A Singular Passion For Contemporary Art -- Jon And Mary Shirley Are Quietly Becoming Some Of The Region's Most Generous Supporters Of Visual Arts

When Seattle Art Museum's Trevor Fairbrother discovered two years ago that the Museum of Modern Art's Chuck Close retrospective had no West Coast venue, he leapt at the chance to bring it to Seattle. Though Close has long been based in New York, the painter is a Washington native with an international reputation, and Fairbrother figured that snagging the show for Seattle after its stops in New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., would be a coup.

SAM's other top executives quickly agreed. But bringing big traveling exhibitions to town is expensive. Exhibition fees (essentially rental fees) and the costs of insuring, transporting, hanging and promoting a show can run anywhere from several hundred thousand to several million dollars, and museums typically look to philanthropically minded corporations to help defray costs.

But with the Close show, SAM made an unusual decision. It bypassed the normal roster of corporate sponsors and went directly to Jon and Mary Shirley, a couple who are quietly becoming some of the region's most generous and active supporters of the visual arts. Given that the Shirleys own nine works by Close, three of which were slated to be in the retrospective, and that they'd already underwritten part of the show in New York, SAM hoped they would be willing to help bring the show here.

"Knowing that the Shirleys had been so involved with Chuck Close as collectors, it was a natural thing to talk to them," said Maryann Jordan, SAM's deputy director of external affairs. "They were the first people we approached and it didn't take them long to decide." No one will say just what the Shirleys paid to bring the exhibition here, but they are the only major funders of the show.

Mary Shirley, a woman known for her big heart and unmasked enthusiasms, shrugs off the question of why she and her husband, the former president of Microsoft, would do such a thing.

"We're major, major fans of Chuck's work," she said. "I look at one of his paintings and it just gives me chills. I don't know how else to explain it. It strikes a chord. Why wouldn't we help bring the show here?"

Thanks in part to the Shirleys' financial support, the Close exhibition is on view at SAM through May 9. It is the first time in five years that SAM has played host to a national-caliber show of contemporary art.

And though SAM executives won't publicly speculate about where else they would have gotten funding if the Shirleys hadn't written a check, one thing is clear. The Close retrospective, though widely acclaimed, isn't the sort of safe, bring-your-grandmother-she'll-love-it exhibition that most corporations prefer to underwrite. It is, however, exactly the kind of contemporary art experience that the Shirleys love and want to share with everyone else.

When leaders of Seattle's visual arts organizations talk about the region's pots of new money - wealth made by people in high technology, telecommunications, online bookselling and worldwide coffee shops - the Shirleys' names invariably surface. They are seen as the most visible of the new Medicis. Especially since Jon Shirley's retirement from Microsoft in 1990, the two have thrown themselves into art, which they describe as a shared passion. Their personal collection is one of the best - if also one of the most eclectic - in the state. And in some areas, such as Chuck Close's work, their collection is extraordinary. (Close himself guesses that the Shirleys own more of his work than any other private collectors in the world.)

Helping fund the Close show is only the latest in the increasingly long list of visual arts programs and fund-raising campaigns that the Shirleys have supported with their money and their time.

Last year they gave $2 million to the Bellevue Art Museum to buy the parcel of prime, downtown Bellevue property where the museum plans to relocate in 2000. Mary is also on the board of directors. In November they gave Artist Trust an endowment gift of $150,000 - the largest single gift the organization has ever received - to fund grants for visual artists. For years they've been among the region's strongest supporters of Pilchuck Glass School, co-chairing the school's $3.45 million capital campaign that ended last year. They've been major donors at the Henry Art Gallery.

A few of the Shirleys' other behind-the-scenes efforts include their 1994 gift to SAM of $1.5 million to endow Fairbrother's position, as curator of modern art, and in the same year they began giving $3,000 a year to Pratt Fine Arts for scholarships for artists working in glass. Jon is currently on SAM's board of directors. In the name of art, they frequently open their home to groups of collectors, museum trustees and fund-raising events. They're regulars at visual arts fund-raisers ranging from the Pilchuck annual auction to Pratt open houses.

Sitting in their home overlooking Meydenbauer Bay, a home that Mary cheerfully refers to as "the campout," Jon says that he and Mary have throughout their marriage been drawn to the visual arts.

"We live with art. There are social services we support, but that's a separate thing," he says. "We pretty much limit ourselves to the visual arts because they mean so much to us. And when we give, we feel that by supporting BAM, SAM and institutions with strong outreach programs, that's a help. I think the visual arts are one of the first things that go when schools cut back on money, and it's terrible."

On the coffee table in front of him is a charming, 1932 sculpture by Alexander Calder. On a nearby wall is a Close portrait of his daughter, Georgia. There's a lovely little Henry Moore bronze by the window. There's a Jackson Pollock painting on the wall. Hanging over the dining room table is a magnificent Calder mobile and on the lawn outside is another very large Calder sculpture. Jon says he has admired Calder's work since he first saw it as a student being led through East Coast museums on school field trips. The Shirleys' extensive Calder collection represents one of their only dips into mid-century art. Most of their collection is much more contemporary.

What the Shirleys have on display in this temporary home represents a fraction of what they own. The rest is in storage. The couple has commissioned architect George Suyama to design a new house to be built on the site of their former Medina home sometime in 2001. In the new house they'll be able to display most of their collection, which Jon estimates at several hundred pieces, including lots of glass sculpture. Mary says the new house will be "a two-bedroom art gallery."

Selections from their collection have been on view at various times at SAM and the Henry Art Gallery. Some of their best pieces include a late painting by Willem de Kooning, a bronze by de Kooning called "The Clamdigger," an unusual figurative painting by Susan Rothenberg, a giant Franz Kline painting, paintings by Mark Rothko and Gerhard Richter, and a remarkable sculpture by David Smith. Regional artists whose work they have bought include Gaylen Hansen, Deborah Butterfield, John Buck, Julie Speidel and many of the area's leading glass artists.

Much of the most significant work in their collection has been purchased in the last decade. The couple started collecting Japanese prints when they were first married, but didn't seriously collect three-dimensional work or large-scale work until the '80s.

(They've always had a knack for connoisseurship, however. Jon is a collector of Ferrari automobiles, and he and Mary travel the globe showing their prize sports cars, especially a rare 1954 Ferrari made for the late film director Roberto Rossellini. Mary says she loves driving around in the car "knowing that my tush is in the same seat where Ingrid Bergman sat.")

Jon says he developed a taste for art as a student at a progressive prep school in Pennsylvania, where a three-year humanities course made a lasting impression on him. Mary says she's always "dabbled in the arts. I tried painting, even glass. But when we moved up here our children were at an age when I couldn't just run off and take classes at Pilchuck. I learned very quickly what my limits were, and I learned to appreciate rather than to make art."

The couple loves Close's work so much that they paid for the publication of a thick, fascinating book of interviews between Close and 27 of his sitters. ("The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close in Conversation with 27 of his Subjects," published as a nonprofit venture by Art Resources Transfer Inc., includes such tidbits as artist Richard Serra talking about his days as a California surfer, and composer Philip Glass talking about driving a cab until he was 41 to pay the bills.)

But their other big passion is sculpture. When the Seattle Art Museum wanted to acquire Mark di Suvero's "Schubert Sonata," the burly, kinetic steel sculpture that was on Harbor Steps across First Avenue from the museum, the Shirleys teamed up with Bagley and Virginia Wright to buy it for SAM. It has since been moved to Benaroya Hall.

And they recently bought a large, outdoor di Suvero sculpture of their own, which they're hoping to loan to the City of Bellevue for a few years until their new home is finished. They already own impressive sculptures by Barbara Hepworth and Marino Marini. In addition, Mary is trying to spearhead a move to bring the International Sculputure Center's 2002 symposium to Seattle, a national event that would bring thousands of sculptors to Seattle.

Artists and dealers who've worked with the Shirleys say the couple have a lack of pretension and an inquisitive attitude toward collecting that is refreshing.

Seattle sculptor Speidel says that after the Shirleys bought one of her sculptures a few years ago and put it in their yard, "Mary would take pictures of it during beautiful sunsets and when it looked particularly good, and send them to me. It was very sweet. Collectors don't usually do things like that."

Gallery owner Greg Kucera recalls that when they commissioned one of his artists, John Buck, to make a 12-foot bronze for them, "they were a total pleasure to work with. It was not the sort of situation where the collectors were trying to twist the arm of the artist, which happens. The whole thing was just smooth and easy and it's clear they trusted him and were interested in what he would do."

Fairbrother, SAM's modern art curator, says one of the things he likes about the Shirleys' approach to collecting is their independent streak and willingness to pursue an artwork they want. For instance, they now own a rare 22-foot-long painting of a nude by Close, thanks to their persistence in pursuing it. Close, who had owned the 30-year-old painting, only let it go after being assured that the Shirleys would keep it in the Northwest.

"Some collectors like to be hand-held and have things paraded in front of them," said Fairbrother. "The Shirleys aren't like that. They work very hard learning about art and what they like, then they find it. It means there's a lot of passion in their collection."