Clik here to view.
Two months before my visit this spring, Gayle and Paul Stoffel began stockpiling small-diameter, 25-watt incandescent lamps. So far, they’ve accrued 200. They want to be ready when the bulbs of their untitled Felix Gonzalez-Torres sculpture from 1992— composed of a single string of some 20 bulbs—begin to burn out. “Technology is changing so quickly, but that piece is going to be around forever,” says Gayle on a sunny afternoon while giving a tour of the couple’s Dallas home. She gestures toward the piece, which falls like a rope from the 20-foot ceiling down to the landing of an open stairwell. “This way we can make sure it will always look like it’s supposed to.” The Stoffels are constantly brainstorming solutions to this kind of problem. With holdings that span 60 years of postwar art history—including masterworks by Ellsworth Kelly, Martin Kippenberger, and Andy Warhol, several of which are promised gifts to the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA)—the couple collect with long-term stewardship in mind. Their home, built from the ground up in just over two years and completed last summer, is the product of such foresight.
Six years ago, it became clear the couple’s Spanish Mediterranean–style house in the city’s Highland Park neighborhood could no longer accommodate their growing collection. “We had too many wonderful pieces that were in storage,” recalls Gayle. Rather than put the brakes on their collecting, the Stoffels, who met on a blind date 30 years ago, purchased the neighboring lot. They considered building a freestanding private gallery but realized they wanted to “live with the art, not just visit it,” Gayle explains. So they demolished their home of 17 years and constructed a new one from scratch on the expanded parcel of land. The resulting 15,000-square-foot house—combining limestone, zinc, and window walls—is a temple to the more than 100 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper acquired over the course of 20 years. During the design process, the couple prioritized opening the house to museum groups, so their holdings can tell the personal story of their ongoing art education and passion for collecting. “Their desire to allow people to come in to see the collection meant we approached things a bit differently,” says architect Timothy Blonkvist of San Antonio–based Overland Partners. “We had to give consideration to parking, to where a bus would come to drop people off, and how to deal with large groups.”
The design also seeks to reflect “the abstract ideas the artists in their collection have incorporated into their work,” says Blonkvist. “Compositionally, the house is a series of planes and panels of stone and glass: solid and void.” The architect, who worked for I.M. Pei, cited his former boss’s East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as inspiration.
Like the 1978 Pei building, the Stoffel residence offers a glimpse inside before visitors enter the house. Windows flanking the 12-foot-tall front door reveal a solid cast-glass sculpture by Roni Horn. Low to the floor and installed immediately to the left of the entry, it resembles a small pool of water. Paul Stoffel, who trained as an engineer before taking up a career in investment banking, proudly proclaims it weighs 1,960 pounds. “Because there is no structural wood in the house, they didn’t need to reinforce the floors,” he says.
Also peeking out from behind the door is the couple’s first serious acquisition: a 1986 squeegeed oil on canvas by Gerhard Richter. Gayle had just joined the DMA’s collections committee, and the couple were enthusiastic about starting their own collection. “The gallery sent us a transparency of this piece,” recalls Paul. “I held it up to the light and was struck by those strong colors.” At the time, Richter’s abstract paintings were far less valuable than his blurred photo-based compositions. (Today that trend has reversed: Abstracts worth less than $200,000 in the 1990s now account for four of Richter’s top five auction sales, all of which exceeded $19 million.) Without seeing the physical piece, the Stoffels took the leap, and it remains one of their most prized possessions. While occupying a rental property during their home construction, they gave the Richter pride of place in the dining room.
The painting is now one of four works by the artist in the Stoffel collection, each representing a different aspect of Richter’s practice. “We’ve established artists that we really like, and then try to collect in-depth,” explains Gayle. Among their most recent acquisitions is the striated 925-1 Strip, from a series unveiled at Marian Goodman Gallery in New York last fall. After more than six months of discussions, Goodman offered the Stoffels first pick. “We walked into the show and I responded to that one immediately,” says Gayle.
Upstairs, another work by Richter—a luminous, jewel-toned watercolor—hangs alongside two abstract drawings by Sigmar Polke. They are among dozens of works on paper that adorn hallways and quiet corners throughout the house. “I love the intimacy of drawings, that you can see the artist’s hand,” says Gayle. Prioritizing historical context for the contemporary holdings, postwar masters such as Cy Twombly and Jackson Pollock—whose paintings are often too expensive or too rare to acquire—are also represented in the Stoffels’ collection through distinguished works on paper. The couple’s Pollock drawing, currently on loan to the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, was once owned by New York art dealer Betty Parsons.
The delicacy and depth of the drawing collection was a consideration during the home design. “You have to be so careful with drawings,” notes Gayle. In order to create a safe environment for the museum-quality works, they sought out an A-list lighting designer. Theirs is the first residence to feature custom lighting from L’Observatoire International, a New York company that can claim the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and L.A.’s Walt Disney Concert Hall as clients. (On the Stoffels’ recommendation, L’Observatoire will consult on the future Shigeru Ban–designed Aspen Art Museum, where they are board members.)
There are almost no visible fixtures in the house. Diffuse light—the result of a combination of LEDs and fluorescent tubes tucked out of sight—emanates from coves in every room. Its intensity varies automatically, according to the time of day. Custom shades descend on the east windows in the morning and the west windows in the afternoon, shielding interiors from the harsh Texas sun. “No matter how well the architecture is done, it has a sculptural and spatial component that is always battling the art for attention,” says art adviser Neal Meltzer, who has worked with the couple for 12 years. “By prioritizing the lighting, which supports both the art and the architecture, we were able to create a balance.”
To be sure, the architecture has some show-stoppers of its own. In a nod to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, a cantilevered staircase juts out triumphantly over the pool. The master suite is suspended over a creek that rings the property. “We worked extensively with the city to be sure the house wouldn’t impede the flow of the creek or cause any harm,” says Blonkvist.
During the building process, the Stoffels pored over a three-dimensional computer rendering of the house, hanging the collection in different ways. This planning helped create spaces where art and architecture blend to cinematic effect: A crinkled chrome-and-painted-steel sculpture by John Chamberlain, positioned at the far end of the glassed-in living room, appears to float above the water’s surface in the swimming pool beyond. In the high-ceilinged gallery, however, the architecture gets out of the art’s way. “That’s the one room where the art will rotate,” says Gayle. The current configuration includes a self-portrait of a bespectacled Chuck Close. “Gayle tried for years to get a self-portrait,” recalls Paul. In 2006, the couple visited the artist’s New York studio. Over lunch, the men discovered they were both born in small towns in Washington State.
The connection was immediate and genuine. “He told [Pace Gallery director] Susan Dunne that he would only sell this painting if we would buy it,” Paul says, grinning. “She said she’d been trying to get him to part with it for a year.”
Spend enough time with the Stoffels and these stories tumble out. “I think Gayle and Paul deeply enjoy the process of looking and acquiring,” says John R. Lane, director emeritus of the DMA. The couple acknowledge the limitations of their first collecting forays, when dealers were loath to grant them access to the best material. “They had to be convinced we were serious,” Paul says. “There was a lot of calling, a lot of conversations. We had to be persistent.” It helped, he adds, that they rarely resell. The couple has parted with only three works of art. “And in those cases, we were upgrading to a more important piece by that artist,” Gayle says.
The Stoffels’ museum ties also helped them gain access. Lane recalls introducing Gayle to a dealer offering a significant painting by Polke at Art Basel. “At the time, Polkes were rationed out; this was a way the museum could be helpful in improving the position of its leading collectors on the list for desirable artists,” he says. The Stoffels, in turn, promised the DMA a number of works, including major pieces by John Baldessari, Marlene Dumas, and Mark Handforth.
Over the last decade, contemporary art collecting in the region has been associated with a handful of names— Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Marguerite Hoffman, and DeedieRose, who promised their collections to the DMA in 2007. During that time, the Stoffels have quietly built their own collection and made substantial gifts to the museum. “The many works in their home destined for the DMA will add immeasurably to our holdings,” says the museum’s current director, Maxwell Anderson. For the time being, however, museum walls will have to wait. It’s likely Gayle and Paul Stoffel will continue their passionate hunt for new additions to be well loved right at home.
This article was published in the June 2013 issue of Art+Auction.