Down to Earth
The friendships that Howard and Joy Berlin share with the artists they collect form the backbone of their collection.
The friendships that Howard and Joy Berlin share with the artists they collect form the backbone of their collection.
By John O’hern
Howard and Joy Berlin didn't follow the path to Florida like other New York snowbirds. “We didn't like the bugs and rain and moisture every day,” Howard relates. Instead they came to the Southwest where “we stayed in every B&B in Santa Fe,” Joy adds. They purchased a home in Santa Fe in 2005 that now houses an impressive collection of Native American art. “Often, we sit and look at the art and recall the stories behind each piece,” Howard says.
They met Della Warrior in the late '90s when she was president of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). On a trip to New York, she was looking for a venue for a luncheon meeting and the Berlins were able to help out. “We met Lloyd Kiva New at the luncheon,” Howard says. “He was a co-founder of IAIA—A wonderful guy. He told artists to break out of what you do culturally and do what your soul tells you to do.” “He was a sweet man,” Joy recalls. “He and Howard became great friends. They were both Navy
men.” Howard adds, “He was educated, a philosopher. He affected a lot of people's lives.”
In a proposal for a Rockefeller Foundation grant in 1959, New had written, “Let's see that the young Indian realizes the values of his great and wonderful traditions as the springboard to his own personal creative ideas. Indian art of the future will be in new forms, produced in new media and with new technological methods. The end result will be as Indian as the Indian.”
Joy, whose sense of humor is always at the ready, recalls riding on an elevator before the IAIA luncheon in New York when one of the other passengers said he had just seen Jackie Kennedy's apartment which had recently come on the market. She said, “You just come to my city and already you're dropping names?” A man at the back of the elevator started to laugh. It was Lloyd Kiva New, and that was the beginning of their friendship.
Joy's humor blends well with Native American
humor. The couple was touring the home of the potter Dextra Quotskuyva Nampeyo when Joy noticed the walls were covered with paintings by Dan Namingha. “I thought, ‘This lady must be doing very well.’ Dextra said, ‘I’ll show you one that’s exceptional.’ We went into the bedroom and she showed me a painting Dan had done when he was 12. I thought, ‘How does she have a painting Dan did when he was 12?’” Dextra then told her she was Dan Namingha’s mother.
Howard relates that half of their collecting occurred between 1998 and 2005 when they purchased their Santa Fe home and half after. “We started to buy one piece at a time with no main theme,” he says. “The first pieces were katsinas and Hopi pottery. We wanted anything that was good and done well.” Joy adds, “We always want the best piece we can afford. We don’t consider ourselves to be collectors, but we still have every piece we’ve bought. We don’t ‘trade up.’”
Stories of their friendships with the artists animate
our conversation. They recall Norma Howard, a Choctaw-chickasaw watercolor painter who stayed at their home during Indian Market. She came out for breakfast one morning to present them with a small painting she had just done.
“We had seen her work at Santa Fe Indian Market,” Joy says. “Later, our friend Bruce Mcgee, who is director of retail sales at the Heard Museum, was taking one of Norma’s paintings out of a car trunk and I asked him if it was for sale. He said ‘Yes,’ and I said ‘It’s mine.’ Bruce knows us well and often recommends artists to us.”
“Fritz Scholder had come to our apartment in New York with Lloyd Kiva New,” Joy says. A week later Fritz arrived at their door with four friends for a visit. The Berlins took them to dinner. Later, Scholder gave Joy a small painting for having served him one of her best bottles of wine.
A corner of their living room now contains a significant grouping of Scholder’s paintings and sculptures. Howard bought one large painting at an IAIA fundraiser. They purchased two others at the artist’s studio. Howard told Joy, “I’m going to buy you a sculpture.” “I loved Man and Dog,” she says, “and I also liked Painted Man, but I liked the one that was sitting on Fritz’s desk. Every Painted Man is different. His copy had a painted heart like our painting Shaman with the Heart. He said, ‘You can have it!’ He was a good man. He was a lamb chop and so funny.”
I asked what first attracted them to Native American art. Joy replied, “The work and the people.” Howard comments, “You know right away if you have a skilled person doing the work.”
Although they profess to no longer collecting, they bought a painting by Tony Abeyta last year with a dragonfly motif, a theme that runs throughout their collection. Joy comments, “You can’t have dragonflies where there’s not water, and you can’t have life where there’s not water.”