JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Dorothy Vogel and her late husband, Herb, amassed a priceless collection of contemporary art on their civil servant salaries. Dorothy died recently at the age of 90. Years ago, NPR senior arts critic Bob Mondello expected a movie about the couple to be as interesting as watching paint dry. Then he saw Megumi Sasaki's 2008 documentary, "Herb And Dorothy."
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BOB MONDELLO: Longtime New Yorkers, this postal clerk and librarian began haunting art studios, literally watching paint dry, in the 1960s. And with only Herb's post office salary to finance a very expensive habit, they began acquiring the unfamiliar with a passion even they can't explain.
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HERB VOGEL: I knew something was new. I didn't know how good it was or how bad it was. And I liked the idea that it was something that wasn't done before.
MONDELLO: Dorothy's salary as a librarian is what kept food on the table.
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DOROTHY VOGEL: In those days, if you wanted to collect art, pop art was already too expensive and so was abstract expressionist. So if you want to buy art, the only thing that we could afford would be the minimal.
MONDELLO: So the postal employee and the librarian went maximal with the minimal, buying from such then-struggling unknowns as Sol LeWitt, Jeff Koons and Christo, endearing themselves by coming cash in hand and only taking home what they could carry in a taxi. They got early work for a song and more mature work at a discount. And over time, they amassed, in their tiny, rent-controlled apartment - under beds, on shelves and even in the bathroom - one of the most extensive and historically important collections of conceptual art in the world.
Filmmaker Megumi Sasaki started documenting the Vogels just as they were deciding what to do with their art. Curator Jack Cowart remembers being startled at just how much they had when he offered to bring their collection to Washington's National Gallery to catalog it.
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JACK COWART: One of the shippers said that he had estimated that it would take a big 40-foot moving van and a half to move the entire collection. He said, I have never seen so much come out of an apartment so small, and we were up to giant moving van No. 5.
MONDELLO: More than 4,000 pieces of art left the apartment, and then the Vogels started filling it again.
I'm Bob Mondello.
SUMMERS: Librarian and art collector Dorothy Vogel died last month. She was 90 years old.
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