The Founder of the 65-Year-Old Pace Gallery Reflects on a Changed Art World

“It was all fascinating,” he said. “I learned about Impressionism. I learned about Egypt. I grew up at the Boston museum. I owe it everything.” (He has, as a result, donated several works of art to that museum, as well as to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to the Morgan Library, he said.)

He met his wife, Milly, in high school and they’ve been together ever since, married for 65 years.

Coming out of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Glimcher wanted to be Alfred H. Barr Jr., he said, the prominent director of the Museum of Modern Art. After his father died of cancer in 1960, Glimcher at 21 years old opened Pace Gallery in Boston — named after his father’s first name — and then Pace in New York in 1963.

He and his wife were personal friends of Alexander Calder and Alberto Giacometti. They raised their two boys (Paul is a neuroscientist) on art, bringing artists like Lucas Samaras and Louise Nevelson to the dinner table and taking the kids to museums every weekend.

“If you did not say something that those artists thought was really interesting — whether we were 11 or 12 — you don’t need to come to dinner next time,” Marc said, only slightly joking. “Contribute something or don’t come to dinner.”

When the Hollywood mogul Michael Ovitz started buying art in 1980, his friend the literary agent Morton L. Janklow told him, “There are a couple of guys you need to meet if you want to collect art and one of them was Arne,” Ovitz recalled. “I started talking to him almost every single day and still do.”

While some galleries pressure their artists to churn out work to meet demand, Glimcher has “respected that I needed more time to make shows,” said the artist Kiki Smith, adding that, “Regardless of what the market was doing or their momentary popularity, or non-popularity, he stuck with his artists.”