About Dale and Doug Anderson
Dale Anderson is a collector who prefers to be ahead of the curve. She learns as she collects and shares what she has learned with curators and other collectors. Anderson began collecting studio glass in the middle of the 1970s when she met Doug Heller, who had a small gallery on Madison Avenue. This led to an exploration of the Studio Crafts movement, which pretty much ended at the close of the 20th century. Concurrently, she built collections of Northwest Coast tribal art (spirit masks, rattles, house posts), and Chinese rank badges and shoes for bound feet. With the turn of the century, she began to collect contemporary photography, focusing on work that both attracts and repels. Anderson was moved by the emerging trend in China, which featured artists who were both documenting change and creating protest pieces. She has traveled to Beijing each year to explore the regional photography scene and has developed a major collection of work that is now being shown in museums around the United States.
Doug Anderson is not a collector, preferring to work as an activist on behalf of artists. He has donated more than 1,200 works from Dale Anderson’s collections to 14 museums in the United States and London. He also sells works that Ms. Anderson has collected.
In 2003, the Andersons co-founded The Association of Israel’s Decorative Arts (AIDA), with Andy and Charles Bronfman. AIDA’s mission is to expose artists from Israel to dealers, collectors, schools, and other institutions in the United States. It has formed partnerships with The Studio, Haystack Mountain School, Penland School, Pilchuck Glass School, and Watershed. AIDA has made it possible for artists from Israel to show their work at SOFA Chicago, The Philadelphia Craft Show, and Craft Boston. AIDA has impacted the lives and careers of a generation of artists in Israel.
An Oral History Interview with Dale and Doug Anderson
An interview of wife and husband Dale and Doug Anderson conducted 2005 July 21-22, by Tina Oldknow, for the Archives of American Art, in their home.
The Andersons discuss their respective childhoods and growing up in Manhattan; their education and early experiences with art; their early collection of Native American art; their first art purchases, including a Richard Marquis Patchwork teapot, a Lowell Nesbitt painting, and a Carolyn Brady painting; their initial involvement with the American Craft Museum's Collector's Circle, as well as other craft organizations including Creative Glass Center of America, Millville, New Jersey, The Metropolitan Glass Group, Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass, and the Friends of Contemporary Ceramics, among others; their involvement with, and support of, various museums, including the Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, the Seattle Art Museum, the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, and the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York; their involvement with, and support of, various art schools, including the Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington, the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Newcastle, Maine, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine; their independent commissioning of works by various artists, including Dale Chihuly, Ginny Ruffner, Sandy Skoglund, Tom Patti, Paul Marioni and Ann Troutner, and Silas Kopf; their involvement in various large-scale glass exhibitions and expositions, including the annual Sculptural Objects and Functional Art expositions, "Glass Today by American Studio Artists," August 13, 1997-January 11, 1998, at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and palmbeach3, West Palm Beach, Florida, among others; their participation in, and support of, the publishing of various books on glass, including Martha Drexler Lynn's "Sculpture, Glass, and American Museums," Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005, and Tina Oldknow's "Pilchuck: A Glass School", Seattle: Pilchuck Glass School, in association with the University of Washington Press, 1996; their dealings with various galleries across the country, including Habatat Galleries, Royal Oak, Michigan, Heller Gallery, New York, New York, UrbanGlass, Brooklyn, New York, Barry Friedman Ltd., New York, New York, browngrotta arts, Wilton, Connecticut, and Ferrin Gallery, Lenox, Massachusetts, among others.