Great and Mighty Things at the Philadelphia Museum of Art – Listen to our 2011 podcast with Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz

By Libby and Roberta March 1, 2013

We spoke with Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz in 2011. The show of their collection of outsider art, "Great and Might things: Outsider Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection" opens today at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The collection is a bequeath to the museum. In our podcast they talk about how they started collecting outsider art and why they are giving it to the museum. This podcast originally ran on May 7, 2011.

This From the Vault post was originally published in 2011 and was sponsored by Fleisher Art Memorial.

bonovitzesweb — Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz, at Sheldon’s office at Duane Morris LLP, where part of their collection the hallways, offices and, as here, conference rooms.

Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz have amassed an extraordinary art collection of work by self-taught artists like James Castle, Martin Ramirez, William Edmondson and many more. The Bonovitzes — Jill is a respected ceramic artist and Sheldon Bonovitz is a lawyer and emeritus chairman of Duane Morris LLP — collect for the love of the art, not for the investment benefit. In the future they will be donating their collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They explain how they make decisions on what to buy and talk about the earliest piece they bought–and one of their most recent purchases. Five years ago the collectors created a foundation, called Foundation STAART, to educate people about self-taught American artists and through the foundation they produced a documentary movie about James Castle.

This episode is edited by Peter Crimmins. The music is by Eric Biondo. Thanks to the Knight Foundation and our series sponsor, Fleisher Art Memorial, for their support of this project. And thanks also to our partner WHYY NewsWorks.org. You can listen to Artblog Radio on Apple and Spotify.