Hirshhorn, Joseph Herman, 1899-1981

Joseph Herman Hirshhorn (August 11, 1899 – August 31, 1981) was an entrepreneur, financier, and art collector.

Born in Mitau, Latvia, the twelfth of thirteen children, Hirshhorn emigrated to the United States with his widowed mother at the age of six.

Hirshhorn went to work as an office boy on Wall Street at age 14. Three years later, in 1916, he became a stockbroker and earned $168,000 that year.[3] A shrewd investor, he sold off his Wall Street investments two months before the collapse of 1929, realizing $4 million in cash.[3] Hirshhorn made his fortune in the mining and oil business. In the 1930s, he focused much of his attention on gold and uranium mining prospects in Canada, establishing an office in Toronto in 1933.[4][5]

In the 1950s, he and geologist Franc Joubin were primarily responsible for the "Big Z" uranium discovery in northeastern Ontario and the subsequent founding of the city of Elliot Lake. Hirshhorn Avenue, a residential street in that city, is named after him. By 1960, when he sold the last of his uranium stock, he had made over $100 million in cash from the uranium business.[6]

From 1961 to 1976, Hirshhorn lived in a three-story Norman chateau in a 22-acre (89,000 m2) estate at the summit of Round Hill, a 550-foot (170 m) rise in north-central Greenwich, Connecticut, with a view of the Manhattan skyline.[7]

When Hirshhorn began to make money, he began to buy art, both paintings and sculpture. He amassed a collection of paintings and sculptures from the 19th and 20th centuries. Applying himself seriously to the study of art, he would question dealers, critics, and curators, and visit artists in their studios. He made quick decisions on buying a piece. "If you've got to look at a picture a dozen times before you make up your mind", he once said, "there's something wrong with you or the picture".[8]

Hirshhorn graced his Greenwich mansion with paintings by Willem de Kooning, Raphael Soyer, Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, and Thomas Eakins, and the grounds outside with sculptures by Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder, Richard Bernstein (artist), and Henry Moore. He allowed many nonprofit groups to use tours of his sculpture garden for fundraising.[7]

In 1966 Hirshhorn donated much of his collection, consisting of 6,000 paintings and sculptures from the 19th and 20h centuries (and constituting one of the world's largest private art treasures), to the United States government, along with a $2 million endowment. The Smithsonian Institution established the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., in 1966 to hold the collection; the museum opened in 1974. At Hirshhorn's death in 1981, he willed an additional 6,000 works and a $5 million endowment to the museum.[7]

Controversy
His business dealings in Canada were not without controversy. He was investigated by the Ontario Securities Commission, convicted twice of breaking Canadian foreign exchange laws, deported from Canada for illegal stock manipulation (which he later appealed and won by having himself declared a landed immigrant), and fined for an illegal securities sale and illegally smuggling cash out of Canada.[9]

Personal life
Hirshhorn's first wife was Jennie Berman. They were married in 1922 and separated in 1941 (19 years). They had four children, daughters Robin Gertrude (b. 1923), Gene Harriet (b. 1926), and Naomi Caryl (b. 1931), and son Gordon (b. 1929).[1] He was married to portraitist and book illustrator Lily Harmon from 1947–1956 (9 years).[1] The couple adopted two daughters, Amy (b. 1948) and Jo Ann (b. 1951).[10] Hirshhorn's third wife was Brenda Hawley Heide.[1] In 1964 he married his fourth wife, Olga Zatorsky. He remained married to her until his death in 1981[11]

Joseph Herman Hirshhorn, the wealthy stock speculator who was one of the country's great art collectors, died suddenly of a heart attack late last night after attending the theater in Washington. He was 82 years old.

He was pronounced dead at 11:59 P.M. in the emergency room of George Washington Hospital, according to the night nursing supervisor, Mary Mailey.

Joseph Herman Hirshhorn was born in 1899 in Mitau, Latvia, the twelfth of thirteen children. His father died when Joseph was still an infant. In 1905 his mother emigrated with her children to the United States and settled the family in Brooklyn, New York, where she found work in a purse factory, six days a week, twelve hours a day. To keep the family afloat, the children had to help, and Joseph left school at the age of twelve to sell newspapers. By the age of fourteen, he was an office boy for the firm that later became the American Stock Exchange. In a short time, he became a chartist, charting stocks for an editor on Wall Street. In 1916 he took a small sum he had saved and launched himself as a broker, earning $168,000 the first year.

In 1924 Hirshhorn became a broker's broker, dealing in bank stock and unlisted securities. He made his first million long before he reached the age of thirty. In 1929 he distrusted the booming stock market and pulled out completely with four million dollars just two months before the crash.

In the 1930s, he began to invest heavily in Canadian mining, discovering gold and then uranium. He secretly acquired mining rights to some 56,000 acres, which became two huge uranium mines. By the mid 1950s, his interests stretched across Canada and the United States, involving him in more than two dozen mining and oil companies. Shortly thereafter, he began to reduce his business interests. His fortune was once estimated at more than one hundred million dollars.

Although the grinding poverty of his childhood spurred Hirshhorn to create a fortune, he also credited it with his love of art. His mother managed to buy her children a piano, and an insurance policy with Prudential sent a yearly supply of calendars into the home. The calendars included reproductions of various art works, which Joseph pinned to his wall.

Joseph H. Hirshhorn with Smithsonian Regent and Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller, at the Museum's First Anniversary, December 9, 1975. When he began to make money, he began to buy art, both paintings and sculpture. Using only his own tastes as guidance, he bought and bought, until the size of his private collection had grown to some 5,600 pieces. In the 1950s, he hired an art dealer, Abram Lerner, to curate his collection. Even Lerner could not always keep track of the acquisitions. Hirshhorn would sweep into a gallery and make so many purchases that the dealer felt his head spinning.

Hirshhorn relied solely on his own "feel" for each piece he bought. He once told a dealer who was advising a purchase for investment purposes, "Don't tell me how to make money. I don't collect art to make money. I do it because I love art." (From Art in America, summer 1958.)

In 1966 President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that Hirshhorn would donate his entire collection to the United States along with one million dollars to supplement the collection. A new museum would be constructed on the Mall as part of the Smithsonian Institution and would be named the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The new museum opened in 1974 with Abram Lerner as its first director. It was called the most important development in art for the Capital since the Andrew Mellon gift of the National Gallery of Art.

Hirshhorn's collection includes an international range of sculpture, but its paintings are primarily modern American. The collection has paintings by Thomas Eakins, Jackson Pollock, and Stuart Davis, and sculpture by Henry Moore, Picasso, and many others.

Hirshhorn was married four times, lastly to Olga Zatorsky Cunningham, who shared his passion for art. His marriages produced four children and two adopted ones. He died in 1981.