Herb & Dorothy

Herb was a postal clerk and Dorothy was a librarian. In the early sixties, when nobody was paying attention to minimalist and conceptual art, they started buying work by unknown artists. The rule was simple: all of Herb's salary went on art and they lived on Dorothy's. Over forty five years they fitted more than four thousand pieces into a one bedroom New York apartment. In the end they gave the whole collection to the National Gallery of Art; as government employees themselves, they liked the idea of the work staying public. Megumi Sasaki's documentary follows the two of them at home and in galleries. It is a film about collecting being a matter of attention rather than money.