134 Photos reproduced with the kind permission of Michael Auliso/Tribalmania Avec l’aimable autorisation de Michael Hamson IN tribute Murray Frum The above photo of Murray Bernard Frum ( September 3, 1931–May 27, 2013), inside his beautiful house in Toronto, Canada, surrounded by great works of art from four continents perfectly expresses his passion for collecting. It all started on a trip to New York in the 1950s as a newlywed with his first wife, Barbara Rosberg. Wood as a medium and Africa as a continent soon became two of his most consuming passions. His first purchase was indeed made of wood and technically came from Africa. It was an Egyptian wooden Middle Kingdom standing figure sold as a reproduction by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s gift shop. He and Barbara quickly became passionate collectors and a presence at all the major auctions and tribal art galleries in London and Paris. After the untimely death of Barbara in 1992, Murray married Nancy Lockhart in 1994, and both continued his “work in progress” collection (as he liked to call it) by expanding from Africa and Oceania to Asian art, art deco furniture, and Medieval and Renaissance sculpture. As a collector, Murray was both strategic and innovative. For example, over the years he patiently built the finest collection in private hands of the art of the Cameroon Grasslands and did so at a time when these styles were completely neglected by mainstream collectors, who wanted to focus on more “classical” tastes in African art. His was a unique approach that involved bringing scholarship and intellectual curiosity to every purchase. Both of the exhibition catalogs of his African collection were groundbreaking at the time. In the first book, Twenty-Five African Sculptures, which was edited by Jacqueline Fry for the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, in 1978, he asked thirteen leading scholars of African art to each write a short, focused essay on one specific object, thereby moving away from more “generalist” essays that were the norm of the time. He managed to convince William Fagg, in my opinion the best writer of his generation on the arts of Africa, to compose the wonderfully rich text of his second catalog, African Majesty from Grassland and Forest, for the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) exhibition in 1981. His generosity and love of sharing his art with the public at large culminated in the gift of eighty-seven of his finest African pieces to the AGO in 2001, making the Frum Gallery the only museum space in the world apart from the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin where one can admire four major life-size statutes from the kingdoms of the Grasslands in Cameroon. Murray was also a man of generous temperament, a quick learner, and a hilarious wit. He always had a demanding eye and a strong sense of the tactile qualities of tribal sculpture. He also had a strong sense of humor, which his son David recalled in his eulogy: “When he did not like a work of art, Murray would remark scathingly that the piece ‘seemed to be the work of that noted Italian master, Garbaggio!’” By Bernard de Grunne
CoverT70 FR corr_Layout 1
To see the actual publication please follow the link above