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It’s easy to think of Richard Serra as a hard-ass with a good education, pushing his radical and strident ideas forward, using an industrial material that weighed tons. A cross between Brancusi and a longshoreman. However, if you were fortunate, or knew him long enough, you could get glimpses of his soft side.
In 1977–78, as a journeyman curator in my mid twenties, I approached Richard about doing an exhibition at the University Art Museum, Berkeley. Even at that time, Serra was widely known, having produced major pieces in New York and Europe. I didn’t have much of a budget, so we settled on a wall-drawing show that he would install. I also mentioned that I couldn’t afford a hotel for him. But I said he could stay at our house, a very tiny house outside of Berkeley. When he and his wife, Clara, arrived, they discovered they were sleeping on our sofa bed in the living room.
At the end of his stay, he thanked my wife Pat and me for allowing he and Clara to sleep on that lumpy, old bed. I apologized for the lack of luxury. He said, “Not at all. In the art world, you don’t often get invited to stay at people’s houses. That means a lot to me.” It also meant a lot to me.
Richard Serra, Vortex, 2002. Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Gift of The Burnett Foundation in Honor of Michael Auping. © 2020 Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Years later, when I had moved up the museum ladder a bit, I commissioned Richard to do a 68-foot-tall Cor-Ten steel sculpture for the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth. When he came for a week to oversee the installation, the accommodations were a little better. One day, when he and the sculpture were cordoned off from the public until the piece was completely installed, he noticed me with my shy, thirteen year-old son, Jonathan. He insisted on giving him a special tour of the piece. Leaving me behind, he took Jonathan under the ropes and walked him around and into the sculpture. Jonathan was exhilarated and proud.
Richard always carried a drawing pad with nice paper. He gave Jonathan a drawing that day. It’s not that big, but Jonathan had it on the wall of his room throughout high school, and it has a prominent spot in he and his wife’s house today.
So this is a thank you, Richard, from two generations.
Michael Auping has been a curator of contemporary art for close to fifty years. He has worked with some of the most important artists of our time, including Lucian Freud, Jenny Holzer, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Susan Rothenberg, Ed Ruscha and Frank Stella.