Napa’s di Rosa Center to downsize, sell off art.
In a radical shift of program, the foundation that runs the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa plans to sell off most of the 1,600 works of art in its fabled collection to focus on exhibitions and education.
“The decision to reduce and focus the collection is necessary to keep (the center’s) doors open,” Brenda Mixson, president of the foundation’s board of directors, said in a statement on Friday, July 5. She added that the center and its parent organization, the Rene and Veronica di Rosa Foundation, will emphasize “commissioning and supporting working artists and expanding the artistic experiences available for visitors.”
Perched on a hillside above Sonoma Highway in the Carneros wine region, di Rosa has long been an idyllic hybrid of art museum and nature preserve. Founder Rene di Rosa, a Napa vintner who sold his Winery Lake Vineyard in 1986 to support his vision of an “art park,” was a voracious collector and a stalwart supporter of art in the Bay Area. He died in 2010 at 91, leaving his art collection
and the 217acre tract, with its unsullied lake and its modest but elegant exhibit spaces, to the foundation.
Long before such formal arrangements, however, di Rosa and, for many years, his wife, Veronica, befriended artists, purchased their work and helped them dream big by funding ambitious projects. A San Francisco transplant from Boston, di Rosa worked briefly as a Chronicle reporter in the 1950s, before heading to UC Davis to study viticulture. At Davis, he met artists like Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, Manuel Neri and William T. Wiley, who were shaping the Northern California aesthetic that came to be known as Funk.
As his interests broadened, di Rosa made room for artists as disparate as Joan Brown and Enrique Chagoya, Mark di Suvero and Viola Frey. He became an early patron of Lynn Hershman Leeson, Mildred Howard, Paul Kos and many others.
Robert Sain, executive director of the center, said the annual budget of about $3 million is insufficient to maintain the collection di Rosa left behind, and the institution has been running at a deficit.
“The reality is the organization has just always been underfunded,” Sain said in a phone interview. “... We’re doing all this to make sure we can ... be viable and have a sustainable future.”
The center has a staff of 15 fulltime and seven parttime employees. Sain has an estimable background in museum education, design and fundraising; curator Amy Owen has a solid curatorial background. A second curator, Kara Q. Smith, was quietly laid off last year.
Graham Beal, former director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, is advising Sain and the di Rosa board on collection matters. A onetime curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Beal knew and worked with Rene di Rosa on museum projects.
The foundation’s announcement on Friday said the current number of 1,600 works would be winnowed “to several hundred pieces that represent the collecting vision of Rene and Veronica di Rosa.” Sain gave a more precise estimate of about 200 to 400 objects, to be held as a “legacy collection.”
Proceeds from the sale of the remainder of the collection will go toward financial stability, according to the center’s statement. An auction house has been consulted, Sain said, but no sales estimate has been determined.
“This was a decision that was analyzed to death,” Sain said. “It was a hard thing to do. I’m convinced it’s the right thing to do.”