St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center to sell Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge art collection
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2012:
St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center to sell Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge art collection
MADISON, New Jersey–Hoping to raise $500,000 toward the estimated $2.3 million cost of completing a shelter that has already cost $10 million and taken more than three years to build, St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center president Heather Cammisa on January 22, 2012 announced the forthcoming sale of 150 works from founder Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge’s extensive art collection. “It was an emotional decision to sell the art-bittersweet,” Cammisa told Daily Record of Parsippany staff writer Cara Townsend.
“We have a shell, but not a single square inch is functioning space yet,” Cammisa said of the building project. “We plan to outfit one segment this spring. To do more, we’ll need more funds.” Cammisa came to St. Hubert’s in July 2010, about midway through the building project. Cammisa previously headed the Jersey Shore Animal Center in Brick, New Jersey, where she directed a multi-year renovation, and was New Jersey state director and Gulf Coast spay/neuter project leader for the Humane Society of the U.S.
The items to be sold are to be exhibited before sale from February 11 to March 24, 2012 at the William Secord Gallery in New York City. Opened in 1990, the Secord Gallery specializes in 19th century art depicting dogs.
“The favorite niece of oil industrialist John D. Rockefeller, Dodge was a collector, philanthropist, dog show judge and breeder of champion dogs at her Giralda Farms Estate in Madison,” recalled Townsend. Founding the Morris and Essex Kennel Club in 1927, Dodge authored books about the cocker spaniel and German shepherd breeds. Her dogs won at prestigious showst 30 sterling silver trophies hat are among the items going up for bid.
In 1939 Dodge converted the former Giralda Farms Estate hunting kennels into the St. Hubert’s Giralda animal shelter. The shelter was directed from inception by Ed Sayres Sr., the father of current American SPCA president Ed Sayres Jr., who grew up helping at the shelter. Ed Sayres Jr. later headed St. Hubert’s Giralda himself as first stop in a long career as a humane society executive.
St. Hubert’s Giralda received Dodge’s 109 dogs after she was declared incompetent in 1963, and–after two years of litigation–inherited the art now up for sale following Dodge’s death in 1973, at age 91.
