An interview with Fleur Bresler conducted 2018 April 19, by Glenn Adamson, for the Archives of American Art and the Center for the History of Collecting in America at the Frick Art Reference Library of The Frick Collection, at the Bresler's home in Rockville, Maryland.
Ms. Bresler discusses being born and growing up in Washington, D.C. in the 1920s and 1930s and their family jewelry store R. Harris and Co.; aspects of being in a Jewish family in D.C. at the time of her childhood; her knitting of doll clothes and collecting of small objects as a child; her education in public schools in the D.C. area and work at the Beauvoir nursery school; her relationship with her husband Charles Bresler; the beginnings of her wooden duck decoy collection with its connections to Maryland; her and her husband's visits to the Easton Waterfowl Festival; her interest in quilts and quilt collecting. Ms. Bresler also describes first becoming interested in wood art after seeing "The Art of Turned Wood Bowls: The Edward Jacobson Collection" at the Renwick Gallery in 1986; the growing of her collection and her associations with fellow wood craft collectors; her affiliations with the Center for Art in Wood in Philadelphia and the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina; her philanthropic efforts and her and her family's plans for the legacy of her collections; and the commissioning and installation of a large table by Danny Laine. Ms. Bresler also recalls Jean McLaughlin; Senator Joseph McCarthy; Rude Osolnik; Stella Rubin; Martha Connell; Veena Singh; Albert LeCoff. As well as Irv Lipton; Charles Hummel; Nicholas Bell; Mia Hall; Judy Weisman; and David Sengel, among others.
Biographical / Historical:
Fleur Bresler (1926- ) is a collector of American craft and decorative arts in Rockville, Maryland. Glenn Adamson (1972- ) is a curator in Brooklyn, New York.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Restrictions:
This transcript is open for research. Access to the entire recording is restricted. Contact Reference Services for more information.
