Men to Match My Mountains: Works from the L.D. “Brink” Brinkman Foundation
Kerrville, TX
When Texas art collector L.D. “Brink” Brinkman died in 2015, he left a massive collection of Western art that included works, even important masterpieces, from many of the top artists. The bulk of the collection was sold in a 2019 Bonhams’ auction that realized $8.3 million. But a key portion of Brinkman’s collection remained together at the Brinkman Foundation. Starting April 3, a selection of the foundation’s works will go on view at the Museum of Western Art, a museum that Brinkman helped start in 1983.
The exhibition, Men to Match My Mountains: Works from the L.D. “Brink” Brinkman Foundation, will feature highlights from the 134 works in the foundation’s collection, which has been given to the museum as a long-term loan. After Brinkman’s death, his children Don and Pam Brinkman, both directors of the foundation, visited the museum and asked why they should entrust the foundation’s collection with the art destination in Kerrville, Texas.
“I didn’t even have to think about it,” says Darrell Beauchamp, executive director at the museum. “I told them, ‘Your father’s name is on the cornerstone of this building.’ I think they were appreciative of that fact, and that they knew this museum was a place their father loved, and this was artwork he loved. So why not put the two together. We thought it was an appropriate pairing.”
“The Museum of Western Art, of which my father was a co-founder, was the obvious choice to house this important collection,” says Don Brinkman. “We’re pleased to bring home what is left of our father’s 600-plus piece collection for public viewing in the town he loved and the museum he worked so hard to get built.”
Works in the exhibition include pieces by Henry Farny, Carl Rungius, G. Harvey, Olaf C. Seltzer, John Clymer and Grant Speed, as well as several key Taos painters such as William Herbert “Buck” Dunton, Eanger Irving Couse and Oscar E. Berninghaus. The title of the show comes from Harvey O. Young’s Men to Match My Mountains, which shows a mountain lake
flanked on all sides by towering mountain peaks. “The title is representative of the kind of guy Brink was,” Beauchamp says. “We think it’s a celebration of those men in the West who were bigger than life, men who could conquer mountains.”
Beauchamp met Brinkman on several occasions and even had a chance to visit with him in his Kerrville home, where many of his great pieces were on display. “For a young art professional at the time, it was a huge moment and intimidating one,” he adds. “But Brink was very kind and he talked about art and how he started collecting. He had a very refined eye for the Western art world. He would bring in some great people, including dealers and artists, who would teach him what to look for in art. And it helped him develop a great eye. Now many of those works are scattered to the winds, but you can still see the last part of the collection right here at the museum he helped start.”