Passion Project

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Gerd Metzdorff at home in 2020. (photo by Christos Dikeakos)

The love of art can inspire anybody to become a collector. That’s the message to take away from Per Diem: The Gerd Metzdorff Collection, a show that highlights lithographs, photographs, sculptures and other art collected over four decades by Metzdorff, a Vancouver flight attendant.

Metzdorff started collecting in the 1970s. His job took him to the world’s art centres, where he visited galleries and art fairs during layovers. Instead of spending his per diem on meals, he saved the money to buy art, slowly amassing a sizeable collection. Metzdorff died in 2020. The show, on view at Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver until May 8, is both a memorial and a lesson about how easy it is to become an art patron.   

“I named it Per Diem because this is really about letting people know that they are part of a cultural landscape and you don’t have to be wealthy to be part of it,” says curator Lisa Baldissera.

Metzdorff, she says, was a casual collector of coins, stamps and vinyl records before he turned his attention to art. When he did, he pursued it with gusto, devouring articles about artists and their work, talking to gallerists and curators, and visiting artists in their studios. He was driven by an incurable curiosity. Once he made his choices, there was no turning back.  

If he liked it, he would buy it, says Metzdorff’s long-time friend Grant Mann, who helped organize the show.

“It didn’t matter if the artist was hugely successful or extremely well-known,” says Mann. 

“There’s a certain amount of gate-keeping that goes on in the art world and Gerd certainly wasn’t one of those people.”

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Ian Wallace, “In the street, Cologne Series III,” 1985, 2005

photograph transferred to canvas, 60” x 80” each (collection of Gerd Metzdorff)

The exhibition spans a range of styles and materials. American artist Dan Flavin’s single blue fluorescent tube, Untitled (to Janie Lee) One, hangs next to Vancouver artist Ian Wallace’s photographic mural In the Street, Cologne, Series III. Brooklyn-based Canadian artist Jason McLean’s mixed media Pennies in a Stream shares space with American artist Vija Celmins’ silkscreen Waves. More than 70 pieces are on display.

Metzdorff loved Pop Art. Mann recalls his friend being invited to a dinner in New York. Andy Warhol was going to be there so Metzdorff stopped at a deli on the way.

“He was really on the search for a can of tomato soup,” says Mann. “But all he had was a can of cream of chicken and he was really nervous that Warhol would say, ‘No, I’m not going to sign it.’” 

But Warhol did and the autographed label is part of the exhibition, along with works by Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Jeff Koons, and, of course, Warhol.

“He was enjoying the whole experience,” says Mann. “He knew his role as a collector. He loved to watch the development of an artist over the years, seeing how their work would evolve and grow. He loved the ladies: Cindy Sherman, Judy Pfaff, Lynda Benglis and their work (all represented in the exhibition) and thought they deserved far more press than they were getting. He was focused and he was frugal, and he saved his money because this is what he wanted.”

Metzdorff shared the joy that art brought into his life by helping, in 1977, to found Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Society, which introduced local curators and collectors to various artists and their works.  

While the price of art has risen, Baldissera says it’s still possible for collectors from modest backgrounds to help emerging artists.

“It means so much to a young artist to have that interest and endorsement in their work, especially at the beginning,” she says. 

Metzdorff, she adds, was really aware of that. ■

Per Diem: The Gerd Metzdorff Collection at Griffin Art Projects from Feb. 4 to May 8, 2022.  

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