Mr. H. David Zucca Interviewer: Lisa M
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ZUCCA INTERVIEW‐‐1 Interviewee: Mr. H. David Zucca Interviewer: Lisa M. Schell Transcriber: Lisa M. Schell Date: April 10, 2010 Time: 1:00PM Duration of Interview: 1:15:34 Location: Mr. H. David Zucca’s home in Ann Arbor, MI LS: I am here today on Saturday April 10, 2010 with David Zucca, an art collector of the Cass Corridor Artwork from the 60s and 70s. My name is Lisa Schell and this interview is being conducted at David’s home in Ann Arbor. LS: If you could just tell me a little bit about your background, your family, where you were born, where you grew up and we can start from there. DZ: My family, my father is from Connecticut and my mother from Detroit. My father worked for A&P Supermarkets, Vice President of A&P. They were married twenty years and never had kids and along comes David. Don’t know what else to say, that I was born and brought up in Detroit in the Palmer Park area of Detroit. Went to Central High School, graduated from Central High School, graduated Michigan State University and then went to Yale for a Masters degree in Economics. Unfortunately, my father passed away while I was at Yale and I had to come home and sell the family business, I was an only child, I was responsible to sell the business, I was 21 years old and sold the family business. I went out looking for a job and in those days you could not get a job unless you had army, so I enlisted in the army and was in the military police. I was discharged because of very bad ZUCCA INTERVIEW‐‐2 eyesight, they didn’t want me because I would be endangering the whole company if I lost my glasses. So I then came back to Detroit and started as a stock broker with a company called Watling Lerchen, I am now at Oppenheimer. I have had an over 40 year career. A lot of people that know me in the business, know me from work, my days from my days at E.F. Hutton, the old add at E.F. Hutton. But that’s about it, I have no children, I was married very young, divorced very young, I have a very large family, can say I have a very long lived family. Right now I am 74 and I have six first cousins over 90, my mother was over 90 when she passed away. I find my business very interesting, very stressful and art has been my outlet to get rid of the stress--going to museums, going to galleries, buying art once in awhile. But I think the thing that really got me really interested is when I came back from New York in 1972, I had an office in New York. Someone told me about the Willis Gallery which was in the Cass Corridor. I don’t recall the first show I saw, it seems to me it was Ellen Phelan because the first thing I bought there was an Ellen Phelan wax piece that the Detroit Institute of Arts also bought one. I think that was the first show, then there a gentlemen there by the name of Dan Moriarity and Dan Moriarity really did get me more involved with the artists, with the work, and then meeting the all of these artists at these openings and then at the end of the openings they would go down to Cobb’s which was a bar on the corner of Cass and Willis and it was quite an interesting evening. It all reminded me a little bit of the New York artists, that the famous Cedar Bar where de Kooning, and that group, went and got bombed and had just a fabulous time just talking about art. Willis or the Cobb’s is kind of like the same kind of thing, were a bunch of artists got together drank, got together and talked about art. There weren’t many collectors of Cass Corridor work. The main collector that everybody knows is Jim Duffy, who just passed away. ZUCCA INTERVIEW‐‐3 Gilbert Silverman, believe it or not believe it or not there weren’t a lot of collectors of the art. Then came along Jackie Feigenson, and Jackie Feigenson whose husband, Mort Feigenson, made Faygo pop company [whose family made], opened a gallery at the Fisher Building. She first, I think, she worked at the Willis, I think when Dan Moriarity left, Dan Moriarity was responsible for taking the Willis from Cass to the Fisher Building and then I think Dan Moriarity left maybe went to New York, I am not sure about this and Jackie Feigenson went in there and then she opened up her own gallery. I think one of the great misfortunes of the Cass Corridor, [there] are two things. It was a very important movement in this area, outside of this area, it wasn’t well known. However, Sam Wagstaff who was working at the DIA at the time was very influential in New York City and he championed the Cass Corridor artists. In fact, I think one of them, Gordon Newton, was taken to New York where he had a show where either Nobler or Williamstein (not sure on the spellings here), I think [it] was Nobler. But Sam Wagstaff was only here, I think, three or four years and then left. I think if he had stayed, then the movement would have been known all over, not only in this area. LS: I am glad you mentioned that because, that was actually one of my questions. Cause I had read quite a bit about that. In the literature, that was the opinion of a lot of folks, that if Wagstaff had stayed on…. DZ: Yes LS: …then Cass would have been on the national map? ZUCCA INTERVIEW‐‐4 DZ: No question about it. DZ: I think that Jim Duffy was very involved with Gordon Newton, bought a lot of his work, out of Gordon’s place, not out of the gallery. I think he bought some things out of the gallery. But very few of those artists really then went on to New York to make it to any extend. I mean Ellen Phelen did, Gordon didn’t, of all the artists that left the city, just a few really. Susanne Hilberry who is a friend of mine has a gallery in Ferndale, and she has shown some Detroit art, I think, also at the time one of the major galleries in Detroit and maybe one of the major galleries in the United States at the time was the Donald Morris Gallery and [the] Donald Morris Gallery didn’t show any Detroit Cass Corridor work. The fact of the matter is, they showed Robert Wilbert and they showed David Barr, and maybe one other person. But they did not do much of backing of the Detroit art, they were more international yet they were one of the great galleries and still are. LS: And where is that gallery? DZ: Donald Morris Gallery was in Birmingham and then they went private to New York. They are very big and big in New York but private. They didn’t, they didn’t encourage a lot of Detroit of Detroit artists to come to the gallery. Maybe Picasso and Matisse you know that type of work, it was really very high end of the art market. But the other bad break came not only Sam Wagstaff leaving early or only being here four or five years or maybe even less. Was Jackie Feigenson, Jackie Feigenson was, cause most of her ZUCCA INTERVIEW‐‐5 artists were in the Kick Out the Jams show and there were some other artists that were in the Cass Corridor that weren’t in that show and a lot of people felt that it was the Jackie Feigenson’s show because they were mostly her artists in that show. But on the outside, she died. Just as she was beginning to take a lot of artists, I think, even I mean, Gary Mayor (unsure on the spelling), who is this painting is in back here, she had a lot of young artists that she was starting to sell very well, wanting to put them outside of this area that were Detroit artists and she died. So there was another bad break, so I felt all along that Detroit got the short end of things. I mean, they had a lot of bad breaks for the humongous talent that was in this city at that time. Bad breaks all around. You know? I mean really. As an aside, a couple weeks ago I went to this exhibit in Mexican Town where Bob Sestok set up 30 artists that were from Detroit and he brought them back and had this marvelous exhibit really in an area that which I would of never of thought, you know gorgeous. And we talked about a lot of things, Bob. He would be a very good source of information if you want, his name is Bob Sestok. And I gave one of his pieces to Wayne University, Sestok. But its, the thing that disappointed me about it was that I saw this incredible talent and that the rest of the world didn’t see it. Terribly disappointing because when you see talent like that, coming from New York. I saw talent. A lot of talent in New York is, a lot of artists, its almost a political situation, there is a lot of art there that is really just awful, that is being, lionized as masterpieces and all this kind of stuff.