Max Palevsky, Arts & Crafts Patron, Dies At Age 85

Rising from the slums of Chicago to the heights of Beverly Hills, computer genius, venture capitalist and Arts & Crafts collector and philanthropist Max Palevsky died on May 5 at his home in California.

His life was the American Dream.

Born to Polish immigrants in 1924, Palevsky attended the University of Chicago on the G.I. Bill, where he studied science and math before attending graduate school at Yale. There he immersed himself in the field of electronics, eventually earning a PhD at the University of Chicago.

By 1951, he had dedicated his life to developing new computers, first at Northrop Aircraft, then at Bendix and Packard Bell. In 1961 he and several employees struck out on their own, forming Scientific Data Systems where they designed, built and sold computers. A few years later, Xerox bought their firm for $920 million dollars. Palevsky’s investment of $60,000 suddenly was transformed into $100 million dollars.

In his new life, Max Palevsky became a venture capitalist and as such helped to found Intel, saved Rolling Stone magazine, contributed to the campaigns of liberal democrats Robert F. Kennedy, George McGovern and Jimmy Carter, funded both independent and mainstream movies and supported the arts.

In the 1970s, while shopping in the SoHo district of lower Manhattan, Palevsky was smitten by a Gustav Stickley desk and soon became a major collector of Arts & Crafts antiques.

In 1984 Palevsky began working with Leslie Bowman, curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, toward his goal of both donating his personal collection to the museum and of building it into the finest in the country. Their efforts culminated in 1990 with the opening of “American Arts & Crafts: Virtue In Design.” The exhibition was accompanied by one of the finest Arts & Crafts exhibition catalogs by the same name.

In it, Palevsky wrote, “aside from their aesthetic pleasures, [Arts & Crafts] allow us to glimpse the intensely human and deeply experienced reaction to a revolution that still seems beyond human control.”

Palevsky dove into Arts & Crafts just as he did each of his projects: headfirst. Building on those objects which he had first acquired, he and Leslie Bowman identified and targeted the finest examples of Arts & Crafts furniture, art pottery, metalware and art – the makers’ names read like a Who’s Who in Arts & Crafts – and in the process assembled the finest Arts & Crafts collection in the country.

While “Virtue In Design” was not the first Arts & Crafts exhibition, it came at a crucial time in the acceptance of Arts & Crafts as a truly noteworthy American art form. In 1972 the Princeton exhibition had first awakened the world to the forgotten significance of the Arts & Crafts movement; in 1987 “The Art That Is Life” exhibition and catalog brought it to center stage.

But Max Palevsky’s personal, public and financial dedication to the assemblage of the finest collection of Arts & Crafts antiques in the country marked a turning point in the Arts & Crafts marketplace. In the years that followed the 1990 opening of “Virtue In Design,” a bevy of Hollywood and Manhattan celebrities soon began battling for the best of the Arts & Crafts movement.

Their endorsement, following that of Max Palevsky’s, cemented the role of American Arts & Crafts in the world of decorative arts. Although the most prominent of those celebrities have since moved on to conquer (or disrupt?) other fields of collecting, Arts & Crafts has retained its position ever since.

Ironically, in his later years Max Palevsky grew disillusioned with the industry that had made him a multi-millionaire. “I don’t own a computer,” he remarked in 2008, “I don’t own a cell phone, I don’t own any electronics. I do own a radio.”

The American Dream.

-bj

For more information on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, go to www.lacma.org. http://www.lacma.org.