Mattie Lou O'Kelley

A Generous Gift for the High: Folk Lift:
Businessman's donation of self-taught art puts museum's collection in front ranks
By EILEEN M. DRENNAN, Staff Writer
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 28 Jan 1990, page N-10

 Soon after Ned Rifkin became director of the High Museum of Art in 1991, Marshall Hahn invited him to dinner. There, in his Ansley Park home hung floor to ceiling with folk art, in the company of fellow folk art enthusiasts, Hahn launched his quest to make the High the country's premier center for folk art.

He has since worked tirelessly as an advocate, philanthropist and fund-raiser to help the High pioneer the first folk art department in a museum of fine art. Now Hahn, 70, has catapulted the High closer to his goal with the most personal of contributions: his own collection. Some 130 paintings and sculptures will form the core of the T. Marshall Hahn Jr. Collection at the High.

"Marshall's gift gives the High an outstanding collection of 20th-century self-taught artists," says Gerard Wertkin, director of the Museum of American Folk Art in New York.

And a special niche: The gift, valued at more than $1 million, is especially rich in Southern self-taught art. The artists would be on anyone's who's who list: Edgar Tolson, Bill Traylor, Thornton Dial, Ulysses Davis, Nellie Mae Rowe and Clementine Hunter are among the 32 on the roster, many of whom are represented in depth.

"This is the first major collection of contemporary self-taught art given to a museum that fully represents the contributions of the South," said High folk art curator Joanne Cubbs. "Other collections were assembled before Southern art revolutionized the field."

The dapper Hahn, who retired as Georgia-Pacific Corp.'s board chairman three years ago, also has given the museum 200 works with the intention that they be sold to generate funds for future additions to the collection. The museum is consulting with auction houses.

"Marshall really understands the spirit of philanthropy and what it means to be a collector," said Louise Shaw, executive director of Atlanta's Nexus Contemporary Art Center. "Great collectors are the basis of great museums. The High is now one of the leaders in the field."

Rifkin calls Hahn "the paradigm of what the patron-collector-board member can be." Hahn was instrumental in the decision to devote the High's downtown galleries to folk art and photography. He secured an anonymous $900,000 grant to support programming and Cubbs' hiring, and encouraged Norfolk Southern Corp. to establish a folk art acquisitions fund.

Hahn started collecting art several careers ago, in the early '60s, when he was dean of arts and sciences at Kansas State University. He was quite taken with memory paintings, the genre that Grandma Moses made famous, after seeing those belonging to the Hall family, which was using the images in its Hallmark greeting cards. Since his first purchase, a painting by Streeter Blair, and his fascination with Georgia artist Mattie Lou O’Kelley, his interests have shifted toward Southern visionary artists.

"I love their passion, their enthusiasm," Hahn said from his Virginia home. (He also owns a home in Florida.) "They're uninhibited. It speaks out so strongly to me."

North Carolina folk art expert Roger Manley compares the Hahn collection to classical music as opposed to the blues, eschewing the raw edge of outsider art for the more aesthetic end of the continuum.  "It's very high-quality," Manley said. "It shows that contemporary outsider art can stand up to the best of any contemporary art."

Atlanta art dealer Robert Reeves considers Hahn an exemplary collector, who learned as he went, acquiring objects of increasingly sophisticated quality, a direction that paralleled the gallery-like environment of his Ansley Park home, in which only the cream of the collection is displayed.  "I've been working hard in recent years to upgrade the collection," Hahn said. "Joanne advised me. I wanted the masterpieces of these artists."

He gave Cubbs free rein in selecting art for the museum, a process that she said was a little bit like Christmas but was also weighted with responsibility.  "It wasn't just a matter of picking the best, but also finding a way to represent Marshall's history as a collector and the history of the field," she explained.

The works will come to the High in phases. Some of those already formally accepted by the museum will be included in the reinstallation of the permanent collection, opening in March. A major exhibition and catalog of the collection are planned in 2000.
Hahn also will give 11 objects to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Williamsburg, Va., and six works to the Museum of American Folk Art in New York.

Hahn, who plans to spend more time in Virginia and Florida, is selling his $1.7 million home here and is looking for smaller digs. But that will not affect his involvement with the High.  "I anticipate helping the High make acquisitions. I've still got
things on my want list."

Chart: THE HAHN FILE
- Vital statistics: Born in Lexington, Ky., 1926, and "Southern to the bone." Married to Margaret Louise Lee; two daughters.
- Education: Bachelor's degree in physics, University of Kentucky, 1945; doctorate in nuclear physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1950. - Career: Taught at University of Kentucky, 1950-'54; headed physics department, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 1954-'59; dean of arts and sciences, Kansas State University, 1959-'62; president, VPI,1962-'75; vice president and later chairman of the board, Georgia-Pacific Corp., 1975-'93; Georgia-Pacific director and honorary chairman of the board, 1993 to present. - Homes: Atlanta; Jupiter Island, Fla.; Hickory Hill Farm, Blacksburg, Va.

Chart: THE HIGH'S HIGHS IN FOLK ART
Moving slowly at first but proceeding now with gathering momentum, the High Museum of Art is building one of the foremost museum collections of self-taught art in the country. Here's a short list of major moments.
1975: Acquires still life by Georgia memory painter Mattie Lou O’Kelley
1981: Organizes first folk art exhibit, featuring Georgian Carleton Garrett's mechanical tableaux.
1982: Acquires 26 drawings by Bill Traylor, well before the former slave's fame skyrockets posthumously.
1993: Acquires 60 works from collector and Athens artist Andy Nasisse, including Bessie Harvey, J.B. Murry and Dilmus Hall.
1993: Designates downtown site as High Museum of Folk Art and Photography Galleries.
1994: Acquires important pieces from Howard Finster's Paradise Garden.
1994: Names Joanne Cubbs the museum's first folk art curator. Establishes first department of folk art in a museum of fine art.
1995: Gets funding for and establishes Norfolk Southern Corp. Collection of Self-Taught Art.
1995: Organizes symposium for national meeting of the Folk Art Society.
1996: Receives T. Marshall Hahn gift.

Page last updated 11/21/2011

This website is (c) 2001-2011 by W. Todd Dorsey.  Limited license is granted to you for personal use.  No part of this site may be reproduced or reprinted, either electronically or by other means, without the express written permission of the owner.  All rights reserved.