Barbara Tober

Barbara
Tober
Chairman, Museum of Arts and Design

Barbara Tober is president of Acronym, Inc., a venture capital firm that invests in art-related projects including The Guild Publishing Company and Guild.com, publishers of The Sourcebook for Architectural and Interior Art, a directory of artists' commissioned architectural, liturgical, and interior design works. Prior to her assiduous involvement in the art world, Tober spent more than four decades in corporate advertising and magazine publishing, most notably at Condé Nast Publications where she was editor-in-chief of Brides magazine for nearly 30 years.

Tober, a collector, journalist and longtime patron of the arts, was appointed to the Museum's Board in 1988. Elected chairman in 1994, she played a decisive role in stabilizing the Museum's finances, and in acquiring its future home at Two Columbus Circle. Tober championed the Museum's expansion-with Chairman Emeritus Jerome Chazen, President Nanette Laitman, and Director Holly Hotchner, the Museum's venerable "Gang of Four"-and helped lead the effort to find a larger facility that would properly represent MAD's growing field. Her foundation twice funded the Museum's educational arts project for children nationwide called Quilts Across America.

Highly regarded and admired by many, Tober is the Museum's "guardian angel." She is passionate about the field and committed to building the world's foremost resource center dedicated to the study of materials and the processes that artists use to transform them. She is also one of the Museum's most generous benefactors and made a substantial seven-figure gift to the Capital Campaign, in addition to her extraordinary annual operating support. To celebrate Tober's legacy, the Museum will be naming the Grand Atrium at Two Columbus Circle in her honor.

COLLECTING PHILOSOPHY

Tober still vividly recalls her first acquisition. At six, she watched an artist heating a glass rod over a Bunsen burner, creating miniature figurines for sale at a gift ship in her hometown of Summit, New Jersey. Intrigued by the process and in love with the objects, she became hooked as a collector. (Tober spent her weekly allowance on figurines for her curio cabinet). She has been interested since in the skills of craftsmanship. She described her postgraduate life in a West Side Manhattan apartment "no bigger than a Pullman car", but decorated with exquisite handmade objects collected locally and during her travels. Today, a visit to Tober's Manhattan apartment reveals works of art that embody her continuing love of objects that are at once "beautiful and beautifully made".

BECOMING INVOLVED AT MAD

In the early 1980s, Tober recalls receiving an unusual "coat shaped" invitation to a gala fundraiser for the Museum. The invitation design was modeled after a felted, woven, appliquéd coat by Jean Williams Cacicedo. Intrigued, she attended the gala, purchased the Cacicedo coat, and learned more about the Museum's mission and leadership. (She later donated the coat to the Museum.) She was asked to join the Board in 1988 and became even more excited by the Museum's work and the future of the field. In 1994, she felt she had taken Brides magazine as far as she could and left the publication. In a coincidence of timing, she was asked to chair the Museum's Board, and embraced this new challenge with a zealous enthusiasm and determination that continues unabated.

Tober's early years as chairman were bumpy. The Museum was on shaky financial grounds and not widely known outside the U.S. She had to open doors and start fresh. A quick study, she traveled frequently to meet counterparts at other arts institutions and quickly felt gratified at her progress. Her journalist's mind savors the opportunities to learn from artists and curators. Of her many accomplishments, she prizes her work on the MAD executive team that recruited Holly Hotchner, then director of the New York Historical Society, to become MAD's director.

VISION OF TWO COLUMBUS CIRCLE

Tober's excitement over the Museum's future home is electric. The new Museum, with its greatly expanded space, will offer a fully integrated visitor experience for a growing audience. As Tober explained, for the first time in its history, the Museum will dedicate an entire floor to showcasing the diversity of its permanent collection. Another entire floor will house education programs. Tober is especially pleased that in its new neighborhood, the Museum will be the first multidisciplinary institution to offer arts-in-education, hands-on art making, an artist-in-residence studio program within the museum experience, which will connect process and creativity to the art, and numerous after-school programs to the diverse residents in the Clinton/Midtown West community and beyond.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS AT MAD

In the early 1990s, Tober was visiting the Monique Knowlton gallery in downtown Manhattan when she saw a work by Sherry Markovitz, known for ornamented animal trophy heads of deer, elk, moose and wild cats. Tober admired a striking red-beaded stag head and spoke with the dealer about commissioning a work. The dealer put Tober in touch with Markovitz. The artist suggested creating a blue-beaded stag, but blue was not one of Tober's favorite colors. Rather than squabble over color, Markovitz reassured Tober that she would like whatever Markovitz chose, but firmly stated it would be last of its kind. Two years later, the artist phoned; the work was completed. Tober said the Museum was about to open a bead exhibition and offered to lend the stag for the show and had it shipped to the Museum. She took a pre-installation peak of the beaded works. There, Tober saw the stag head for the first time and it was a blend of neutral forest shades and tiny coral roses. She was overwhelmed by its beauty and the remarkable skill involved in creating it. The moment-a tribute to the artist and the integrity of her work-was poignant, visceral and memorable. In keeping with Tober's legacy of patronage, she is gifting the Markowitz stag to MAD.