Fine Art Collection Profile >
After several years of effort, Anne W. Brown and Rusty Munn completed the design and construction of their “forever home” in the scenic Four Corners region of southeastern Utah, where the state touches upon Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. It was writing and music that brought this couple together in their 60s, but especially art of the American West, which both have collected for decades.
As a small child on South Carolina’s coast, Rusty dreamed of heading west to see the snow-capped mountains depicted in a painting his grandfather owned. During his adolescence in Oklahoma, a field trip to the Woolaroc Museum introduced him to some of the great cowboy painters and sculptors, particularly Charles M. Russell and Joseph H. Sharp. From then on, Rusty became a voracious reader of art history.
As a toddler in her Michigan bedroom, Anne looked up at the walls and wondered at the framed prints made by E.I. Couse; though usually associated with the Taos Society of Artists, Couse was originally from Saginaw, Michigan. After her family moved to the Cleveland area, Anne encountered the broader world of art, ranging from high school classes at the Cleveland Institute of Art to exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where her aunt volunteered as a docent, to family trips to Taos and Santa Fe. Having taken graduate courses in art history, Anne attended an auction in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1973 and spent far too much of her income on her first artwork. Created by her favorite historical artist, Amedeo Modigliani, the signed and numbered lithograph marked the start of her collection of figurative art.
Also in 1973 — but 2,200 miles away, in Cody, Wyoming — Rusty purchased his first artwork from what is now the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. At first he kept the reproduction of Charlie Russell’s “Free Trappers” rolled up, but later he had it expertly framed and still cites it as the first of his many cowboy scenes depicting America’s 19th-century fur-trapping boom. Soon Rusty started visiting exhibitions at Utah State University, where he bought paintings from instructor Glen Edwards and (then) student James Morgan, both still among his favorite artists.
Today Anne and Rusty own a broad range of paintings in oils, acrylics, and watercolors, as well as sculpture, prints, drawings in pastels and charcoals, ceramics, photographs, and batik works. The artists represented in their collection include Mark Edward Adams, Vanya Allison, Terri Axness, Mark Bangerter, Arlene Braithwaite, Tim Cox, Vadim Dolgov, Mark Eberhard, Glen Edwards, Tammy Garcia, Frank Hagel, Dale Harding, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Brad Holt, Charlie Hunter, Lance Johnson, Donal Jolley, Jim Jones, Janet Lever-Wood, Lucy M. Lewis, Noel Logan, Robert Martinez, William Matthews, Curt Mattson, Fitz Maurice, James Morgan, Dan Namingha, Maggie Neal, Peter Nisbet, Michael Ome Untiedt, Dustin Payne, John Potter, Kevin Red Star, LaQuincey Reed, Stephanie Revennaugh, Dave Santillanes, Bill Sawczuk, Gil Scott, Hannah Barron Spencer, Kate Starling, Gregory Stocks, Kathleen Strukoff, Matt Suess, Ed Tewanema, Carolyn Thome, Kathryn Turner, Echo Ukrainetz, Ron Ukrainetz, Michele Usibelli, Michael Weinberg, and Jean Reece Wilkey.
Over the years, Anne has intersected with a wide array of individual artists, museum benefit auctions, and gallery exhibitions through service as a trustee or committee chair at various organizations including Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center, the Laguna Art Museum, Scottsdale Artists’ School, Zion National Park Foundation, Salmagundi Club of New York, and National Sculpture Society, and also through her longtime role as associate publisher of Fine Art Connoisseur and PleinAir magazines.
Almost all of the living artists Anne and Rusty “own” have become acquaintances, and so the couple are always eager to visit studios around the country to reconnect, especially since their recent retirement allows them to travel more. Rusty has advised artists such as Michele Usibelli on the tack appearing in her horse paintings, and Anne offers tips to many artists on their career moves.
As they planned their new house in Utah, Rusty and Anne prioritized the artworks by including glassed built-ins and pale gray walls to accommodate not only paintings and sculpture, but also a large collection of Navajo rugs. Throughout the process, they consulted more experienced collector friends such as Mary Linda and Jay Strotkamp, Marlene Whitlock, and Tim and Cathi Newton, who showed them that creating a home gallery environment with occasional rotations means they’ll never have to stop acquiring.
Anne and Rusty note that, in the field of painting, representation “seems to have taken a back seat to abstraction, even at the Western auctions we enjoy attending.” That’s one reason they have started buying more sculpture, which looks great alongside their Hopi kachinas, Acoma ceramics, and Navajo rugs — and doesn’t require them to remove any paintings from their already crowded walls.
When asked to select just two artworks to illustrate this profile, Anne and Rusty struggled, admitting it was a bit like picking a favorite child. In the end, they chose “Soulmates” (at top), which Mark Edward Adams sculpted after volunteering at a therapeutic equestrian center. There he observed the strong bonds forged between horses and riders, a theme that resonated with both Anne and Rusty. It is now the focal point of their dining room table.
“Sioux Single Tail,” Ron Ukrainetz’s large polychromatic engraving of a Plains Native American headdress, was commissioned for the new house by Rusty, who had already picked out a spot where Utah’s abundant sunlight would not blanch the black clayboard surface. Like the artist, Anne and Rusty are intrigued by the idea that the feathers and furs a Native warrior wears signify key attributes of his soul — a nod to the unity of humankind and nature the collectors have attained with their beloved new home.
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