Black, White and Brown

By Dalia Karpel, Ha'aretz (link)
November 27, 2009

Everyone who knows industrialist and art collector Ami Brown knows he doesn't like to attend art exhibition openings. He takes no pleasure in social events of that kind and his attitude toward public relations borders on the contemptuous. He is an altogether mysterious figure. People close to him say he is an obsessive collector who buys by intuition, is subject to fits of rage and is generous to a fault. It's hard to find a photograph of him even from 1968, when he founded the Israeli branch of the Coca-Cola Company, in Bnei Brak. Brown, his friends agree, guards his privacy zealously

Gabriel Klasmer

Nevertheless, about a month ago Brown was on hand to greet people at Kibbutz Ein Harod's Museum of Art, at the opening of an exhibition entitled "Israeli Art from the Collection of Gaby and Ami Brown." Initiated by the industrialist's wife Gabriela (Gaby), and curated by Galia Bar Or, the show features some 300 paintings, sculptures, photographs and drawings by Israeli artists from the beginning of the 1920s to the 21st century. One visit is not enough to take in the vast scope of the treasures on display. "He was not interested in having the exhibition and also objected to the catalog, but Gaby insisted," says Shaya Yariv, owner of the Gordon Gallery in Tel Aviv and a friend of the Browns for nearly 60 years. (The 380-page catalog, in Hebrew and English, contains two essays about art collecting by curator Bar Or.) According to Yariv, Brown "views his collection as something completely private and does not want others to poke around in it. He has absolute loyalty to his loves in the world of art. He has always had an aversion to exposure of any kind and therefore refused to give interviews

Another friend, Joseph Ciechanover (former director general of the Foreign Ministry, and a member of the board of directors of Discount Bank and El Al, among others), relates that even when Brown makes donations, he prefers to keep them secret. "He donates to and assists many bodies, but on one condition: Don't mention my name, leave me be. He is a man of principles, who lives by only two: black and white." Elegantly dressed and affable, Ami Brown sat in the library of the Ein Harod museum, holding the leash of his beloved dog Barak in one hand and a cigar in the other. Brown finds it difficult to stand up for any length of time. He turned 80 this year and was diagnosed with cancer two years ago, though none of his friends has ever heard him complain or moan.

"His inner strength and his unequivocal vision are unique; others would have fallen apart long ago," says Ciechanover. "Even when in the most dire straits, he says: 'I am perfectly fine, I will get through it.' He is strong inwardly, because that's the kind of family he comes from. If there were a 'Mayflower' in Israel, his parents would have been on it."

Brown returns to work immediately after his debilitating treatments, not missing a day. He has a warehouse in Tel Aviv in which his diverse collections are arranged, on moveable tracks.

"The warehouse is protected according to criteria which only the Israel Museum meets," says veteran curator Yona Fischer. "There are all kinds of systems to prevent break-ins, and everything is impeccably ordered and computerized."

At the opening in Ein Harod, Brown looked happy to see the many guests. Among them were collector Beno Calev, attorney Avigdor Klagsbald and artists Yair Garbuz, Uri Lifshitz, Nahum Tevet, Rita Alima, Hila Lulu Lin, Ido Barel, Gilad Efrat, Asaf Ben Zvi and Joshua Borkovsky. Also on hand were members of the families of deceased iconic artists whose works were part of the exhibition, such as Raffi Lavie, Lea Nikel, Moshe Kupferman and Menachem Shemi. Representatives of leading Tel Aviv galleries, such as Noga, Zomer, Julie M. and Gordon, also made the trip to the Jezreel Valley kibbutz.

Batya Apollo

Silence fell as Gaby - whom Brown calls "my little one," repeating that the project of collecting Israeli art is really hers - took the stage. The two met on the Yarkon River bridge in Tel Aviv and were married in 1955. Their daughter, painter Dana Brown, was also in the hall. "Where is Ami? Bring Ami," Gaby called. He entered and waved to her from the back of the room, looking as excited as a child. She thanked him and went on to pay homage to the artists and to praise the curator for her meticulous choice of works and for the catalog. The word in the art community is that Bar Or is one of the few people that Ami esteems and gets along with.

'Ultimate collector'

In recent years, Ami Brown has supported exhibitions and monographs on artists such as Arieh Aroch (2001), Aviva Uri (2002), Michael Druks (2007), Joshua Borkovsky (2005) and Hila Lulu Lin (2007). The Ein Harod catalog (designer: Michael Gordon) contains hardly any information about Brown. Bar Or, the editor, says Brown would not allow it. She notes in the catalog that Brown is one of those collectors whose activity over time accords them recognition as being a taste-setter who is discerning and skilled in judgment.

"Ami started to collect [Yosef] Zaritsky 50 years ago and would pay Sonia Zaritsky in installments spread over a year or two," Shaya Yariv says. "In those years, Zaritsky had great stature among painters, though he was not held in very high regard among the public before the 1960s. He and Ami were on good terms, because Ami bought a lot in that period, when few people took an interest in him. In terms of numbers, there are a few Israeli artists who have greater representation in the Brown collection than in museums."

In the course of working on the exhibition, Bar Or visited the collection warehouses, an experience she likens to seeing Aladdin's cave: "A sense of thrill, revelation, a stimulus for the imagination. The items spark memory. With eyes shining, the collector tells their story, indicates facts, leads the visitor behind the dividers, between the rows of shelves, familiar with every item."

Ori Reisman

Bar Or's second essay in the catalog, "Remarks on the Collection of Israeli Art," sheds light on the particular thrust of Brown's Israeli art collection. The history of collecting in the country begins in the 1950s with the establishment of the Association of Museums and the contribution of collector Ayala Zacks, followed by the activity of industrialist, entrepreneur and collector Sam Dubiner. Beginning in 1957, Ami Brown worked as Dubiner's assistant in Cargal, a cardboard box manufacturer. In 1959, Dubiner divested himself of all his business assets and devoted himself to collecting art. Two years later he opened Galerie Israel, a commercial establishment for modern art, in Tel Aviv.

"The encounter between leading Israeli figures and American Jewish art collectors in Israel and abroad sparked an awareness of the national need to stimulate donations from collectors on an international scale," Bar Or writes. This coincided with the period in which Teddy Kollek, then the future mayor of Jerusalem, was an envoy in Israel's Washington embassy (1950-1952), where he became aware of the incipient interaction between the art collectors in Israel and abroad. Upon his return to Israel, Kollek began to push for the establishment of what would become the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. A special committee, headed by the education minister, was created for this purpose in 1957, with Kollek as a member.

The Israel Museum opened in May 1965 with an event attended by dignitaries and key art collectors from around the world, Bar Or relates. This was a period of austerity, hardship and mass immigration to Israel, but at the same time the country was undergoing a development boom. Private collecting here was influenced by closer ties with the Jewish-American moneyed aristocracy.

As a youngster, Brown had a collection of stamps and coins. He began collecting art in the mid-1950s and acquired his first valuable painting at the end of that decade: Menachem Shemi's "Safed" (1949), which is on display in the Ein Harod exhibition. According to estimates of confidants, the collection now contains more than 3,000 paintings and sculptures; works done on paper are not recorded. Knowledgeable sources say the collection is worth between $25 million and $30 million. There are 60 paintings by Zaritsky, 30 by Yehezkel Streichman, more than 100 works by Pinchas Cohen Gan. Every period in the work of Raffi Lavie is represented, by more than 120 of his important works. There are some 20 rare and important paintings by Lea Nikel. Aviva Uri is represented by more than 60 paintings. One of the artists who has long fascinated Brown is Michael Druks; indeed, he owns more than 260 of Druks' works. "There is some sort of love affair between us, but I don't know Brown well," Druks said last week by phone from London. "He was there and helped finance the book and my show at Ein Harod two years ago. From the end of the 1960s, Shaya Yariv bought many works from me. I was one of the first artists who had a personal contract with him. He paid me a salary and I paid him back in pictures, some of which were acquired by Brown." Bar Or also mentions other leading artists who are represented in the collection, including Arieh Aroch, Igael Tumarkin, Henry Shelesnyak, Yair Garbuz and Yehiel Krize (from whose daughter Brown bought the artist's entire estate.

"The [most important] thing about a collector is how he chooses one picture out of 10," Yair Garbuz says. "Brown's collection includes painters who are found in most of the big collections in Israel, but in terms of the choice, what emerges is an exceptional personality. The problem is not to see Zaritsky in the Brown collection, or Krize or [Avigdor] Stematsky, but which Stematsky. And his choices are amazing. This exhibition has plenty of character. You don't ask who did the painting, but who collected and created this huge ensemble.

"In the old days, I would enter a gallery to watch how Shmuel Givon, a collector and gallery owner, sat in front of a new painting in order to get to know it, with enviable intimacy. Ami Brown has been sitting in his warehouse for years and learning art. He lives through art and is enclosed within art.

Buying behind Gaby's back

Amiel Brown was born in Tel Aviv in 1929. He grew up at 49 Ahad Ha'am Street, corner of Mazeh, next to the water tower, in what is now known as the Brown House. It was built by engineer Eliahu Brown in 1933 and designed in the International Style by the architect Zaki Chelouche. Eliahu Brown and his wife, Batya, were born in Ukraine. She studied law in Odessa and he was an engineering student in Belgium. She arrived in Palestine near the end of 1919 on the Russian ship "Ruslan," which symbolized the start of the Third Aliyah (wave of immigration). Eliahu, who arrived in Palestine around the same time, became a businessman. He had a gas station in Tel Aviv, and acquired land and orchards.

Mordechai Ardon

Their first child, Margalit, was born in 1924. A musician and pianist, she completed her studies in the Jerusalem music academy and in London. Amiel was born five years later. The youngest of the children, Uriel ("Aika"), was born in 1937. At the age of about four, Ami came down with scarlet fever and while he was recuperating fell out of bed and hurt his knee badly. In the next two years he underwent three serious operations and was left with a slight limp. He attended elementary school in Tel Aviv and high school in Jerusalem. Considered to be a bit over-energetic, he did not enjoy school. Apparently his teachers in Jerusalem did not enjoy him, either, and it was decided to send him and two other "special" boys like him to a prestigious boarding school in Whittington, England. The three sailed aboard the first British ship that left Palestine after World War II. Brown returned for a visit in 1948 before obtaining an undergraduate degree from the London School of Economics and then an M.A. in the United States.

His younger brother, Aika, became a painter and in his youth was considered no less charismatic than his brother. Ruth Cheshin, the long-time president of the Jerusalem Foundation, attended Gymnasia Herzliya with him, where, she says, the "schlemiels" were sent: "Aika was very rough-hewn on the outside but very sensitive inside. Ami has a lot of Aika, who had a domineering personality. Aika was anti-everything and not a good student, but he had a magnetic personality and a social circle formed around him."

In 1964, Yona Fischer curated a modest exhibition of young artists in pavilion 32 of the Orient Fair site in Tel Aviv.

"A day or two before the opening, Ami Brown stormed in, fell into my arms and burst into tears," Fischer relates. "Aika had been killed while driving from the Riviera to Paris, in order to pick up his wife and daughters and return to Israel for good. It was a dramatic meeting that was the start of a beautiful friendship that lasted for more than 40 years, until two years ago." (In Paris Aika did the black assemblage works incorporating doll heads, which are on display at the Ein Harod exhibition.)

"About a year later, after the Israel Museum opened, at Ami's request I was the curator for a commemorative exhibition in honor of Aika. It was the first solo show of an Israeli artist that I curated at the museum. In 1968, when Ami founded the Coca-Cola plant in Bnei Brak, he was the first - and this must be said to his credit - to display Israeli art in an industrial plant on a permanent basis. There was a sculpture by Yehiel Shemi at the entrance and contemporary art in each of the interior spaces. He chose everything by himself. Always by himself. This was before he made his big money, and he paid in installments."

Did he ever consult with you?

Fischer: "He would show me what he had bought, and if I said that maybe it wasn't such a good buy, he would get angry, saying: 'You don't understand anything.' It was the type of answer you get from someone who is impatient and self-confident in every realm. He bought endlessly and made his choices. He decides according to intuitive 'illumination.' One of his weaknesses is his uncontrolled desire to acquire art. Sometimes, with all his adoration of his wife, Gaby, he bought art behind her back: 'I bought this and this - don't tell Gaby.' She knew he was overdoing it and that he was incapable of setting limits. It's the obsession that exists in all collectors who find it difficult to curb their appetite. He handled each item he bought individually, from restoration to framing."

Does he ever sell collections ?

"A few years ago he sold his Judaica collection to a collector named Slifka who donated it all to the Israel Museum. There were dozens of works, which were exhibited about a year ago, accompanied by a catalog of selected works 'From the Alan B. Slifka Collection in the Israel Museum.' There was not the slightest mention of Ami Brown."

Didn't he also sell an art nouveau collection?

Hila Lulu Lin

"When I met him he collected art nouveau obsessively, read all the literature and was knowledgeable about every item in the collection. When the prices start to soar he decided to sell, because it was becoming a luxury to buy art nouveau. He approached me and said he was willing to donate the collection to the Israel Museum. That didn't happen, because the museum could not guarantee that the collection would be on permanent display. 'Go to hell,' he said, and sold it elsewhere" - to Sotheby's Europe. Brown also owned a collection of archaeological artifacts in the 1950s, which he did give to the Israel Museum.

A key chapter in Brown's dense biography is his political activity. From 1952 to 1956 he worked alongside Teddy Kollek in the Prime Minister's Office, dealing with the establishment of the Israel Museum, among other projects. In the 1959 Knesset elections Brown was part of the David Ben-Gurion campaign team. The prime minister traveled to remote communities, and Brown did the research on the economic profile of the places and their inhabitants. Brown was also active in Rafi, a party established by Ben-Gurion in 1965 following a split in Mapai (the forerunner of Labor). Among those who followed Ben-Gurion out of Mapai were Shimon Peres and the former chief of staff, Moshe Dayan. Peres' daughter, Zvia Walden, was 15 years old when her parents received from Brown a painting by his brother Aika. It is a dark work with a hangman's noose, which she read as a cry for help. She insisted that the painting be hung in the living room, and it is there to this day.

Brown was sometimes a guest in the Peres home on Shabbat, but he liked Dayan better. According to Dayan's widow, Rachel Dayan: "They had in common a love of antiques, a love of the homeland and of the history of the Land of Israel. Moshe was not one to have friends, but he and Ami occasionally met and there was a special closeness between them. They were both people of truth and spoke without pulling any punches. I am not familiar with Ami's intimate life, but Moshe was sensitive and gentle in his speech, while Ami was capable of being coarse. Moshe accepted him as he was, because those who love Ami love him for all time. He is dear to my heart."

The fizz biz

Shalom Seba

"In 1964," Hurvitz recalls, "when we did the merger between the pharmaceutical firms Assia and Zori, the latter demanded we sell 20 percent to a third party so that Assia - meaning us - would not have an absolute majority. We agreed to sell 20 percent to the Central Company. When we acquired Teva in 1969, Ami made a key contribution. It was a major move. We bought shares on the stock exchange and we needed financing and good advice about how to proceed. He is smart and digs into things, and were it not for him, it's doubtful that we would have succeeded in acquiring Teva."

Hurvitz adds that Brown "stole" Muzi Wertheim from Assia. "He asked me and said that I never stop people, but what will Muzi be - a soda jerk? It's more interesting in pharmaceuticals, no? But I agreed, and they built a very successful business." It was Brown who founded Coca-Cola in Israel (where Wertheim served as managing director and CEO), but there is no mention of this in the company's historical documentation.

Hurvitz: "Ami Brown would not allow Muzi Wertheim to mention his part with so much as a word. Nor does it say anywhere that Ami was in Assia-Teva, yet he was an important figure there. He is not a secretive person. He truly believes that a person should reach his potential at his workplace and after he leaves, to drop his connection. Many times, when we sat among friends and mentioned that he was in Assia, apart from a small smile that spread across his face, he said nothing. He decided one day to leave Coca-Cola and never went back to the office for even a quarter of an hour."

"I met Ami in April 1967 at the headquarters of the Central Company on Lilienblum [Street in Tel Aviv]," he recalls. "At the entrance to his office I already heard shouting. He was sitting with his feet on the desk, and at the side was his secretary, Alona Einstein [then the wife of singer Arik Einstein]. Muzi Wertheim was there, too. [Brown asked:] 'Do you know English?' I said I did and he asked me to converse with him in English. 'I will speak in whatever language I want and you will speak in whatever language I want,' he said.

"The line between genius and madness is quite a fine one, and if you ask him he will say that he is neither a genius nor a madman. He is a person of extremes. He is gifted with leadership and management skills. There is no hypocrisy with him. Either he loves and embraces you, or he hates you to death."

Moskovitz, today a businessman who moves between Miami, Israel, London and China, describes Brown as his mentor, who both taught him a great deal and imbued him with motivation. "He knows how to make people ambitious and teaches you how to manage. I was a 23-year-old kid and it took him time, but in the end he gave me total support ."

In September 1967 the three returned to Israel. Brown was appointed director general of Coca-Cola Israel. (In 1973, he sold a large part of his Israeli art collection and acquired 5 percent of the total value of the shares in Coca-Cola.) Wertheim became the sales manager and Moskovitz, the production engineer.

Production began in April 1968. After the operation was functioning well, Brown was invited in 1973 to manage several faltering company factories in the United States. He moved to Miami and took along Moskovitz, who worked with him for eight years in the American branches.

"When we went to Amsterdam for Coca-Cola Israel, you saw that he was familiar with all the museums," Moskovitz says. "He is an obsessive collector. He doesn't know the meaning of 'a little.' From the day I met him he had a huge art library. His art nouveau glass collection was the biggest in the world. I still see objects which used to belong to him in museums. After 14 hours of work, he'd call to me and say: 'Come and see what I bought."

Brown never talked about personal matters, but he knew what was happening in the lives of his employees. When Moskovitz divorced his first wife, Brown bought him a yellow Ford Caprice. "I was like the son you could shout at, but also wanted to look after. He was like God for me. Our ways parted in 1981. He went back to Israel after selling his art nouveau collection, and I established a consultancy firm in the United States."

One fell swoop

Quite a few people bet that Brown would not retire. They all lost. He became a pensioner and devoted himself to his collections, though he also remained active as a businessman in fields such as foreign securities. He had investments in science-based industries, and in 1984, as an official foreign resident, he invested about $1 million in Beeper, the communications company, through an investment consortium in the United States.

Abraham Naton

There was not one of his acquaintances (Eli Hurvitz, Rachel Dayan, the architect Ada Karmi Melamede, Prof. Uriel Reichman and many others) who did not say the following about him: "If I need something, and thank God I don't, I will turn to Ami Brown." That is how people feel about this man, who also severs relations in one fell swoop, irreversibly.

Yona Fischer, for one, does not understand why the ties between them were cut after 40 years, after Ami and Gaby Brown treated him with devotion when he suffered a stroke. Fischer says the break grieved him, but that he understands Ami and loves him. Brown has broken connections he once had, such as with the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; he does not loan works for exhibition at museums other than to Ein Harod. But when he loves, it's in a big way.

The question of what makes Ami tick has more than one answer. According to Shaya Yariv, his collection is Brown's great escape: "When someone collects like this, it's a type of madness, an uncontrollable urge. It's all passion; it's not calculated."

"His art collection is a Zionist act," says Prof. Uriel Reichman, president of the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. "He has an internal compass of values that guides him. [He is] the exact opposite of the average opportunist. When I resigned from the Knesset because it was not possible for me to receive the education portfolio, Brown gave me as a gift a landscape painting of the Land of Israel that I loved. I took that as a human gesture of friendship intended to express appreciation for the principled position I demonstrated by resigning."

"Ami goes for the jugular," Moskovitz says. "Since we parted I have stopped being afraid of him, but he is certain that I still work for him. That's fine. I understand him. He is a wonderful person and always at the bursting point and tempestuous. He is not afraid to die and therefore enjoys life. He takes no prisoners. He sees me wearing an expensive shirt and scolds me. He still drives a 1966 Buick. I used to bring him spare parts from the States. Why? Because you don't throw away what still works."

Amos Melamede, the late husband of architect Ada Karmi, was a friend of Ami's, and the two couples spent a lot of time together in New York.

The Browns live on Nordau Boulevard in Tel Aviv. "The artwork in their home is what they love," Karmi continues. "One painting vies with the next and they are all crowded onto the walls. They are both people who want to live the things they have, all the time. He is never bored. He talks about what occupies him and he lives it. He is a colorful person who built himself up."

Menachem Shemi

Karmi was supposed to design a museum in Be'er Sheva to which Brown would leave his collections. The municipality gave land and plans were drawn up, but no budget could be found for the upkeep of what would be known as the Gaby Brown Museum. Ami got uptight and the project fell through.

"It's a pity for collections like that to be broken up," Karmi says.

Rumor has it that Brown is now looking for a buyer for his collection and that he will donate part of the Israeli collection to the Ein Harod Museum of Art. But you never know.

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