AFA 18th Anniversary

2018 Antiques & Fine Art 179 Fig. 6 : Governor John Garland Pollard, 1931. Fig. 7 : Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890), Daisies, Arles, 1888. Oil on canvas. VMFA; Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon (2014.207). million Jews fled the programs of the Russian Empire to settle in the United States. Among them was Julius Berul Shklovsky Lewis, father of Sydney Lewis who attended Washington and Lee University and Harvard Business School before taking up a position in his parents’ encyclopedia sales firm. Wed in 1942, Sydney Lewis and Frances Aaronson assembled a collection of contemporary works while nurturing the careers of numerous artists. In 1969, the Lewises made their first gift to VMFA, a set of lithographs by their friend, Andy Warhol. A few years later, they established a fund for Art Nouveau. Joining with Paul Mellon in underwriting the museum’s 1985 expansion, the couple went on to shape its future, contributing more than 1,500 works, including their famed collections of fin-de-siècle decorative art (Fig. 9) and modern and contemporary painting. Philanthropy is commonly assumed to be the charge of a well-heeled elite. It is also the achievement of self-made individuals whose spirit of giving back is born of lifelong diligence. Virginia-born J. Harwood Cochrane (1912–2016) was fifteen when he began delivering milk for a local farmer. Over time, he converted his one-horse wagon into a truck he drove overnight for on-time deliveries. More trucks followed until, ultimately, Overnight Trucking became the freight arm of UPS. Cochrane’s wife of eighty-one years, Louise Odell Blanks (1916–2015), was one of seventeen children. She was born in 1917 at Long Branch Plantation