As consummate patrons of the arts, Acey and Bill Wolgin did not just live with the art that they collected—they lived alongside the artists who made it. Through their generous support of both individual artists as well as institutions they cherished, the Wolgins became widely celebrated collectors known for their friendships with artists—including Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Arman, and Robert Rauschenberg—that were sustained, not least, by legendary parties thrown at their Philadelphia apartment.
Bill Wolgin, who practiced as a urologist, met Acey through her brother with whom he attended medical school. The pair married and made strong roots in Philadelphia—indeed, the Wolgins may be credited for having a significant role in elevating the City of Brotherly Love to the cultural destination that it is today. In the 1960s, Acey was a founding member of the Arts Council at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association, which helped spark the city’s contemporary art scene. In 1974, Acey became one of the first women elected to the board of the Philadelphia Art Museum, where she served as a trustee and trustee emeritus for the rest of her life. When Robert Indiana’s LOVE stamp was released at that museum, Acey’s birthday party doubled as the event after-party. Among the attendees was the artist Arman, who absconded with a piece of the LOVE stamp-themed cake in order to seal it in resin.
The Wolgins would later relocate to Boca Raton, where they became actively involved in the Boca Raton Museum of Art and eventually funded the Wolgin Education Center. After returning to Philadelphia, Bill Wolgin would become involved in the Woodmere Art Museum as a trustee, helping to guide the institution’s expansion. Works from the Wolgin Collection are now held in all three of the institutions where they became involved, including Yves Klein’s Portrait Relief I: Arman at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fletcher Benton’s Donut with Balls and Half Moon at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, and a group of large-scale sculptures by Sam Maitin at the Woodmere Art Museum.
Surrounded by his parents’ collection from a young age, Richard Wolgin recalls meeting many of the artists whose works he knew intimately—especially memorable was the flaming red hair of Jeanne-Claude when she and Christo dropped in one weekend. (When they weren’t celebrating together, the Wolgins kept correspondences with many of their artist-friends, who sent postcards and, sometimes, drawings.) As kids, Richard and his sister would, naturally, delight in playing with one of Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures. When Richard was twelve years old, Acey gave him his first work: Roy Lichtenstein’s CRAK!, which he affixed to his bedroom wall with thumb tacks—inadvertently bringing the work back into the realm of mass media and pop cultural detritus that so inspired Lichtenstein.
The works featured in The Acey and Bill Wolgin Collection represent a life lived through, and for, art—“It’s not just buying something to hang on the wall,” says Richard, “it’s a piece of their lives, that are now part of our lives.”
Man Ray 1890–1976
Man Ray, originally known as Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American visual artist who had a profound impact on the Dada and Surrealist movements of the 20th century. Born in 1890 in Philadelphia, he was the eldest child of Russian Jewish immigrants, who changed their surname to Ray due to prevailing anti-Semitism. Man Ray moved to Brooklyn with his family when he was seven years old and went on to graduate from the Boys' High School, where he learned the fundamentals of drafting, illustration, and painting. Although his parents initially disapproved of his pursuit of art, they eventually supported his ambition by transforming part of their home into his studio.
During his early career, Man Ray experimented with paintings and drawings influenced by 19th century styles, but he was drawn to the avant-garde art he encountered in New York City. In 1921, Man Ray relocated to Paris and became an integral part of the Montparnasse artistic community. He was an innovator in the use of photograms, which he called "rayographs," creating mysterious and surreal images that were highly regarded by fellow Dada artists like Tristan Tzara. During this period, he met and fell in love with Kiki de Montparnasse, a famous artists' model who became a prominent subject in his photography and experimental films. Man Ray's work also expanded to include readymades, ordinary objects he selected and modified, such as his iconic The Gift (1921), a flatiron with metal tacks attached to the bottom.
Man Ray was a pioneering photographer, capturing portraits of important figures like Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Jean Cocteau. He was also known for his painting, sculpture, jewelry design, and filmmaking as well as collaborations with Marcel Duchamp on various projects, including the creation of kinetic art. Man Ray was likewise instrumental in helping to organize the Société Anonyme, a traveling collection considered the first museum of modern art in the United States, which was later donated to Yale University Art Gallery. During World War II, Man Ray returned to the United States and resided in Los Angeles from 1940 to 1951, focusing primarily on painting.
In 1951, Man Ray moved back to Paris and he married Juliet Browner, a trained dancer and artist's model, five years later. Over the next two decades, Man Ray continued to create art across various mediums until his death from a lung infection in 1976. His innovative techniques in photography, filmmaking, and art left an enduring legacy, earning him recognition as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Man Ray's work still inspires and captivates art enthusiasts, with some of his photographs achieving record-breaking prices in the art market, such as Le Violon d'Ingres (1924), which became the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction in 2022. Examples of Man Ray's work are now held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, and other notable institutions.
Auction Results Man Ray
