In TRIBUTE Daniel Malcolm 1929 – 2015 172 the two of you built one of the fi nest collections of traditional sub-Saharan art in the world. Sharing your joy freely, you welcomed anyone into your home who you sensed shared this connection to African art. This is how we met. Chinnie and I came to your home on a Saturday morning and we all got lost in time, waking up again shortly before midnight as fl edgling friends. There I was the fortunate one to be struck by lightning. Since then, nearly a decade has passed, fi lled with wonderful experiences together. My book Visions of Grace is a celebration of your and Marian’s passion and a tribute to our friendship. It was published just in time for you to still enjoy it, savor every page, images and words. Handing it to you was one of my proudest moments. Dan, I know I will see you again. I will see you with a broad smile across your face, with your youthfully sparkling eyes, your eyebrows raised in delight, your shoulders tense and hands with fi ngers spread, and I will even hear you say “Oh yes!” every time I am face to face with the greatness of African art. I am not speaking of my memory of you. To me you will be present for real because your love for African art was as pure as that of a child, and a child’s love is immortal. For the rest of my life, you will be by my side, wherever I fi nd the beauty of African art of the kind that made you smile and laugh. Your gift to me is the very gift that the Little Prince gave his friend when he said, “When you look at the sky at night, it will be as if all the stars were laughing. For in one of the stars I shall be living. For in one of the stars I shall be laughing.” Thank you, Dan, for having shared your laughter with the world. Thank you, from all of us. Heinrich Schweizer My dear Dan, You left this world after a massive stroke on June 13, 2015, and I wasn’t there to say goodbye. So I thought I would write this letter to you. I knew you as a genuinely kind person. I admired your intelligence, wisdom, and integrity. You were loving, caring, and loyal. Your curiosity for life was childlike: boundless and guided by ever-renewed optimism, even during the last year and a half when you were very sick. And your fearless passion allowed you to fall in love on the spot. This quality made you the luckiest man in the world, as twice you turned a serendipitous encounter into a life-changing moment. You were born in New York City on April 17, 1929, and had your fi rst chance encounter in 1948 as a sophomore at Columbia University and offi cer of the pre-med society, when you met a wonderful and brilliant young woman, herself an offi cer of the pre-med society at Barnard College. You fell in love right there for the fi rst time: In your own words, it “hit you like a bolt of lightning.” After courting Marian for four years, she became your wife in 1952 while both of you were still in your second year of medical school. Rarely has anyone seen a couple so deeply in love and unconditionally supportive of each other. You followed your profound interest in humanity and became a medical doctor, one who really cares. You settled in Tenafl y, New Jersey, just across Manhattan’s George Washington Bridge, where you and Marian made a beautiful home and raised your three children, Betsy, John, and Jim. And then, you had your second serendipitous encounter. On a very hot summer day in Paris in 1966, you and Marian strolled into the Grand Palais to spend a few minutes in the cool. You didn’t know what was there and you walked right into the exhibition L’art nègre: sources, évolution, expansion, which traveled from Paris to Dakar and included some masterpieces from the private collection of Nelson Rockefeller. And here you fell in love on the spot the second time, this time not with a person but an entire continent. You discovered that you had a visceral reaction to art and became a collector, again fi nding in Marian a full partner for this adventure. Guided by curiosity and passion, over the course of nearly fi ve decades
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