PATSY NASHER

PATSY NASHER IS HERE TODAY in this room with us,” said Raymond Nasher of his late wife as he announced creation of the Nasher Sculpture Garden.

That was his opening statement and everyone in that room who knew Patsy Nasher believed it. If ever there were a blithe spirit, it was she.

Her husband’s gift to the Arts District in her native city includes land, maintenance, security, a cafe and an auditorium for a rotating population of outdoor sculpture from the collection they had begun nearly a half-century before. It also will fund a sculpture study program at her beloved Dallas Museum of Art.

Art was an early bond for the Nashers. Ray’s immigrant parents took him regularly to Boston’s many museums and galleries even before he started grade school. Patsy’s passion came : later, with art history courses at : Smith College and gallery and museum visits in New York.

From their courting days, the Nashers decided to travel and buy what art they could afford, after family responsibilities, i “We didn’t collect art,” Patsy would say. “Art collected us.”

Years later, she and I would talk about paintings, prints and the sculpture they had found. Her excitement never dimmed.

They had always said that art would be an integral part of any structure that Ray built. His emphasis on shopping centers put a happy concentration on sculpture. The expansion of Ray’s businesses and his increased activity in government service took the couple more and more often to Europe, and they began to know artists and other collectors as well as dealers.

Years later, when she was in the hospital. I asked Patsy about her adventures in collecting.

They saw “The Vertebrae- Three Pieces” by Henry Moore when it was only three small rocks in the artist’s hand. They bought it in 1968.

“Those little fossils were the beginning of ’The Dallas Piece’ in front of City Hall, which was installed 10 years later,” Patsy said. “Mr. Moore visited us while he was here for the installation. It was in front of the bank. He got out of the car and went over and gave it a hug!”

She remembered with glee climbing, bundled and booted, into the quarry with sculptor Scott Burton, in the midst of a snowstorm, to see “The Furniture Group,” a stone settee with two chairs that now sits at the Nasher residence, waiting to go downtown.

The Nashers knew Roy Lich-tenstein. “1 already owned ’The Single Glass,’” said Patsy, “but I loved the size and scale of ’The Double Glass’ so 1 traded. I always regretted losing the I other. But I love the drawing in space that this is. It’s the essence of pop art, but it is so much more.

“I loved those three great | heads of Diego [Giacometti] by his brother Alberto, who died in 1966. We had seen them in Dallas and followed them to Monterrey, but Diego did not want to let all three go.

He agreed they should be in the United States and let us buy them when Ray promised we would keep them together and that we would tend them.”

And tend them they did. I saw her pat one on the head as she walked past it in the house.

The acquisition of Matisse’s “Large Seated Nude” marked a decision to concentrate on works of major importance.

“Ray left the decision [to buy “Large Seated Nude”] to me. It was difficult, but it moved our whole collection in a different direction. 1 had wanted it for a long time, but now I’d be hard-put to favor her over ’Decorative Figure’ [also by Matisse]. They are at a place in our house, and we make a fresh choice ; each day.”

Of the Oldenburg “Typewriter Eraser”: “He’d done so many versions of the eraser that I wondered if we would want it. But the color and scale is so marvelous. When we had it in the bank, people laughed at first, and when we took it out, they cried. It was their friend.”

Of the Rodin “Head of Balzac” : “What appealed to us was the majesty and grandeur of this….You can just see him throwing the cape over his shoulder.”

Patsy walked into a gallery one day to discover that the Lip-chitz “Seated Woman” had just come in. “1 said to myself, ’A stone Lipchitz, one I’ve seen and liked. How lucky can 1 be? This is mine.’ Minutes later, a dealer walked in and offered me I a nice profit, but I couldn’t do it, Ray loves Lipchitz and his birthday was coming up.”

The last time 1 saw Patsy was just before I left for Italy, where she was to come later, for the opening of the collection in Florence. Picasso’s “Head (Fernande)” had just been brought to Patsy’s house, and she was in transports of joy. She called it a “masterpiece of masterpieces.”

Patsy Nasher did not make: the Florence opening. But in that most beautiful of sites- high on a hill with the Duomo and entire skyline of Florence below-a few of her close friends gathered to mark her passing and celebrate that vital ; and generous life.