Episode 6: Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn

In Episode 6, Adam and Laura visited Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, founder of Salon 94 and Salon 94 Design, at her home on 94th Street — configured as part gallery, part entertaining space, and part family home. In her beautiful living room, surrounded by a painting by Julie Mehretu, a table by Diego Giacometti, a steel bow stool by Maria Pergay, and a whimsical ceramic gourd by Taxile Doat, they discussed Jeanne’s views on cross-collecting, the need for a renewed generation of design patrons, and behind-the-scenes anecdotes from her upbringing and life as an art dealer.

Find out more about Salon 94 and Salon 94 Design, or follow Jeanne @jeannegr

Follow our adventures @adamcharlaphyman and @laurakugel_

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello, this is Adam Charlop Hyman.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

And this is Laura Kugel. Welcome back to Handle with Care, the podcast you didn't know you needed about curtains, chairs, lamps, and weird ceramics. Today we're very happy to introduce Ginny Greenberg Rutin, curator and dealer, having started her amazing gallery 794 out of her home on 94th Street on the Upper East Side of New York. It has since expanded to a townhouse on 89th Street from 1915. We sat down with Ginny in the living room or salon of the 94th Street House, which is configured as part gallery, part entertaining space, and part family home with bedrooms upstairs.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

The iconic New York room we are in is artfully arranged with an astounding drapery work by David Hammonds, a massive painting by Julie Moretu, a suite of Diego Giacometti furniture, a fantastic ceramic piece by the turn of the century artist that I only just recently learned about from Laura, Taxil Doat, a bizarre and beautiful table carved with a giant frog perched on its side by Hella Jungarius, a Maria Perigay steel bow stool that I love, all set on a rug by Diana Vignoli, designed for the space when she and her husband Rafael Vignoli renovated the house in 2002. We were interested to speak with Jeannie about her unique perspective as a dealer of both design and fine art, and how she has built a gallery around a vision for collecting that defies binaries and is ignited by the tension of the outsider and the insider, the domestic and the public, furniture and sculpture, ugly and pretty, queer and hetero, masculine and feminine. Jeannie is a force of nature who has forged her own path and business model. She speaks of art and artists with such thoughtfulness and passion. It was truly an amazing conversation. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

I guess there's a big fascination in our respective jobs, you know, whether it's art dealing or being a gallerist or interior design, it still exerts some kind of aura, uh, but it's a bit mercurial what it's actually all about beyond the buying and selling and the transactional side of it. And in terms of art dealing, which is also what I do, it's very much based on oral tradition because very few dealers will record what they do. So it's really based on conversation that you learn a lot of those things. And maybe you don't realize at the moment you live through something, like say growing up with some art dealing parents, yes, quite how much it teaches you. And so I understood from listening to some of your previous interviews. Uh you come from a family of art dealers in St. Louis, yes, um, who were involved with Leo Castelli in some form or another.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Well, Leo was a great, great friend of my father's. And really, when my father became an art dealer in St. Louis, which is was a very unusual thing to do in the Midwest in the early 70s, uh, Leo was right there saying, You have a gallery, I will feed you artists.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

And how did they know each other in the first place?

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Because my father started to come to New York and buy art from him. And so he really first became his friend and client. And as well, my father didn't have a ton of money to buy art. So uh being an art dealer was a great way for him to be able to take home art, some of the great dealers becoming collectors and vice versa.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

And um earlier when we were introduced to this living room where we're sitting in, you were kind of explaining that this is not a home decorated by an interior design. It's your taste, it's ever changing. Um, do you think that's something typical of an art dealer's home?

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Ah, that's a great question. Because I think of my home as a space to experiment with objects and art, I probably change it around more than most people. And I experiment with objects, I place objects down, I see if they have their own integrity and charisma against other works. So I think my play is perhaps more personal than many dealers, but I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

Because one feature of being a dealer is that the concept of ownership is not very clear, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yes, it's definitely liquid. That said, I do try and separate out works that I'm going to keep versus the ones that are within the gallery inventory. And usually there are things that I've coveted for a long time. I have real personal history with. In order to have that David Hammond's tarp, I sold nine other tarps and always had a dream of having this particular tarp. So it took me many years to bring it home and many transactions.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

And what was your parents' house like? What was their taste like?

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Well, they were collectors in mostly the 70s. That's when they started. So very spare. They had, however, a large Tudor Gothic house, which was wood. It was built by a man named Lionberger Davis. So there were many carved lions and a few stained glass windows with lions. And so the house right next door to us was the Jeffersonian one, and we had the Tudor one. Our neighborhood was built during the World's Fair. So each house was a different architectural style. But my father, when he bought the house, he hired the architectural students at Washington U to help him build these big, thick, white walls that went over the wood paneling because he didn't want to destroy the wood paneling. And that's where he would hang the art. He was very minimal. We did not grow up with a lot of furniture around. He barely believed in furniture. And so it was, you know, really a time where the 70s tenants and those canons were lived by. If you were collecting that material, you were also living with it in the same way that it was made, the same concept. And remember, he was very new to the art world. So the white box gallery space was not really as precise as it is today. You know, Leo Costelli's gallery started in 1957 in his townhouse. Ileana Sanobin in Paris in the 60s had her gallery in her Paris apartment. So there still hadn't been this commodification of the white box at that time. Would you say you stand against the white box? I don't stand against it at all. I love looking at art in a white box. It's just that I had to define my practice a little bit different than my colleagues. And in order to do that, you have to develop your own aesthetic, your own voice, because it's very loud out there. So I just thought I'd rather create a bit of a pilgrimage to a different kind of experience.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

And the gallery started here in this street?

SPEAKER_01 7:30

The gallery started here on 94th Street, yes, in this exact house. So the conservatory below was used as the original Salon 94. And it's just a simple room, and it was a perfect way for me to start out and create a space where you could bring together multiple types of people and dialogue. And I didn't want to have a kind of a white box space without constant chitter-chatter and voice and talk of some sort. You know, I didn't want to have that silent space.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Were there reference points for you that inspired you to put this together in this way, to configure it in this way?

SPEAKER_01 8:17

So I always loved Florine Stuttheimer and this idea that she would unveil her paintings with a community of dancers and singers and writers and artists. And of course, that fantasy is a little bit too theatrical for my taste. And the salon style of hanging is really not my taste at all. But I loved this New York idea of her and her sisters. So that was influential, of course. You know, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklis was an influence. But I wasn't thinking of it in that way. I was a young mom here at home, didn't want to leave my kid so much. I wanted to work from home. I love to work. I love to work 24 hours seven, but at the same time, you know, you're nursing and you're taking care of a kid. So I wanted a space where I could do both seamlessly without too much friction. So that it was kind of practical as well. And we've found this big space, and I was able to carve out an office for myself and a space for art.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

And I was always so struck by how your approach was different than a lot of other galleries. For instance, like your obsession with ceramics and you're showing ceramic artists, and I think also the diversity of identity of the artists that you've shown over the years. I mean, you just have always seemed to adhere to a very kind of free set of rules. And then when I came to this house, it put that into perspective. Like it showed me that there was actually this rationale for uh the blending of design and art and well, you went to architecture school.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah. So you probably had a lot of rules that were thrown at you. Yeah. Right. So you were taught by rules. I was never formally trained. I mean, there's nobody that gives you a set of rules of what you're going to be doing. And in terms of a hierarchy of art history, as a young female student at Vassar and then at the Art Institute, I was constantly clashing with our 101 art history book and what was written about. And that was not anything other than a natural inclination of saying, well, where is, you know, where is this artist? Where is that artist? It's very interesting what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

I did not study art history, which in some way I regret, because of course I would have, I think, thoroughly enjoyed it. But the way we work follows no linearity. And especially once you move away from fine arts and you enter the world of objects and decorative arts, it's even worse. And the teaching I don't think could ever sustain the way our practices actually work. Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Because you must get one object from the 17th century, and then a minute later something comes and it's from the 19th century. Exactly. And we have these treasures that are from all different times. So it's our job to spot those treasures and retell their stories and, you know, frame them in a way that uh, you know, literally frame them or hang them or make them look sexy and fresh again.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

And in some ways, the frame for a lot of what you do is this mix of a domestic and a commercial space. Like it is the sort of suggestion of the domestic, which is funny. Actually, you also live in a house gallery or work in a house gallery.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

The difference with you is that we present things in a gallery that looks like a house, but in fact isn't, in something that feels more like period rooms. My father has always lived above our galleries. So I have always known that to be kind of like a fact of life. Yeah. And also now I can kind of apprehend that it also informs me on who he is, with no distinction uh in his mind between his passion and his work and his domestic setting. Um it's a very fluid thing, but the difference I suppose, which I find very interesting, is that you're presenting here the artists you care about in a way where you actually live, and I sell works in a setting that will never be the setting that I will live in a kind of grandiose, period roomish interior.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

You know, I have a gallery that is a version of that. It's a pared-down version of a domestic space. It was never really a domestic space, but you can walk through and have the fantasy of living there. Exactly. But I do think that elevating the idea of domestic space into a ritualized space is much more interesting. You know, that the idea that if you're buying something as simple as a teacup, that you call it a chauan and you know the history of the Japanese tea ceremony, and that it's somehow elevated and that you understand that object in in a different way. So when we talk about the domestic, uh, we're also talking about daily rituals, which I think are super important for our own lives.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

I feel you have such a particular taste, such a particular point of view.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

What do you think my taste is? Oh my gosh. I'm I'm always feeling like I'm changing my taste and point of view. Not that it's predictable.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

You have a taste that feels like it doesn't match perfectly a market. You've sort of made your own market and you've shown people how to follow along with that market in a way. I think. I mean, you have kind of invented your own set of rules with regard to showing art in your house, and you've made your house look more like a gallery than a house, and you've made your gallery look more like a house than a gallery, and it's totally cool to me.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

You know, it's just a way of dealing in extremes, and I do like extremes. You know, I tend not to like things that are neutral.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Right. Yeah. I mean, in constructing those tensions between what you expect to see from the outside and then what you see on the inside, it does sort of do something to the eye where you're able to focus more on pieces if they are kind of set against something that they don't belong against. Or I I think you're very good at sort of playing with these kinds of tensions in scale and in period.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yeah, there should be tension in art. Absolutely, because if not, you're gonna walk right by it. It has to call to you somehow and get your attention somehow, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:23

As your practice evolved from dealing in fine arts, increasingly dealing in furniture and objects, did your collectors react with the surprise or I mean, first of all, I spend more time on still my art practice, but they have become merged.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

You know, we ha now have Erst Fisher making furniture with us. Uh, we have an exhibition of Tom Sachs, who is going to show a lot of new furniture projects that he's been playing with for years in the studio. And yes, there's now a kind of seamless layering of the two, but for many years it made certain artists uncomfortable. It probably still does. It makes people in the art world uncomfortable. I just don't see the difference in it to understand what went into making a Carlo Molino lattice table is so fascinating to me in the same way as how the layering that Julie Morettu made for this painting behind me, it's of equal interest to me. And they might have different muscles that we have to recall to understand them, but at the same time, there's not a hierarchy for me in either one.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

I want to go back to something we started talking about. And I did want to ask you about interiors and collectors and art collectors and what it's like to work with art collectors that are thinking about their houses. Because as an interior designer in New York, I am struck so often by how much difficulty art collectors have picking up furniture and thinking about interiors, and I see a lot of really ugly interiors with great art. Right. And New York City has got to be the city with the most amazing art collections and the worst interiors. And I'm just curious about your hot take. Why do those things go together?

SPEAKER_01 17:38

It drives me crazy. It does. Because the sophistication of somebody's art collection, the connoisseurship of their art collection, that concentration just did not go into their interiors, where they probably allowed somebody else to make those decisions. And as well in the 80s, the aesthetic really was that you would have a neutral interior in order to show off your art. And as well, I don't think that the vision of people to work with an amazing designer, you know, have Max Lamb come in and design a full room for you doesn't occur to people so much right now. Marie Pergay, I mean, imagine how many incredible interiors that she did, from the doorknob to the couches to the rugs, to everything in the room. And then those rooms get dismantled. It's so sad. But I think people just don't have the vision. And interior designers perhaps don't have the education or haven't seen enough interiors. And I do think that especially Americans like to have something that is thought of as interior decorated.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

That somebody has its own aesthetic, it's its own thing.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

And I, as a dealer, luckily, don't really care. And so if somebody comes to me and adds in a piece of design, I'm always delighted, but I don't expect it. I never expect it. I do, however, have fantasies of a great restaurant to come and say, we want Tom Sacks shop chairs and tables in this entire restaurant. That I do aspire to and want that to happen and continue to work with designers because I I imagine that that will happen.

SPEAKER_02 19:52

It's true. Like the total artwork doesn't really exist anymore in the interior sphere.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Yeah. Yeah. What are some of your most exciting commission stories for design artist people?

SPEAKER_01 20:03

So we've had several, you know, Travis Scott called us and wanted to have Rick Owens and Michelle design for him his kind of green room, as it were, or his dressing room and his recording studio while he was on tour. So that was a super interesting commission. It had to be very quick. It had to be something that was modular, that could come apart, that could be easily trucked, easily assembled, and be put together in a different size room, but that he could use before and during his concert tours. And in fact, he ended up making an entire album within the recording studio coming out soon because he loved the interior so much. You know, it allowed him to spend more time in the space and it allowed him to prepare for his concert. So when we were on a Zoom and talking about it, he was really precise. He said, the minute he walks in that door, he needs his mind space to be in the aesthetic space for performance. So we needed to make sure that that kind of opening was immediately into the kind of Rick Owens aesthetic that he really desired for his own practice. And then we ended up showing it. He allowed us to show it.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Cool. Yeah, I sometimes wonder if this idea that we've lost some piece about patronage or we've sort of forgotten how to be patrons to designers is connected to the modern idea of or the contemporary idea of collecting and the ideals that collectors have. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 22:08

So important. And I and I I think you bring up a really great point because collectors are such wonderful patrons of artists and many of whom start to collect because they have built relationships with artists. But in the design world it is much less so. I think that there are few actual designers who have created their own furniture as a result. But the old fashioned kind of Peter Marinos are perhaps a thing of of the past, although he's luckily still working where he did commission full designers to make rooms. Or at least to participate in a fuller vision. And that's something that we have very rarely look restaurants are the great patrons of designers and artists. Yes. I mean if you think about you know the Philip Johnson space of going into the the four seasons it's now the grill. Yes. You know that's a great collaboration between designer and architect. And I do believe that that's a great space to make things happen. And yes if more I guess interior designers would commission and patronize designers then we would be in a different space. I I do believe that most people who are at the level where they're spending money collecting art are probably having a designer trail them to help them make their homes.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Yeah. And I I wonder if there's something about the motivation for collecting art that means that somebody winds up approaching that process so differently than the motivations around making your house look a certain way. It's a great question I think for you it seems like they're motivated by very similar things. But I think for some people they're motivated by totally different factors.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

We're in a different generation. So we'll have to see what happens with this young generation and see what they patronize. You know, the kind of skater kids or sneaker kids, I think they're very hip to design. I think they love design and perhaps they're going to start as more interested in design than they are in art.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

My experience working with a lot of interior designers, I feel like people kind of turn around to becoming collectors once they start looking at objects because once you have your beautiful painting on the wall and your console tables and your home looks like a fancy hotel, you understand that your personality is going to translate into what you actually put on those tables. And there people make their own choices and I think often that's where the interior designer perhaps fades away and people at first may be intimidated because we've kind of also lost knowledge of how to live with precious, fragile things. But once they get into it, yeah, there are like rabbit holes that they fall into.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Yes. I mean all it takes is to bring home and place on a console or a table one fabulous object that gives off an energy and either it makes all the other objects around it look mediocre or it has some kind of a dialogue amidst the other objects that turn it on or with an artwork. And that's when people do make changes.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Yeah though sometimes there's a darkness to it I think to what gets people to collect to do anything. I don't know tell tell I don't know I feel like sometimes people are collecting because they're looking for something in objects they're trying to chase the past I don't know some of the great collectors are yeah they're they love the chase the hunt they I don't know there's those are positive things though.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

In as much as it gives an indication about ownership and status maybe that's what you're talking about but it always opens a door to learning curiosity imagination so I would say it's pretty much always positive.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

Yeah I do. I think yes of course collecting shouldn't be so easy and the compulsion to collect is absolutely attached to defining who you are as a person. And it's a very personal story but for instance I'm facing one of my favorite objects in in my space which is a David Hammond's elephant dung literally a whole piece of elephant dung with a big chain around it. And you know everything he makes has an elegant hand so it is elegant yet it's kind of gross but it fulfills a story for me that I need in my home. I want this object I've coveted this object for a long time since I was a young person. And to me it tells multiple stories you know not only the story of a great white elephant being imprisoned but it tells a story of Africa and slavery and it tells a story of possible freedom and it tells all kinds of stories in this tiny object that can literally fit in the palm of your hand and it's moving to me. And it might not be my story. It's not my story but but the tragedy and the complexity of us as human beings is something that is deep inside me. So that's why that object is there. So yes it is dark.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

And it also tests out the limits and the concept of what art is what an artwork can be.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Yeah I agree with everything you're saying but there is also an edge sometimes I do think that people have their inner palettes you know their colors that make them comfortable or uncomfortable. But I'm fascinated with your idea that that there's a darkness that that propels people to buy art. That's an additional thing versus this more joyous form of collecting there's something else that's driving people to obsess over an object that is darker. It's very dory and gray. But it's objects that somehow have changed somebody's life but have made it somebody more decadent for example or I don't know it's it's really interesting. I can't put m my finger on it and now we're we're towards the end of the conversation. Yeah. But it's worth pursuing that as a subject matter.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

And to that point I should just circle back to actually something that I said earlier which is that something about your taste and what I should have said actually is that I don't necessarily see a specific taste of yours that I could say I understand. But I do feel an energy to the way you put objects and art together that I can pick up on that I kind of can put my finger on. It feels so you it's so particular and it's an energy and a sort of energetic sensibility between things in space.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

I actually try and choose objects and art of great quality and great practice and of greatness and in whatever practice that they are pursuing. And I think when you combine these types of objects whether they're modest or grand they can hang out together. So you'll see around the house that I have collected many different forms of ceramic practice and I'm interested in all kinds of ceramic. So it doesn't need to be on a wheel it can be slab it can be coil it can be high porcelain ownware the weirder the yes I'm interested in kind of the whole range of ceramic practice so you'll see my own collection all around the house. I actually with my pot dealer uh now ex-pot dealer Jason Jackson we would make some trades and so in fact you're not really allowed to barter for instance my dentistry growing up was traded for an artwork those kinds of unlike trades are now illegal but you can still trade art against art or like kind objects. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

What is the what are the rules for a trade? Are there like universal rules?

SPEAKER_01 31:06

I I have a very big rule which is don't ever get caught up in value.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

Because the minute you start doing a trade and you know something has a value of 6000 and something else has a value of of a hundred thousand then you start adding on or somebody feels badly. I just say if you both feel good about the trade, then it's a good trade. But yes a trade should just feel good and you should remove the the monetary value part.

SPEAKER_02 31:38

I guess there is also something almost like back to a childlike excitement of trading you know of like satisfaction.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

It's the greatest form of transaction other than making a very big profit or transacting something that goes into a public place that was private things like that. There are always these really special moments in being a dealer. Yeah you have to be scrappy to collect as a dealer that is to bring things home