San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Art sparked psychologist, benefactor
NORMAN STONE 1939-2021
Every day for 33 years, Norman Stone put on one of his outrageous clothing ensembles, backed his extremely rare Porsche 959 out of his garage on Broadway, and drove to the Bayview, where he spent his day working with the poor and mentally ill in his capacity as a psychotherapist in a governmentfunded clinic.
Almost every night for 33 years, he would be in a different outrageous outfit in the social swirl of San Francisco with Norah, his equally vivacious wife. They were Norah and Norman Stone, a bestdressed, lifeoftheparty duo at every gala, museum opening and benefit. They could be counted on until Norah died in 2019 and Norman began a steady decline with a chronic lung condition.
A practicing Buddhist, Stone died on Good Friday, April 2, after a threeweek stay at California Pacific Medical Center, said his daughter, Amy Stone, who was with him at the end. He was 81.
“He was unique in that he wasn’t overly concerned about how people perceived him,” she said.
An introvert who was hard of hearing, Stone had a style of dress that was a conversation starter. “It made people stop and think,” said Amy, a Philadelphia trauma therapist.
“Like good art.”
And Stone knew about good art. Norah and Norman started their collection with a blue chip painting by Marc Chagall, bought on the secondary market. It was a good investment, but the transaction bored them. So they took a trip to New York with John Caldwell, the curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, who educated them in contemporary styles. They came home with John
Baldessari’s “A Painting That Is Its Own Documentation,” a 1968 work on canvas that consists of typed text listing the dates of its conception, creation and first exhibition.
“The ideas behind that painting just lit them up,” Amy said. “It’s not just the object, it is the intention underneath it and the ideas that go into forming it.”
In the late 1980s, the Stones started buying at New York City galleries that represented young American and European artists such as Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Matthew Barney, Bruce Nauman and Jeff Koons.
“Their collection is monumentally important, and their commitment to working with artists was equally so,” said Thea Westreich, their New York art adviser for 30 years. The collection runs to 800 pieces of sculpture, painting, photography and film and video, corners of the art world not already claimed by major contemporary collectors such as “Hunk” and “Moo” Anderson and Donald and Doris Fisher.
“The Stones were unique among their breed in that they
were so curious that what they really wanted to do was to look and learn,” Westreich said. “By pursuing cuttingedge artists, they made a mark.”
First they filled their Pacific Heights mansion with art, then they bought Azalea Springs Vineyards near Calistoga and built Stonescape, a 5,000squarefoot private museum in an “Art Cave” carved out of a mountainside. The collection was open to the public by appointment, and the tour guides were Norah and Norman, who could discuss each piece on display at length.
He’d make the drive from the city to the Napa Valley in record time, at the wheel of his Porsche, one of only four streetlegal 959s in the United States. He was always early to a trend, in either investment or fashion. He had one of the first Tesla Roadsters to come off the line in 2005.
“He loved fun and was generous in the healthy ways,” said his soninlaw Lawrence Tingley. “He didn’t throw money around. He supported things that mattered, education and cultural values.”
In addition to being his own museum director, Stone served on the Board of Trustees at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Committee of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Tate International Council in London. He finally left the board of SFMOMA in 2020.
“The Stones were incredible ambassadors for our museum and our community,” SFMOMA director Neal Benezra said in a statement. “They opened their home and their singular collection to the delight of artists, collectors and museum directors from around the world.” Norman Clement Stone was born April 28, 1939, in Chicago and was raised in Evanston and Winnetka. His father, W. Clement Stone, founded Combined Insurance Co. of America, which eventually merged into Aon, a multinational firm in London.
Stone graduated from Evanston Township High School in 1957 and began working for his dad’s company. In 1959, he married his high school sweetheart, Karen Fernstrom, and they came west when he entered Stanford University as a transfer student. He got his bachelor’s degree in economics in 1962 and soon became an associate at the venture capital firm of Draper, Gaither & Anderson, investing in Silicon Valley before it had that name.
He and his wife had four kids and settled in. In the late 1960s, Stone changed with the times and turned his back on his Republican roots. While still an investor, he attended the San Francisco Art Institute for a time. By the 1968 presidential election, he was a hippie and backer of Robert F. Kennedy for president, according to his soninlaw.
In the mid1970s, the Stones divorced, and on June 1, 1986, he married Norah Sharpe in the garden at Sherman House in San Francisco. By then, Stone was working toward his doctorate in clinical psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley. It took him eight years to complete his degree, and all the while he was working as a staff psychotherapist at the Bayview Hunters Point Foundation’s mental health center.
“He went straight to Hunters Point and he stayed there,” Amy said. “He wasn’t in a private practice or longterm relationships with clients. He wanted the challenge and satisfaction of helping people in a mental health clinic.”
In 1991, he joined the Board of Trustees at SFMOMA. He served during its move from the War Memorial Veterans Building to the brick box designed by Mario Botta, which opened in 1995. He later served on a collections campaign that generated gifts of 3,000 works, many of which premiered when the expanded museum reopened in May 2016. Visitors to the seventh floor contemporary galleries were greeted by a Jeff Koons carvedwood bouquet and a gallery filled with art gifted by the Stones. They never missed an SFMOMA event and made a point of never wearing the same outfits twice. Twenty years ago, Stone became involved in the Pristine Mind Foundation in San Rafael and started meditating daily for up to two hours.
“It was how he did everything,” his daughter said. “Art collecting, meditation — he was disciplined and committed.”
In addition to his wife, Stone was predeceased in 2020 by his son Norman Clifford Stone. He is survived by sons Bryan Stone of Portola Valley and Mark Stone of Redwood City, daughter Amy Stone of Philadelphia, and five grandchildren. A memorial is being planned for 2022.