, so two, a week ago, one of the artists said, you know, you said I should do a catalog, but it looks like it's going to be around 400 pages. And do you think you could be ready for Art Basel? We said, yeah, I don't know how, but it's going to happen. Because when we came to understand, and it's something that we'll have to pay attention to in the future, when you actually get going inside of the creative process, you're just, you're not allowed to say no. You could have something that this museum knows a lot about. You don't say no to what you do and what you have to do, because otherwise you wouldn't get the work that you get here and the projects that you have going on here. It's that kind of museum, and that's what artists talk about. It's like a real museum makes things happen. So, hopefully we can deliver to the artist what you guys do all the time. But thank you very much. It's a wonderful place to end, except that I think we should all wish you a very happy 50th anniversary. Congratulations. For such great conversation. I now get to present you both with your awards. Come on up. Very short, as you can tell, I'm no brief member of that. We moved to receive this award and this great honor from a museum that is so close to both of our hearts for different reasons, and then also the same reasons that it's close to all of our hearts. And, you know, for me, I can speak for my mother, I think art is family. There is no difference between art and family, and it's both the family you're born with, the family you choose, the family you surround yourself with, and to us, the Brooklyn Museum is a part of our family and it's particularly touching to receive this from a museum that occupies that place in our hearts. So thank you all.