A Grand Passion

However unusual the idea of building a small, private museum in a country-club community might have seemed at first, the Gilgores' treasure trove, housed in an Italian villa that complements the Italian works of art within, soon caught on with friends and neighbors, as well as with curators from all over the world who have come to study the couple's collection.

The museum's first exhibition, A Chisel and a Brush, curated by Dr. Fred Licht of the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, drew scholars eager to find in one place works by Italian masters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. On Dec. 8, the Gilgores and Licht plan to open another exhibition, this one titled Winds of Change: The Milanese Avant-Garde 1860-1900, which will allow visitors to sample more of the nearly 400 pieces the Gilgores own.

It all began in the late 1980s. The Gilgores were living in Chicago, where Sheldon, an internist and endocrinologist, was CEO and president of Searle Pharmaceuticals. Irma, an artist whose paintings and drawings are regularly featured in a New York gallery, agreed to assemble a corporate art collection for Searle. But while focusing on contemporary artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, James Hockney and David Rosenquist for Searle, the Gilgores initiated their private collection with a 19th-century Italian painting by Giuseppe Aureli, a watercolor on paper whose style and execution reminded them of the action and characters on an opera stage.

And perhaps that's where it really all began, with opera. Growing up near New York City, Irma listened to opera on the radio and attended rehearsals at the Met. After she and Sheldon met on a blind date while he was still in medical school, she introduced him to the world of Verdi, Puccini and Catalani.

"He didn't like the first two operas we went to," recalls Irma, "but he fell in love with the third, Tosca. He started collecting records, learning everything he could about every opera, star and singer. He even ended up forming his own opera company in Connecticut. And one of our sons, Laurence, became an opera and symphony conductor. Music means so much in our lives and in our collection."

Once they were fixated on the music of 19th-century Italy, it seemed only natural to gravitate toward the period in the paintings, sculptures and drawings they kept adding to their collection. And it also became necessary for them to do a great deal of research into the works they bought, mostly while traveling in Europe.

"In Italy, it seemed as if galleries and dealers only knew about the artists who had worked in their city," Irma says. "In Venice they knew about the artists of Venice, in Milan the artists of Milan, but they didn't know what was going on at the same time in other parts of the country. And because Paris was the art capital of the world and Impressionism was such a dominant movement, the Italians of that same period were often overlooked."

That began to change when the Gilgores let the Art Institute of Chicago display a number of their sculptures in 1994, the first show ever to concentrate on Italian art of that period. That exhibit was followed by one at the Denver Museum that included paintings and drawings, and the Gilgores' collection began to attract international attention. In 2001 they were named among America's top 100 collectors by Art & Antiques magazine.

"We're the only ones in North America who collect this type of art," says Sheldon proudly. And although Licht curates the shows at the museum, only the Gilgores choose the pieces they collect. "As an artist, I have an eye," says Irma, "and Shelly, with his experience as an executive, can see the big picture. You can't just collect a piece because you love it; we have to decide on the basis of how important it is to our whole collection. You can't get to really know an artist unless you see his whole body of work. We do have to reject some works if they just don't fit."

And while the Gilgores admit they may sometimes disagree about whether or not to purchase a piece in the beginning, "in the end we almost invariably agree," says Sheldon.

They agreed, too, about their full-time move to Naples after enjoying a condo seasonally in the area for some time. But building a home at Eagle Creek didn't mean early retirement or hours of golf (although Sheldon does play when he can).

"We thought, wouldn't it be wonderful to have a space for our art, on white walls, unadulterated by furniture," says Irma. "We spoke to the architect David Humphrey, asking if it might be possible to build a museum on this property near our house. I thought that I would have studio space there as well. But once the museum was built, it took on a life of its own." Instead, Irma produces her own art-which weaves together images of Oriental prayer rugs, visual interpretations of the sounds of music and her singular approach to spirituality-in a spare bedroom of the main house in between offering tours of the museum next door.

And the tour is a memorable one. Stepping into the two-story, 5,000-square-foot building, with an interior conceived in the shape of an eye ("We didn't want the usual square rooms," says Irma), a guest is immediately transported to a different time and place. While a quiet stream filters its way over smooth rocks through the center of the space, classical music of the 19th century drifts to the ear even as the eye is filled with expressive portraits in oil by Antonio Mancini or sculpted bronze heads by his longtime friend, Vincenzo Gemito. The two knew each other from boyhood and often used the same orphan boys for their models.

A number of Mancinis will remain on the first floor while the new exhibition occupies the second. Included will be a selection of avant-garde works by artists leading up to Italian Futurism, an art movement fascinated with machines and motion. And Futurism in turn, says Sheldon, was really the foundation for modern art.

"These artists wanted to break away from the establishment," he explains. "They even felt they had to break away from Verdi's music and move on to Wagner's."

Among the artists featured in Winds of Change will be Russian-born sculptor Paolo Troubetzkoy, who lived and worked in Italy; Luigi Conconi, whose paintings derive inspiration from works by Boccaccio and Dante and whose Courtly Lovers graces the cover of the exhibition catalog; Emilio Gola, a Milanese nobleman and engineering school graduate represented by one of his landscapes in pastel on canvas; and Medardo Rosso, an innovative sculptor whose wax-over-plaster works are unique and rarely seen.

Although the Gilgores' collection has grown so that works not on display fill a guest house the couple also owns at Eagle Creek, they can't conceive of putting an end to their collecting ways. "When you find the right piece, you can be so exhilarated; it's like a revelation," says Irma. "If you're truly collectors, like we are, you'll never stop."