Page 7 - 2019 September 11th Christie's New York Chiense Art Himalayan bronzes and art

The fine art collection of Dorothy and Richard Sherwood represents a lifetime of travel and
discovery, an embrace of global art and artists—and erudition reaching across categories
and continents. As pioneering civic leaders in Los Angeles, California, the Sherwoods were
visionary thinkers and builders who made an indelible impact on some of the finest arts
institutions in the world.
It was Dee Sherwood who first shared her Wellesley art history textbooks with Dick, her high
school beau who attended Yale College and then Harvard Law School. Thus began a romantic
lifelong exploration of art and culture together.
After serving in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War and marriage to Dee in 1953, Dick
won a prestigious Sheldon Traveling Fellowship from Harvard that transported the newlyweds
around the world for one year of continuous travel. From Europe to the Middle East to the
Indian subcontinent and Asia, they studied new genres and began collecting paintings,
drawings, prints and sculpture that stimulated their senses and captured their imaginations.
Following Dick’s Supreme Court clerkship with Justice Felix Frankfurter, the young couple
returned to Beverly Hills to build their lives in the community in which they had been raised.
Dick joined O’Melveny & Myers, the pedigreed law firm in which he practiced for 38 years,
specializing in antitrust, intellectual property and trade. In their exquisite Beverly Hills home,
they raised two accomplished children, Elizabeth and Benjamin, both Harvard graduates and
Rhodes Scholars.
As pathbreaking patrons of the arts, Dee and Dick were immersed in the dynamic 1960s
California art scene and knew many of its leading artists. Their early acquisition of an iconic
Berkeley painting by the young Richard Diebenkorn led to a decades-long friendship. David
Hockney joined them for festivities in their home and garden, as did the sculptor Robert
Graham. Emerging artists, museum curators, art historians and dealers frequented their
gatherings. Across decades, the couple devoted their time, prodigious energy and resources
to helping build some of the leading cultural institutions in Southern California, including the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Center Theatre Group.

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