Chihuly: The George R. Stroemple Collection

'As Marcel Duchamp said, 'the creation of art restlessly oscillates between two the artist and the spectator',' writes Donald Kuspit in his insightful essay, 'Chihuly and A Meeting of Imaginations'. He suggests that 'the collector is the ideal spectator.' For Dale Chihuly, George R. Stroemple, may be the ultimate 'ideal spectator' as he possesses more works by Chihuly than any other collector, concentrating on three series only -- the Irish Cylinders, Macchia, Venetians -- and Drawings. In 1997 the Portland Art Museum presented 350 works selected from this collection. In the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Kuspit explores the relationship of artist and collector, noting that 'this exhibition is not only about Dale Chihuly's glass art, but also about George R Stroemple's enthusiastic, if selective collecting of it.' Curator Kathryn Kanjo addresses the creation of these three distinctly different series in her incisive essay, ' Glass Without Limits'. Statements by the collector and his curator, Tracy Savage, who had run Chihuly's Seattle studio at the time of Stroemple's first purchases in 1990, offer intimate insights to this relationship of collector and artist.