Structural Constellation

The Collection of James and Marilynn Alsdorf represents a notable achievement in the history of American connoisseurship. Steadily acquired throughout the latter half of the twentieth century by two of Chicago’s most important civic and cultural patrons, the Collection is unparalleled in its breadth and quality, illuminating the remarkable feats of human artistry across time and geography. For the Alsdorfs, collecting represented a unique opportunity for exploration, adventure, and the pursuit of beauty, extending from the art-filled rooms of their Chicago residence to distant continents and historic lands. The couple’s philosophy of collecting, as Marilynn Alsdorf explained, was simple yet profound: “We looked for objects,” she said, “to delight our eyes and souls….”

Married in 1952, James and Marilynn Alsdorf would spend nearly four decades together building a life centered on art, philanthropy, and family. The son of a former Dutch diplomat and exporter, James W. Alsdorf joined his father’s business after studying at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. It was while working for his family’s company, Alsdorf International, Ltd., that Mr. Alsdorf came upon the opportunity to acquire the Cory Corporation, a producer of coffee brewers and equipment. Under Mr. Alsdorf’s leadership, Cory grew to become the nation’s top manufacturer in the field, allowing him to expand the business into other areas of production and service. After successfully selling the company to the Hershey Corporation in the late 1960s, he re-joined the Alsdorf family’s export firm, and worked together with his wife, Marilynn, to amass an exceptional private collection of fine art.

Raised in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood and educated at Northwestern University, Marilynn Alsdorf was a woman whose intelligence and passion for fine art left an indelible mark on the Alsdorfs’ collection and the community in which they lived. The couple made their first acquisition at a Chicago auction shortly after their marriage. The work was a harbinger of greater things to come, prompting the couple to look deeper into the innumerable strands of art historical expression found throughout history—from the societies of ancient Egypt and Greece to the early Renaissance, Islamic art, Chinese and East Asian art, and Modern painting and sculpture. Through international travel, personal scholarship, and in conversation with leading curators, dealers, and living artists, the Alsdorfs honed a shared, astute connoisseurship, one driven by an ineffable, almost spiritual quality found in the works they chose to acquire.

It was this “love of the object,” as the Alsdorfs described it, that resulted in an extraordinary, polymathic private collection. The couple’s residence on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive became home to a striking mélange of works in which painting, sculpture, and decorative arts from around the world stood in art historical conversation—a curatorial achievement in its own right for which the Alsdorfs were widely celebrated. The couple were especially pioneering in their acquisition of Indian, Southeast Asian, and Himalayan art, areas that were largely undervalued when they first began to acquire these works in the 1960s. The Alsdorfs’ first visit to India in 1968 was followed by numerous trips in the region, allowing them to expand both their expertise and their collection. Each new spark of art historical interest—in Old Master drawings, Buddhist sculpture, Chinese porcelain, Native American art, and beyond—set off a flurry of erudition and acquisition. “You have to love something before you buy it,” Mrs. Alsdorf explained. “Find something, some period or some venue that you really like and do research on it. Find something that you’re passionate about and then start collecting.”

While their collection included masterful pieces by unknown artists from across history, the Alsdorfs were also keen to advance the work of Modern and Contemporary figures, acquiring works by artists such as Mark Rothko, René Magritte, Frida Kahlo, Fernand Léger, Jean Dubuffet, and others. In 1967, the Alsdorfs joined other prominent Chicago collectors, including Edwin and Lindy Bergman and Robert and Beatrice Mayer, in founding the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, an institution to which they would provide extensive financial and personal leadership. The Alsdorfs’ patronage of museums and cultural institutions extended across Chicago and the wider United States: Mr. Alsdorf was a member of the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art, the Collectors Committee of the National Gallery of Art, and a board member of Dumbarton Oaks, among others. Mrs. Alsdorf, for her part, served as president of the Arts Club of Chicago and in leadership positions at institutions including the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame, and the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University.

With the passing of James Alsdorf in 1990, his wife and family sought to continue to build upon the legacy in art and philanthropy that had defined his life. From the 1950s, the Alsdorfs were especially ardent patrons of the Art Institute of Chicago, gifting or lending hundreds of works to the museum commencing in the earliest days of their collecting. A longtime AIC trustee, Mrs. Alsdorf served for a time as president of the museum’s Women’s Board, while Mr. Alsdorf served as AIC chairman from 1975 to 1978. The couple’s decades of generosity toward the AIC would extend past Mr. Alsdorf’s death and into the twenty-first century. In 1997, Mrs. Alsdorf presented the AIC with some four hundred works of Southeast Asian art, a transformative bequest celebrated by the landmark exhibition A Collecting Odyssey: Indian, Himalayan, and Southeast Asian Art from the James and Marilynn Alsdorf Collection. Less than a decade later, Mrs. Alsdorf made yet another monumental gift when she supported the construction of the Alsdorf Galleries of Indian, Southeast Asian, Himalayan, and Islamic Art, an arresting Renzo Piano-designed space bridging the museum’s Michigan Avenue building and Modern Wing. At the same time, Mrs. Alsdorf funded a dedicated curatorial position at the AIC in Southeast Asian art, ensuring that generations of visitors will continue to discover the wonders of the field through exhibitions and education.

In 2006, when Marilynn Alsdorf was presented with the Joseph R. Shapiro Award from the Smart Museum of Art, fellow collector John Bryan lauded her as “an art patron without equal in our time in Chicago.” Together, the Alsdorfs had not only built a peerless private collection of fine art from around the world, but had also dedicated themselves to sharing that collection and the passion that fueled its acquisition. The James and Marilynn Alsdorf Collection now serves as the tangible representation of the wide-reaching curiosity and connoisseurship of its namesakes—an unwavering belief in the transcendent and timeless power of art.
Post Lot Text
The work is registered in the catalogue raisonné of the paintings of Josef Albers as 1958.8.10.