I'm interested in Andy's comments on collections and restorations.

I'd like to note that a family friend, Sam, had been in the Arts Restoration
section of the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA) after
WWII. On his own time, he went to various art and antiques dealers in Europe
and managed to collect various examples of what the Nazis deemed "degenerate
art" for pocket change.

Sam was a small businessman but he managed to go on frequent vacations to
the Caribbean to go fishing with his wife, who had been in the German
Resistance. He financed these journeys with money from the sale of these
works from well-known Expressionists. (Incidentally, his wife could have
left Europe since she was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed "Aryan" from a military
family. She chose to work underground in Strasbourg, collaborated in the
1944 plot to kill Hitler and was captured by the Gestapo).

Anyhow, it was Sam's wife who gave me some of the early donations to my
collection, such as a beautiful Strombus gallus. She says it was washing
over a reef and struck her in the leg (in Islamorada?)

May we all benefit from art in unexpected and enriching ways.

David Kirsh
Durham, NC

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