Herb and Dorothy

Starting in the 1960s, the ordinary middle-class New Yorkers—a postal clerk and a librarian—managed to build one of the most important contemporary art collections in the world. Interviews with the Vogels and many of the artists whose work they acquired reveal how the pair started collecting, developed and followed their own taste, and selected the artworks (many of which now reside at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.). Artists who appear in the film include Robert Mangold and Sylvia Mangold, Pat Steir, Robert Barry, Chuck Close, Lynda Benglis, Lawrence Weiner, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude. (87 mins., video)

Megumi Sasaki began her career as a freelance journalist. She first attracted attention for her coverage of the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, when she turned the photographs she took in Berlin and the stories she gathered from ordinary people into a 10-part series that ran in Japan's highest-circulation newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun. She went on to work for NHK, Japan's sole public broadcaster, on a morning news program, then returned to freelance work, developing documentary programs for that network's premiere documentary series, and for commercial networks including TBS and TV Tokyo. She formed her own production company, Fine Line Media, in 2002. Herb and Dorothy is its first production, a labor of love on which she has worked as both director and producer.

Born and raised in Japan, Megumi Sasaki has lived in New York City since 1988. She first found out about Herb and Dorothy Vogel and their incredible collection while working on a documentary about Christo and Jeanne-Claude for Japanese television. She met the Vogels at an event with Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 2004, in advance of their Central Park installation, which some viewers may recall was the topic of The Gates, our last member-only film, in September 2008.

Herb and Dorothy Trailer