Bob Rockwell, Collector

BOB ROCKWELL, COLLECTOR

September 16, 2003

For Bob Rockwell, the West is a place of enormous beauty and big ideas. The romantic art that reflects these notions - largely created by artistic giants of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - has been Bob's passion for over six decades. For "A Collector's Perspective," he has hand-picked some of his favorites - not an easy task, for Bob feels a personal connection with virtually every piece of art he collected.

"Almost a Westerner," Bob Rockwell moved to his family's cattle ranch in Colorado one month after his birth in Bradford, Pennsylvania in 1911. He grew up riding with old-time cowboys and talking with men who had helped open the west. Prints by Charles M. Russell hung in his living room. The culture of the old west and its images surrounded him. Add to that the fact that Rockwell is "just naturally a collector" - as a youngster he accumulated arrowheads and butterflies - and the seeds of collecting Western art were sown.

After graduating from Stanford University, Bob Rockwell came to Corning to help his grandfather run the family department stores on Market Street and three other area cities. He thought that job would be temporary. But it was in Corning that he met his wife Hertha and here that they raised their son Bobby and daughter Sandra. More than 70 years later, Bob and Hertha still make their home in this community!

It was here in the East, in fact, that Bob Rockwell began collecting western art. His first purchase is now legendary: it was a fake! "I heard that a fellow in Elmira had a Remington. I went down and saw it, and I couldn't write a check fast enough!" On a trip west, he showed a photograph of it to Dr. Harold McCracken, then Director of the Whitney Gallery of Western Art in Cody, Wyoming and an expert in western art. McCracken gave him the bad news.

Undaunted, Bob Rockwell was determined to learn all he could about the art he loved, and he sought out experts nationwide. Hertha shared Bob's interest and participated in acquiring some works. The Rockwells' collection grew rapidly and steadily to include many of the masters of 19th century Western painting, sculpture, and illustration. As time went on, Bob discovered a few contemporary artists whose work he also greatly admired. He became friends with John Clymer, Charlie Dye, and others, visiting their studios and getting to know them and their art in a very personal way.

For years, Bob displayed some of his paintings, sculptures, and weavings in the Rockwell Department Store in Corning. But his collection was vast and precious, far larger than could be housed in the store. So in 1975, he and his family generously decided to donate much of their collection to the museum that bears their family name. With the core of its collection from Rockwell family, this museum today proudly shares "The Best of the West in the East" with visitors from around the world.