The first art object I bought was a little Indian bowl that I got when I was 7 years old. I was on a family trip, outside Colorado Springs and I saw this terra cotta bowl, about 6 inches in diameter and 3 inches high. It cost 35 cents, which was more than half of my two-week allowance, but I had to have it. I still have it.
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I became a serious collector about 15 years ago. There`s never been a pattern to my collecting. It`s a matter of seeing something I like and being able to afford it. As a result, I have a very eclectic collection. One of my favorite pieces is on my coffee table in my medical office. It is a stamp, or a seal, a commercial object made of clay. It`s from the Indus Valley (an area now part of India and Pakistan), probably made around 2500 B.C. It was probably used to mark bales or crates of some kind of produce for trading.
The piece is not enclosed in any protective container. I want people to be able to pick it up, to look it over and to feel it. That kind of hands-on experience is what I try to provide at my museum. There`s hardly an object in my exhibitions that can`t be touched. People can examine the workmansip, really be with the piece.
The risk of someone stealing these objects is one I`m willing to take because of the experience other people will have by holding them.
At the museum, occasionally I will put very small or delicate objects in cases so that they can`t be easily pocketed or damaged.
I get my objects when I`m walking down the street and see something in a shop. I`ve gotten quite well known among the traveling sellers of artifacts. Personally, I have traveled very little, except for Mexico. It`s easy to get there and it`s cheap. I have a wonderful collection of the Mexican folk arts, which was included in our second museum exhibit.
I have earned many degrees, but most of my learning has come about on my own, not attached to formal schooling. The more I want to know about something, the more exciting it becomes. I`m an historian simply by pursuing something I`m interested in.
Formal schooling is fine; I don`t disparage it. But it isn`t the essence of learning. The key to learning is experimentation. It`s an attitude, the discovery you make. I was 14 when I made my first dress. I cut a hole in the middle of it, but my mother showed me how to camouflage it. Learning is an openness to trying things.
I`ve always been interested in mental medicine, the workings of the human mind. I could not be a physician who looked down throats, tested eyes, performed surgery. In my training I`ve had to do some of these, but it is the vitalness, the beauty of mental processes that I think intrigued me a long time ago.
I was born in St. Louis, and came to Chicago to study at the University of Chicago. I was there on a music scholarship, which was the only way I could afford to go to college, but I took all my electives in biology, chemistry and history. By the time I had an advanced degree in music, I also finished my pre-med.
My father was a carpenter/plumber and my mother was a homemaker. My parents were self-educated-rather remarkably so, considering they both had to leave school in 5th and 6th grade in order to work. They always encouraged my younger brother and me to learn.
My parents taught me that education was sacred. If there was a God in our family it was education, and if there was a sacred object, it was a book. It was an atmosphere in our home. My brother is a geneticist and pharmacist.
The idea of becoming a physician was always in the back of my mind. I got an M.D. (degree) from Northwestern University and specialized in psychiatry. After I graduated from medical school, I married and had two children. It meant I could arrange my practice around my daughters` school schedules. All of the years of advanced medical training were accomplished during my marriage and while I raised a family.
The idea of founding a museum probably began seven or eight years ago. It wasn`t a lifetime dream. It was the next thing to be done. I`m still first of all a physician and I always will be. If the museum takes off, I will probably go on to something else, because there is probably something else that should be done.
I wanted to expose people to utilitarian objects created by various peoples of the world. Utilitarian does not only mean ”secular” but also magical and religious. These objects are used for ceremonies and rituals. Many of them are not masterpieces, but they are beautiful. The world cannot be filled just with masterpieces. The way I display these pieces-putting together the textiles and the household pottery and other containers and the furnishings of the culture-makes it come alive.
Chicago needed this museum and no one else was doing it. It probably needed a wealthy person to do it but a wealthy person wasn`t doing it. I was told I`d never be able to make it happen. ”Chicago is a terrible place; you don`t have the funds,” they said.
I heard that over and over again. It may have been true, but there was no reason to stop doing something that is so important simply because other people didn`t have faith. On the museum`s opening day I had people predict,
”May, it will never go. You can`t keep this going.” Probably the last time I was told this was last week.
It was a large task, doing the administrative work in starting up the museum. It took four years before I could find space I could afford. I had to have a place that was accessible and that meant automatically it would cost more and that we would have to have a smaller space.
When I walked into the building at 230 E. Ohio, a perfect location because it is just east of Michigan Avenue and across the alley from the Museum of Contemporary Art, there was a sign saying they were remodeling and renting. The workmen were lowering the ceilings down to the typical office height. The tall ceilings were just what I wanted. We signed a lease two months later.
The museum is public, tax-exempt and incorporated under the same not-for- profit laws as the Art Institute. This means I am public and ready to receive support. People do give me wonderful donations in the form of objects (for exhibitions). The other museums and the artistic community in Chicago have been very supportive with advice and loans of art. I need financial support, but I have had a lot of emotional support.
Some of the shows I have planned will be exclusively of one culture-Africa or Mexico, for example-in which I want to express it as fully as possible. We will do three to four shows each year.
Most of the exhibit objects are my own. We`ve gotten a few donations, but only about 1 percent, and a few are on loan. The current exhibit, ”Mexico`s Riches,” is entirely my own.
The first exhibit, ”Art in Daily Life: the Many Faces of Beauty,”
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represented the theme of the museum. Our daily lives are filled with beautiful objects. There are many people who have an old mixing bowl in their kitchen that has been handed down from a grandmother`s kitchen and it is beautiful. I have a wonderful plumbing tool from my father`s workshop that is an extraordinary shape and is beautiful.
I think when you walk into the museum, you feel as if you are in the land of the people, in the village. There is a market-like feel to some of the exhibitions. I think it does have a warmth and a life to it.
Although I am devoted to the Met and the Art Institute, there is in some ways, a sterility in these museums. You go up to a case and look at a magnificent object and it`s totally out of context. These things don`t occur that way.
I like being able to combine these arts in a way they haven`t, bridging cultures with common human nature. Even though we express our beliefs, wishes, fears, ambitions and loves and hates in different ways, basic human qualities are the same. The artifacts are demonstrations of how beautifully all of these things can be expressed and with infinite variety.
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”Mexico`s Riches,” an exhibit of 20th Century artifacts, runs through Jan. 13.