Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/101712
A collection of monochromatic works light up a room in Patrick Duffy's home. THE DREAMER Patrick Duffy leans towards late modernism and contemporary works while warming hearts with his passion for art and generous philanthropy. A dynamo of the arts and philanthropy, Patrick Duffy lives, breathes, and dreams art. His vibrant Vegas home testifies to the joy of collecting. Of the 233 or so works displayed, Duffy can rattle off every artist, title, year, and provenance—the White Cube gallery or the Hotel art gallery in London, say—without skipping a beat. "With these works, I hold in my hands a portion of the artist's reputation and history," he says, considering Men With Hats, a powerful mixed-media work by rising Danish star Sergej Jensen. "I take that responsibility very seriously. I have to be able to move whatever works I acquire from the walls of my home to the walls of a museum—that's the baseline." It's lucky for Las Vegas that Duffy has such informed taste. Among donations to museums from coast to coast, Duffy gifted 90 works to the Las Vegas Art Museum collection. "Every time I visit, I recall the history of each painting and artist," he says. "That's what art should do, for God's sake—fill you with thoughts and emotions." Duffy's encyclopedic memory and artistic passion is matched by his highly trained eye. After working in fine jewelry for 30 years, where selling and identifying gems is as exacting as it is routine, Duffy learned to translate his keen sense of observation to fine art when he met his late partner, Wally Goodman. Together, they grew the Goodman Duffy Collection, which spans more than a hundred years of art, with emphasis on late modernism and contemporary works. 94 Every single room in the Duffy home offers a visual treat. In the study, early-to-mid-century gems—a gorgeous, small-format Klee, a de Kooning— bedeck a wall. In the entry hall, Pop Art giants such as Jim Dine and 20th century mixed-media masters such as Jess Collins punctuate the niches. In the bedroom, German Expressionist Thomas Schindler's masterful painting The Siege of Troy, II (1985) holds sway, while a Sol LeWitt presides in the breakfast area. Honoré Daumier, the great 19th century satirist, has pride of place in the dining room. One of the rooms is devoted to monochromes— the space pulses with rows of monochromatic paintings by masters of the genre, almost as if it were a 3-D Buddhist mandala. "My collection is a personal history," Duffy says. "I arrange it differently to modulate different feelings. It's got to speak to me. It's not the scholarly context or the value or the intellectualization. It has to go from my eye to the pit of my stomach and fill my mind. And it has to keep doing that." A Diamond Resorts International executive who serves as president of the Las Vegas Art Museum board; vice chairman of the Neon Museum; and on the boards of the Smith Center, Opportunity Village, and The Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada, Duffy travels to international art fairs and exhibitions when his commitments allow. "What really matters with art collecting," he says, "is, does it keep you engaged? Does it keep you wondering, finding things? Keep you relevant?" He pauses. "It should." V VEGASMAGAZINE.COM 088-095_V_Feat_Art_Win13.indd 94 1/2/13 2:50 PM