Alice Weston, Cincinnati arts patron and a visual artist, dead at 93

The Enquirer
Alice Weston

Alice F. Weston was that rare combination of arts patron and artist. Weston, a photographer whose name is on two local galleries, died Monday at age 93.

Weston and her late husband, Harris, gave money to help establish the Weston Arts Gallery at the Aronoff Center for the Arts. They endowed the director's chair of the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), where Alice was a lifetime trustee.

The Westons' names also are on one of the contemporary art galleries at the Cincinnati Art Museum. The gallery, on the museum's third floor, houses large scale works in a space once shared by Frank Duveneck and Clement Barnhorn, noted local artists in the early 1900s.

Weston, who served on the Cincinnati Art Museum's acquisition committee into her 90s, bequeathed most of her post-war art collection ranging from the 1940s to the 1980s to the museum.

Cameron Kitchin, the Cincinnati Art Museum’s director, called Weston "one of our most inspirational lights in Cincinnati and at the Art Museum.  Alice has personally been a guiding force for me and for so many in Cincinnati. … She was a truly extraordinary person who made us all better by her presence."

Weston's "keen and nuanced understanding of the role of art in people’s lives has had a deep impact on the path of this organization and the discourse of contemporary arts in Cincinnati," said Raphaela Platow, the Alice and Harris Weston director and chief curator of the Contemporary Arts Center. "I am proud to carry Mrs. Weston and her late husband’s name in my title and am inspired every day by the bold course they have set for this organization I am privileged to lead. The CAC will forever feel the impact of Alice Weston’s presence and will proudly continue her legacy."

Weston, whose medium was photography, said he didn't differentiate between collecting and creating art.

“They are two parts of me,” the East Walnut Hills resident told former Enquirer arts reporter Janelle Gelfand in a 2016 interview. “I can’t evaluate them that way. My own art and my collection of art are two aspects of my personality.”

The Aronoff's Weston Gallery, at the southeast corner of Seventh and Walnut streets, has featured the work of more than 1,000 local, regional and national artists. It supports the development of professional and emerging artists in the region.

A new exhibit, Emanate, opens Friday and coincides with this year's Blink Festival. It features light-based works that include phosphorescent painting, neon sculpture, illuminated photography, video and projection. Nine of the 17 artists with work on display are from the Cincinnati region.

"On the eve of launching the Weston’s 25th exhibition season, we are reminded of the tremendous contributions Alice made to the Cincinnati arts community as a patron, collector, artist, and arts advocate," the gallery said in a statement Wednesday.  "While we are saddened and shocked by her sudden death, we believe Alice would have wanted us to carry on with our Opening Reception for Emanate on Friday night from 6 to 8 p.m." The show is a "fitting tribute to someone who was a beacon to us for the arts."

"It’s the leading gallery showing what’s current in local and regional artists," Weston said in the 2016 interview. "A lot of people attend their openings, and they are popular. When I go there, I don’t recognize people, because they are all much younger than me. I’m so glad that that’s what’s happened."

The Weston Art Gallery is a perennial host location for the annual Cincinnati Canstruction competition held each spring. This picture is from 2004.

The gallery's schedule always includes Cincinnati Canstruction, a hybrid design- build event each spring organized by the Cincinnati chapters of the American Institute of Architects and the Society for Design Administration that benefits the Freestore Foodbank.

The Westons funded the space for the visual arts in 1996, just as the Aronoff Center was being built. They were important donors in the arts center project. But to Alice Weston, something was missing.

"The Aronoff was a purely a performing arts center, and I thought it should include a visual component on the order of Lincoln Center in New York City," she said.

The couple was told that with a small addition to their gift, the group spearheading the arts center would carve out a portion to be an art gallery. Weston said she had no input into the directing or curating of the space, but that "I had a bias toward contemporary art."

Alice Weston at the 1997 opening of the  Photo-Op exhibit at the Contemporary Arts Center featuring photographs by Tim Burton, Dennis Hopper, David Lynch and John Waters. At the event with Weston were Waters (left) and Charles Desmarais, the then-CAC director.

Weston, a graduate of Walnut Hills High School and Vassar College, started collecting art in college. "I went to New York a lot, and saw the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (now The Guggenheim), and that abstract art was a big influence. This was a time when the United States became the leader of international art, just after World War II. Back home, there was a show of abstract expressionists at the CAC. I noted that the 20 Jackson Pollock paintings all belonged to one person. Then I realized I didn’t have to make art; all I had to do was buy it. The CAC was also a big influence because they showed the latest and best."

Alice Weston with her photo, "Clues to the Sublime," in 2016.

She set aside a little money for art purchases. "It was too late to buy abstract expressionist art – it was too expensive," she said. "By chance, a dealer sent me a sculpture of a 'Box of Shirts' by Claes Oldenburg. I wasn’t moved by it, but it was the very next movement – Pop art – and it only cost $500. I bought it. The art movements changed almost every year. I understood what was going on. By buying early, I was able to develop an outstanding collection of the major movements."

Then there was her own art. An environmental artist, she contributed about 100 architectural and landscape architecture photographs to "Architecture in Cincinnati: An Illustrated History of Designing and Building an American City," by Sue Ann Painter with Beth Sullebarger and Jayne Merkel (Ohio University Press: 2006). Subjects range from American Indian earthworks to the building projects on the University of Cincinnati campus.

A photo shot by Alice Weston for a book on Cincinnati homes. The picture is of the postmodern Lloyd Taft house in Indian Hill, designed in 1978-81 by New York architects Charles Gwathmey and Robert Siegel.

She received an award from the Cincinnati Architectural Institute for her 300 photographs in "The Great Houses of the Queen City," published in 1997 by the Cincinnati Historical Society, with text by Walter E. Langsam.

Weston's artistic interests crossed many genres. Weston was a friend and patron to composers of classical music such as the late John Cage. She has commissioned several works from the late Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Gunther Schuller. In 1996, her solstice and equinox photographs hailing the arrival of the seasons were projected over the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Music Hall as the orchestra performed Schuller's "An Arc Ascending," an atmospheric piece in the style of a Debussy tone poem.

A Vegetable or Mineral? #4, from Crystal Clues to the Sublime, a microphoto of a crystal by Alice Weston.

Weston's microphotos of crystals were part of a 2012 FotoFocus event at the CAC featuring music by Susan Botti.

In January 2016, the Cincinnati Symphony gave the world premiere of Schuller's "Symphonic Triptych," his final symphonic work, which Weston commissioned. The composer died in 2015.

"It was bittersweet because he had just died," she said. "But he wrote me a lovely note (earlier), saying he appreciated my giving him the opportunity, and the music just flowed out of him."

Weston was born in the Philippines, the daughter of Alex and Corinne Frieder, whose family owned a successful cigar company in Manila. A 2014 documentary, "Rescue in the Philippines," tells the sensational but little-known story about how the five Frieder brothers, whose office was in Downtown Cincinnati, helped to mastermind the rescue of more than 1,300 Austrian and German Jews who were likely destined for Nazi death camps. They were given jobs in the family's cigar factory in the Philippines.

Their rescue plot was hatched over poker games on the family's porch, poker games that Weston recalled watching as a child. The documentary was produced by Weston's daughter, Barbara Sasser.

Weston was preceded in death by her husband, a daughter, Virginia, and two sisters. Edna Lichtig and Louise Behr. In addition to Sasser, she is survived by her partner James Rauth, daughter Carol Roberts, six grandchildren and two great grandchildren. Visitation will be at 9:30 a.m. Friday at Weil Kahn Funeral Home, 8350 Cornell Road, Symmes Township, with services starting at 10:30 a.m. Donations can be made to the Contemporary Art Center, The Cincinnati Art Museum or a charity of your choice.