‘ Aggie’ shows art patron’s conscience
It’s a cliche to say that a film can change someone’s life. But that’s exactly what happened to philanthropist and arts patron Agnes Gund.
Gund, a power player in the New York art world, attended the opening night screening at the New York Film Festival in 2016. It was of Ava DuVernay’s “13th,” a powerful documentary about the inequities of the justice system and mass incarceration, and how it disproportionately affects Black people.
Gund was so moved by the film and outraged by the injustices depicted onscreen that she wanted to do something about it. So down came her favorite painting, “Masterpiece,” a 1962 piece of pop art by Roy Lichtenstein, which had hung for decades over the mantel at her Upper East Side apartment.
As shown in the new documentary “Aggie,” it sold at auction for $ 165 million, and she used the proceeds as seed money to start the Art for Justice Fund, which offers direct grants to artists and advocates focused on reducing the prison population through, among other things, advocating release for those serving unjustly long sentences.
“I’d been with that painting for 40 years,” Gund said in a video chat with The Chronicle. “It was very seldom loaned, and then when it came back it was like seeing an old friend that you haven’t seen for a long, long time.”
But Gund, known as Aggie by most, was on a mission. So she recruited DuVernay herself to sit on the governing board.
“There was no way when I was making ‘ 13th’ that I would have thought a wildly wealthy white woman from New York City would decide to take her worldfamous, almost priceless artwork off the wall and sell it and start the fund for criminal justice,” DuVernay told The Chronicle in a phone interview. “I mean, it’s not anything that could happen in my wildest imagination, and yet it happened because of the magnificence of Agnes Gund — the way that her mind works, the way that her heart works.”
DuVernay appears in “Aggie,” directed by Gund’s filmmaker daughter, Catherine Gund, which begins streaming at the virtual cinemas of San Francisco’s Roxie Cinema, CinemaSF and Alamo Drafthouse; San Rafael’s Smith Rafael Film Center; and the Rialto Cinemas of Berkeley, El Cerrito and Sebastopol on Friday, Oct. 9.
While the raison d’etre of the documentary is the Art for Justice Fund, of which Catherine Gund — an Emmynominated director and producer of activistthemed documentaries through her Aubin Pictures — also sits on the board, it’s actually a fascinating portrait of Aggie herself. The film details her privileged upbringing in Depressionera Cleveland and her emergence on the arts scene, her championing of unsung artists, and her philanthropy, which also includes Studio in a School, a nonprofit she founded in the 1970s when budget cuts in New York City slashed arts funding in schools.
“Aggie” is also a portrait of the New York art world during the midto late 20th century. Lichtenstein was a friend, along with Jasper Johns, the late Louise Bourgeois and filmmaker John Waters, who’s in the documentary.
Aggie Gund, one of six children, came from an affluent family and eventually inherited much of her wealth. Her father, George Gund II, was a bank executive and real estate magnate. She’s no stranger to San Francisco, often visiting her late brother, George Gund III, who was chairman of the board of the San Francisco Film Society and owner of the San Jose Sharks NHL team.
She fell in love with art as a teen and said a Henry Moore sculpture may have been the first thing she had ever bought that wasn’t clothing or a purse. And the privilege of that wealth, she said, made her feel guilty, a guilt that has fueled much of her philanthropy.
“I always had that feeling ( of guilt) even as a younger child,” Gund said. “We had this little enclave where we lived which was separate from reality and other people. ... We just had a lot that other people didn’t.”
She said the family’s housemaid, Henrietta, was the only Black person she knew.
Catherine Gund, who was also on the video chat, said that her mother has for years pushed for change behind the scenes at places like New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where she is president emerita.
“There’s a long list of these incredible collaborations with artists, and other art thinkers and educators and art historians and people she’s worked with to make incredible change,” Catherine Gund said. “It’s so subtle. And Thelma Golden ( director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, who is in the film) says that over and over. You can trace how ( Aggie’s) pressure and her work have influenced that over many, many years.”
But Aggie Gund considers the Art for Justice Fund, after three short years, her most important work and perhaps her defining legacy.
“What I like the most is when we do something for children and families,” Gund said. “There has been very little recidivism of people that have been let out early. Some of them have such huge sentences for such petty crimes.”
DuVernay, whom Gund calls “one of the people we listen to the most,” said it’s important work for her, too, despite her busy filmmaking schedule.
“Every three months or so we talk about ways to give away this money to grassroots organizations to established organizations, all kinds of organizations fighting for justice within the world of criminal injustice,” DuVernay said. “Every time I’m around ( Aggie), every time I’m in one of these advisory meetings, I think nothing’s impossible.”
With the Black Lives Matter movement gaining full steam over the summer and the coronavirus pandemic a threat to prisons, the Art for Justice Fund has stepped up its mission, working with organizations such as Desmond Meade’s voting rights group the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.
In February, Gund was presented with the first Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award by the late Supreme Court justice herself for her philanthropic work.
Still, though, doesn’t she miss her “old friend,” that painting?
“I don’t miss it that much,” Gund said with a laugh, “because it’s doing a lot of good.”