The Rembrandt Research Project and the Collector

MEGHÍVÓ

Alfred Bader a neves amerikai kémikus, filantróp és műgyűjtő vendégünk lesz Budapesten, és előadást tart az MTA Felolvasótermében

november 11-én szerdán, délután 4-órakor

"The Rembrandt Research Project and the Collector " címmel.

Az előadást Pálinkás József az MTA elnöke vezeti be.

Alfred Bader jeles személyiség, aki 1924-ben Bécsben született, történelmi és kémiai tanulmányok után a Harvard egyetemen szerzett PhD fokozatot kémiából. Az Aldrich (majd Sigma-Aldrich), a világ legnagyobb finomvegyszer gyárának alapítója és korábbi elnöke, aki saját erejéből lett milliárdos. Ma elsősorban műgyűjteményével, rejtőző művek felderítésével és restaurálásával foglalkozik. Különösen érdeklik a régi holland mesterek. Számos tudományos és oktatási célú alapítvány finanszírozója. Alfred Bader anyai ágon a Dessewfy és Serényi arisztokrata családok leszármazottja.

Az előadás illeszkedik a Magyar Tudomány Ünnepe alkalmából tartott előadások sorába a tudomány és művészet témakörében.

Závodszky Péter

Alfred Bader

Alfred Bader (born 28 April 1924 in Vienna, Austria) is a Canadian chemist, businessman and collector of fine art.

Early years

Bader's father's family was of Czech Jewish descent; his mother was a Catholic Hungarian aristocrat. He fled from Austria (via the Kindertransport) to England in 1938 (at age 14) to escape Nazi persecution. However, in England he was suspected of being a Nazi sympathizer, and in 1940 was deported to Canada to be interned at a camp in southern Quebec. He obtained release in 1941and began working on admission to a university. Denied admission at McGill University because its Jewish quota was full, he was accepted at Queen's University, in Kingston, Ontario, which operated without quotas. He studied engineering chemistry, then continued his education at Harvard University.

Education

• Engineering Chemistry BS, Queen's University (1945)
• History BA, Queen's University (1946)
• Chemistry MSc, Queen's University (1947)
• Chemistry MA,HarvardUniversity(1949)
• Chemistry PhD,HarvardUniversity(1950)

Business

Bader was employed as a research chemist by Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. in 1950, remaining with PPG until 1954. While pursuing this career, he sensed the need for a small reliable company dedicated to providing quality research chemicals (at that time Kodak was their only supplier, and that large company seemed to show insufficient consideration for small and independent researchers), and as a result he co-founded the Aldrich Chemical Company in 1951, with the title of Chief Chemist (the company operated out of a garage). By 1954 he was able to buy out his partner to become sole proprieter and company president, at which time he took his leave from PPG. In 1975 the Aldrich Chemical Company merged with the Sigma Chemical Corporation to become the Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, the 80th largest chemical company in the United States. Bader was president (later chairman) of the combined company.

In an unexpected corporation upheaval Bader was ousted from the company in 1991. Initially shocked by this turn of events, he soon realized it gave him more time to pursue his artistic desires and his philanthropy. A few years later, however, the corporate official who had engineered his ouster was himself ousted from the company, and Bader was invited to return as chemist collector of paintings for covers of the company journal, Aldrichimica Acta (which Bader had founded)

Art connoisseur and philanthropist

Bader stated, "I am an inveterate collector. It may be a sickness, and it began with stamps at eight, drawings at 10, paintings at 20, and rare chemicals at 30." He collected stamps as a youth when his finances permitted. He purchased his first oil painting in the Canadian internment camp: his portrait, painted by a fellow inmate, for a fee of one Canadian dollar.

In 1962 Bader founded Alfred Bader Fine Arts, a gallery, art collection, art-verification, art-discovery effort which has brought to light many previously-forgotten masterpieces, and has made them available both for purchase and for exhibitions. In the process, Bader himself has become a respected art appraiser and expert; he has given more symposia on the subject of art than on the subject of chemistry.

While involved with Aldrich Chemical, Bader contributed numerous articles on art subjects to the company's journal, and printed full-color copies of works from Dutch masters.

A lifelong collector, Bader has devoted himself to the study of art history and collection of many fine paintings.

Bader is well-respected at Queen's for his numerous generous donations, both financial and in-kind. He is the generous donor of the 15th century Herstmonceux Castle, as well as Old Masters artworks such as two Rembrandt paintings. In honour of his numerous contributions, in 2004 Queen's renamed a campus road from "Queen's Crescent" to "Bader Lane". Other Queen's namesakes include "Bader Hall", the residence at the International Study Centre at Herstmonceux Castle, the Alfred Bader Fellowship, and the Bader Chairs in Southern Baroque Art, and in Northern Baroque Art.

In 1995 Bader published his autobiography, Adventures of a Chemist Collector, which details his experiences from Nazi-era refugee, to chemist magnate, to fine arts connoisseur. In 2008 he published his second autobiography, Chemistry & Art - Further Adventures of a Chemist Collector.

Dr. Bader has donated significantly to universities; to Queen's he has endowed professorships and student scholarships and has donated valuable paintings. As mentioned above, his most significant donation there was the gift and renovation of the fifteenth-century Herstmonceux Castle (Sussex, England), which now serves as Queen's Internatonal Study Centre. For Victoria University (Toronto) he funded construction of a performing arts theater, named in honor of his wife. He is presently establishing a similar performing arts theater site at Queen's University, which will also be named in honor of his wife.

Bader's contributions often have the aim of bringing diverse human elements together. He has financed projects in libraries both in Israel and in Arab communities, and has helped children of Roma gypsies in Kosovo and Prague.

Publications

• These, métaphore, chimere: Symposium francophone pluridisciplinaire sur la dynamique esthétique dans l'art, la folie et la science (co-author with Gérard Salem), P. Lang 1986, ISBN: 326103548X
• Adventures of a Chemist Collector, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995 ISBN: 0-297-83461-4
• Further Adventures of a Chemist Collector, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2008 ISBN: 978-0-297-85512-5

Honorary degrees and honors

• DSc from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (1980)
• DSc fromPurdueUniversity(1984)
• DSc from University of Wisconsin-Madison (1984)
• LLD from Queen's University
• DUniv fromUniversityof Sussex (1989)
• DSc from Northwestern University (1990)
• DSc fromUniversityof Edinburgh (1998)
• DSc fromGlasgowUniversity(1999)
• DSc fromMasarykUniversity(2000)
• American Chemical Society, Milwaukee Section - Award (1971)
• Royal Society of Chemistry - Honorary Fellow (1990)
• Royal Society of Arts - Fellow
• MilwaukeeArt Museum- Guest Curator (1976, 1989)
• Winthrop-Sears Medal (1980)
• WisconsinAcademyof Sciences, Arts & Letters - Fellow
• CzechAcademyof Sciences - J.E. Purkyne Medal (1994)
• American Chemical Society - Charles Lathrop Parsons Award (1995)
• Universityof Vienna - Honorary Citizen (1995)
• Chemical Institute of Canada - Honorary Fellow (1996)
• BoronUSA Award (1997)
• American Institute of Chemists - Gold Medal (1997)
• American Chemical Society - "One of the top 75 Distinguished Contributors to the Chemical Enterprise in the Last 75 Years" (1998)
• Commander of the British Empire (1998)

Personal

When asked his greatest achievement, Bader answered that it was twofold, one for his business achievement, and the other was meeting and marrying Isabel. His romance is detailed in his second autobiographical book; it involved a shipboard meeting and courtship, some 400 love letters, a twenty-five year separation, and finally a happy and fruitful marriage. He has two sons, David and Daniel, who now serve as half-owners of the Alfred Bader Fine Arts (descendants of Bader's onetime partner in that gallery, Marvin Klitsner, now own the other half).

About Alfred Bader Fine Arts

What makes this art gallery so different from most galleries, is that it is so non-elitist.

Most galleries frown upon customers who don't want to spend thousands of dollars.  Here we have fine works priced at hundreds.  We have museum quality works priced at thousands.  Also, we have an array of 15th to 19th century works with quite a few realistic works by contemporary artists. All that is lacking is abstract art - we do not understand it.

About Dr. Alfred Bader

"I am an inveterate collector. It may be a sickness, and it began with stamps at eight, drawings at 10, paintings at 20, and rare chemicals at 30."

-- Alfred Bader

Alfred Bader's love affair with fine art began during the difficult pre-World War II years, when, as a young boy in Austria, he began collecting stamps: "I wandered from dealer to dealer, and scanned the newspapers for collections for sale, hoping to earn a little money, most of which I used to buy basic foods." Given money to purchase a camera for his tenth birthday, he bought an Old Master drawing instead, which he has since donated to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Although a Jewish refugee from the Nazis, Bader was interned with other "enemy aliens" in a Canadian POW camp, where he bought his first oil painting, a portrait of himself painted by a fellow prisoner, for the price of one dollar.

In 1951 Alfred Bader founded Aldrich, later Sigma-Aldrich, the world's largest supplier of research chemicals; Bader was able to combine his passion for fine art with his distinguished career as a chemist when Aldrich began using Old Master paintings from his private collection, often alchemical in theme, on the covers of its catalogs and journal, the Aldrichimica Acta. Articles on art history and alchemical paintings from "Our Chemist Collector" soon appeared in the catalog as well, penned anonymously by Bader. "Man Surprised," Bader's very first Old Master painting, purchased in the early 1950's and believed to be a portrait of Adriaen Brouwer, graced the cover of Aldrich's catalog of the Alfred Bader Library of Rare Chemicals and may be seen on this website's home page.

This early appreciation for fine art became a life's mission, including years of devotion to the study of art history with preeminent experts, art dealers, collectors, and historians of Old Master paintings.  In 1962 he became both collector and dealer when he created "Alfred Bader Fine Arts." His love of 17^th century Dutch and Flemish painting, particularly portraits and Biblical or historical themed-works by Rembrandt students, grew to include the work of Italian, French, and German painters and contemporary artists. Bader enjoys the thrill of discovery; he prefers to come upon "dirty old paintings" in antique shops which, thanks to his dedicated research and restoration, reveal themselves to be great, forgotten works. "Alfred Bader Fine Arts" has earned an international reputation, selling to such esteemed museums as the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery of Scotland, and the Getty. Bader has curated special exhibits, become a renowned lecturer, and was named a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London.

Alfred Bader's commitment to the "ABC's" of his life - Art, Bible, Chemistry - has enriched the world. But looking back sixty years, this "Chemist Collector" simply observes:

"As I wander from art dealer to art dealer in London, I realize that this is not very different from my [stamp] dealing in 1938...except that paintings are more fun."