This documentary introduces the viewer to the lives of Herb and Dorothy Vogel, two New Yorkers living on modest incomes who were able to amass one of the most important contemporary art collections in the United States. Herb, a postal worker, and Dorothy, a librarian, married and decided to live off of her salary and spend his on artwork. They began collecting in the early 1960s when little attention was paid to Minimalist and Conceptual art. They would visit artists’ studios and most often bought directly from the artists themselves.

The artists appreciated their opinions and their eye for art. As Lawrence Weiner said, “Art is the way we understand our relationship with objects” and the Vogels seemed to really get that notion. The movie is an interesting look into the mind of a collector. You can see where collecting really can become a disease. With the low salaries they had it is fascinating to see the sacrifices the Vogels were willing to make. For people who have millions of dollars the “disease” of collecting is not that big an issue, but for the Vogels, they gave up their lives in order to ensure that this art had a proper home in their tiny one bedroom apartment in Manhattan (now in the permanent collection of the National Gallery in DC). Artists who appear in the film are: Richard Tuttle, Lynda Benglis, Pat Steir, Bob Mangold, Chuck Close, Lawrence Weiner, Sol Lewitt, and James Siena to name a few.