“But is it interesting?” — Gertrude Stein
“Marny” Solomon never ceased to find Peter Lipsitt’s sculptures, of whatever mode or material, interesting. Frequenting his solo exhibitions at the Boston Sculptors Gallery, she would croon, “Oh, Peter, I lo-o-o-ve it!” and once again demand a piece for her living room or buffet. She and her husband Arthur K. Solomon, the distinguished head of Biophysics at Harvard Medical School, continued to purchase Lipsitt’s sculptures for two decades, even after cutting back on their pursuit of late 20th century American abstraction that, by 1985, they’d promised, along with the rest of their superb collection, to the Fogg Museum at Harvard University.
How did this admired collection of two highly regarded Cambridge art connoisseurs come into the Harvard Art Museums’ teaching galleries to join Harvard’s world-renowned holdings? Mariot F. and Arthur K. Solomon met in Boston in mid-life and married in 1972. He had had children by a previous marriage; she had none. Before they met, each had well-established collecting ambitions. Although more than 20 years apart in age, they bonded through their deep and scholarly love of art.
Marny had graduated in fine arts magna cum laude from Radcliffe. She subsequently pursued graduate studies at Harvard, working alongside both Harvard and Wellesley faculty. A frequent donor to the Fogg, her unerring eye for quality in Old Master European prints was legendary. Arthur, a brilliant young chemist, began collecting 19th century and Modern painting and sculpture as a young man in the 1930’s. While pursuing his doctoral and post-doctoral studies at Harvard before World War II, he picked up many art history courses and honed a Formalist appreciation of 19th and 20th century French paintings, drawings and sculptures under the Fogg’s Associate Director, Paul Sachs.