Marietta Patricia Leis, Fissures, graphite acrylic and birch, 36 x 22.5 x 4″

What is thoughtful collecting?

Happy spring and happy art collecting as seasons turn warmer! At Turner Carroll Gallery, we are enjoying our Hunt Slonem: Family Portraits exhibitions and preparing for a fantastic week at the Dallas Art Fair. Tonya Turner Carroll has the honor of speaking at the Dallas Collecting Panel at Park House on Monday, April 13, where she will speak with some of the nation’s top collectors about thoughtful collecting. We’re sharing some of that advice and collecting expertise in this newsletter.

Tickets are sold out to the collecting panel, but you can still get on the waitlist! You are also invited to contact the gallery if you would like a complementary ticket to the Dallas Art Fair from April 16 to 19.

What is thoughtful collecting? Thoughtful collecting combines a collector’s desire and personal connection to an artwork with the expertise and art history knowledge of a gallerist or other art expert. At this intersection, the value of an artwork comes to life.

A collector’s connection to a work of art can come from many places, as many as the different effects art has on our psychology; it moves us in a way beyond words, allows for creative and original thoughts, new ideas, and the ability to step inside someone else’s world. It can remind us of unique personal joys or meaningful experiences, or it can spark inspiration and action in our lives.

Wrapped automobile (Volvo), lithograph on Arches Cover White mounted on museum board, with collage of fabric and twine, 1984, 26 x 32″ framed

An art professional adds context and additional value to the art we feel drawn to. When a gallerist or curator who is trained in art history and knows art markets is added to the collection process, artworks become even more valuable as they are placed in conversation with aesthetic and cultural currents, adding historical and conceptual context to our positive responses.

After a collector acquires the artwork they love, this art historical context helps inform where we want to place the piece. Which visual conversations do you want the work to have? Do you want to place it in your home for daily inspiration and energy? Do you want to loan it, permanently or temporarily, to a museum for collective education that broadens the conversation? Do you want to make a promised gift that has current financial benefits? When collectors make decisions about where to place their works, they engage in cultural philanthropy that builds legacy and provenance for the artist and value for themselves–in other words, a win-win!

Judy Chicago, Through the Flower, serigraph on paper, 1991, 34 x 34″ framed

Deaccession is the last step in the relationship between the collector and the artwork. Finding a future home for your collection after you pass is incredibly important–talk with your loved ones early to make a plan about dividing your collection, and connect with art experts who have a wide breadth of knowledge and museum relationships. Promised gifts and donations to museums are time-intensive and strategically complicated: finding the collection and museum that fits your work contextually is the key to a successful gift, as museums are judicious about assuming responsibility for additions to their specific collections. Connecting with gallerists and appraisers who have art historical expertise and museum relationships as early as possible in your collecting career ensures the best possible placement for your cherished and culturally valuable works upon deaccession.

Turner Carroll Gallery has a team of art historians and certified appraisers who are here to help with public placements, deaccession, and other strategic collecting consultations. We have built our knowledge, experience, and network over 35 years in the art world, and we are excited to share our expertise with you and create the best collecting experience possible.

Author: Sophie Carroll

Package on a Table, Project, lithograph and screenprint in colours, with collage of fabric, twine, staples and pencil additions, on Rag paper mounted to 2-ply grey cardboard, 1961/88, 34 x 26″ framed

Christo and Jeanne-Claude family collection at the Dallas Art Fair

Next week, April 16 to 19, Turner Carroll Gallery will represent Santa Fe in the Dallas Art Fair at booth F7. We’re bringing you important works by an international selection of blue chip and first time art fair exhibiting artists, listed below. After 14 years at our original booth, we’re shaking it up with a new booth location and fresh design concept. Come view our selection and say hello at booth F7 on the main floor, and let us know if you’ll be joining!

Wrapped automobile (Volvo), lithograph on Arches Cover White mounted on museum board, with collage of fabric and twine, 1984, 26 x 32″ framed

We are incredibly excited to be able to offer collectors works from Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s family collection. Christo and Jeanne-Claude are one of the most well-known and innovative artist duos in art history. They created monumental environmental artworks that transformed landscapes and urban spaces, and they are most recognized for their large-scale fabric-wrapping works which included wrapping the Berlin Reichstag in Berlin, an Australian coastline, and islands in Florida. Across their installation, sculpture, and print work, Christo and Jeanne-Claude used the language of wrapping to capture light and bring attention to the way light strikes form.

Wall of Oil Barrels – The Iron Curtain, Rue Visconti, Paris, offset color lithograph, 1961/1990, 35 x 24″

When so many works from an artist’s oeuvre are viewed together, they paint a picture of the evolution of a career and the mind of the artist as a whole. For example, “Wall of Oil Barrles–Iron Curtain, Rue Visconti, Paris” (pictured above) is a print of one of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s earliest collaborations in 1961 (their second ever). As Gagosian writes, this project reflects the magnitude of Christo’s fear of the iron curtain during the Cold War, while the young artist was a recent and passport-less political refugee from Bulgaria.

Calyxte Campe, AnnArc de Triomphe, Wrapped, Project for Paris, lithograph with collage of cloth, city map, and thread with hand-colored additions, 1989, 28 x 22″a, cast bronze, 2002, 18.5 x 22 x 13″

The “Iron Curtain” project earned the artist duo much acclaim. They started to think big: one of Christo’s dreams became to wrap the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, one of the most prominent symbols of his new home. He made drawings and photomontages of his visions, including “Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, Project for Paris” (pictured above). Christo and Jeanne-Claude wanted none of their artistic ownership to be diluted, so they financed all of their visions through the sale of these drawings and prints and never accepted sponsorships. Christo’s dream to wrap the Arc de Triomphe became reality posthumously in 2021, the culmination of a career built through decades of increasingly monumental installations.

Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, dye-transfer print mounted on rag paper, sample of fabric used in the project, 1980/1984, 19 x 36″ framed

Christo and Jeanne-Claude steadily gained an international following as they realized their big dreams. One of the pieces they are most well-known for, and which cemented their names as public figures, is “Surrounded Islands,” a project in which they wrapped the coast of Biscayne Bay in Miami. The incredibly complicated project involved consulting with hundreds of local government permitters, marine biologists, and engineers, to enormous acclaim. The Miami Dade Public Library astutely summarizes the goal of Surrounded Islands:

“Surrounded Islands was more than just an aesthetic spectacle; it was a statement about the relationship between art, nature and the urban environment. By transforming these seemingly insignificant islands into works of art, Christo and Jeanne-Claude drew attention to the beauty and fragility of Miami’s Biscayne Bay, encouraging viewers to reevaluate their perceptions of the landscape around them.”

 –Miami Dade Public Library

Wrapped motorcycle/sidecar (Project for Harley-Davidson 1933 VL Model, color lithograph with collage of cloth, polyethylene, twine, and pencil, 1997, 23 x 26″ framed

Explore all Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Author: Sophie Carroll

Turner Carroll Gallery now represents the Christo and Jeanne-Claude family collection of prints and editioned works

Turner Carroll Gallery is thrilled to announce a major milestone: our gallery is now representing the prints and multiples collection of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. We are delighted to bring our collectors the opportunity to view and collect this stunning, art historically significant work.

Wrapped Snoopy House, Project for Charles M. Schulz Museum, 2004, lithograph and collage, 24 x 21.5″

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are one of the most well-known and innovative artist duos in art history. They created monumental environmental artworks that transformed landscapes and urban spaces, and they are most recognized for their large-scale fabric-wrapping works which included wrapping the Berlin Reichstag in Berlin, an Australian coastline, and islands in Florida. Some of these projects would take as much as 20 years to realize with the planning, permits, and other logistical complexities of installations at such a large scale.

(left) Surrounded Islands, 1982, Miami (right) The Pont Neuf Wrapped, 1985, Paris

Across their installation, sculpture, and print work, Christo and Jeanne-Claude used the language of wrapping to capture light and bring attention to the way light strikes form. As Cyril Christo, the artists’ son, writes, “form gave way to light which was given shape, and the wind was given expression, as a mistress of a dream.” The installations, he continues, were a way “to relish the body’s passage through a landscape as an experience,” in contrast to other work in the 1960s which was “representing reality by imitation, an emperor, a religious scene, a still life, a bunch of flowers, a portrait, a nude, simple paint thrown on the canvas. Jeanne-Claude and Christo offered an act of revelation something, of a small engineering marvel, a new aesthetic of liberation.”

Wrapped Vespa, paper collage and digital pigment print, 2009, 12 x 12″

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were born on the same day on different continents. On June 13, 1935, Christo was born in Bulgaria and Jeanne-Claude was born to French parents in Morocco. In the late 1950s they started a lifelong artistic and personal partnership in Paris. They accepted no sponsorships, and funded every project through selling of prints, drawings, and fabric from previous installations. Christo explained, “I like to be absolutely free, to be totally irrational with no justification for what I like to do. I will not give up one centimeter of my freedom for anything.”

Wrapped Statues (Sleeping Fawn), offset lithograph on chipboard, 2000, 32 x 23″

In 2026, Turner Carroll Gallery will have an exhibition of both works by Christo and Jeanne-Claude and creative process materials from their long legacy, including the actual cloth that was used in their wrapping works, much from the archive of Jack Lemon’s Landfall Press Archives. Jack Lemon was the first printmaker to master the combination of 3D wrapped work and lithograph that Christo and Jeanne-Claude were seeking. As art historians, we are so grateful for the opportunity to connect two archives and provide a more complete picture of the impact of Christo and Jeanne-Claude on contemporary art, performance art, and sculpture and print.

Author: Sophie Carroll

Explore all Christo and Jeanne-Claude Collection