Herbert Vogel, humble art collector, dies

Herbert Vogel, a New York postal worker who, with his wife, Dorothy, created one of the world's most unlikely, and most significant, collections of modern art, then bequeathed much of it to the National Gallery of Art, died Sunday in a nursing home in New York. He was 89.

His death was confirmed by Anabeth Guthrie, a spokeswoman for the National Gallery. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.

Vogel and Dorothy Hoffman were married in 1962 and went to Washington on their honeymoon, spending several days at the National Gallery and other museums. When they returned to New York, they began to buy a few pieces by artists they met, slowly amassing a collection.

The Vogels were not wealthy. They collected on their salaries and pensions. Vogel worked nights sorting mail at New York post offices; his wife was a reference librarian in Brooklyn.

They bargained directly with the artists, sometimes buying on installment, paying as little as $10 a month. Once, they received a collage from Christo in exchange for cat-sitting.

The Vogels never talked about how much they paid for a work of art and did not sell a single piece they owned until the National Gallery acquired much of their collection in 1991. Estimates of the collection's value range well into the millions.

"We could have easily become millionaires," Vogel told The Associated Press in 1992. "We could have sold things and lived in Nice and still had some left over. But we weren't concerned about that aspect."

Their first purchase was "Crushed Car Piece" by John Chamberlain, who made sculpture from wrecked auto parts. It was not the sort of art that was in high demand.

The couple visited studios and became close friends with artists, including Sol LeWitt, Richard Tuttle and the husband-and-wife duo of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Over almost 50 years, they amassed more than 5,000 works, including drawings, paintings, sculptures and pieces that defied classification.

Herb and Dorothy Vogel had three requirements in purchasing art: It had to be inexpensive; it had to be small enough to be carried on the subway or in a taxi; and it had to fit inside their one-bedroom apartment.

Their small apartment was quickly overrun with art, which hung on the walls and was stacked on the floor and under the bed. They got rid of their sofa and had only enough room to sleep, eat and care for their cats -- as many as eight at a time -- and the exotic turtles and fish that Vogel kept in aquariums.

After Army service in World War II, Vogel began working as a postal clerk, sorting mail at Manhattan post offices. He worked mostly at night, allowing him to study art history at New York University during the day. When he retired in 1979, he used his pension to buy more art.

"When they came to the studio, they always came with a wad of cash," the renowned painter Chuck Close said in a 1992 interview with Newsday. "You'd always wind up selling something for a fraction of what it was worth."

Besides his wife, survivors include a sister.