Illustration by David Huang for Bloomberg
Boomers Are Leaving Behind More Art Than Anyone Wants
Nearly $1 trillion of art is expected to change hands in the coming decade. There won’t be enough buyers or museums to absorb it all.
David A. Vaughan occupies a unique position in the history of American modernism. He was born in 1891 in Selma, Alabama, to a wealthy family that afforded him a bohemian artist’s life: He moved first to New York and then to Vence, France, where he founded an art school near the home of his hero Henri Matisse. World War II sent him back to the US, and he landed in Laguna Beach, California, where the light and the ocean reminded him of the French Riviera. There, he taught art, showed his work in local galleries and had one-man shows at the San Diego Museum of Art, the Norton Simon Museum and other institutions.
After his death in 1975, his two children, Sue and David, inherited the bulk of Vaughan’s postwar art — 90 paintings, along with many more drawings and sculptures. They kept the collection largely intact, apart from one piece that was donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2011 and a few paintings that were gifted to extended family members. Soon it will end up with Vaughan’s two grandchildren, now in their 50s, who have little ability to look after the remaining works, some of which are extremely good, and are struggling to work out what to do with it. I should know — I’m married to one of them.
