As part of the celebration of the LSU Museum of Art opening in the Shaw Center for the Arts fifteen years ago, our upcoming exhibition Living with Art: Selections from Baton Rouge Collections highlights artworks from nine local collections and celebrates the creative spirit that binds artists to collectors and collections to institutions. We recently spoke to two of the featured collectors, Jerry and Karen Ceppos.

About Jerry and Karen Ceppos

Jerry Ceppos has been in journalism and journalism education for 51 years. Before Baton Rouge, he was Dean of the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno; and the Executive Editor of the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News and Vice President for News of Knight Ridder, then the second-largest U.S. newspaper publisher at the time. He additionally served on the board of the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. Most recently, he is the former Dean of the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication and currently is a William B. Dickinson Distinguished Professor in Journalism.

Prior to her retirement in 1997, Dr. Karen Ceppos was an assistant professor of library and information science at San Jose State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Library and Information Studies from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Simmons College, and an A.B in Spanish from the University of Miami. A native of Miami, Dr. Ceppos spent nine years in the Boston area managing library collections and services at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, and Digital Equipment Corporation. She moved to the Bay Area in 1978 to develop business and technical information services for Intel Corporation. Currently she serves on the Board of Directors of Beth Shalom Synagogue and is a reading buddy with Volunteers in Public Schools in Baton Rouge.

Jerry and Karen Ceppos moved to Baton Rouge in 2011 when he was named Dean of the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication. They were both very interested in the LSU Museum of Art even before Jerry became a member of the LSU MOA Advisory Board. Read our interview below with these two avid collectors whose artwork is on loan for this exhibition.

LSU MOA: When and what did you first start collecting (anything), and when did it change or become an art collection?

Jerry: I bought my first piece (for $30 or so) at the fabled Coconut Grove Art Festival in Miami around 1975. It was a colorful scene on embossed paper. We visited the festival last February for the first time in thirty or so years.

Karen: I bought my first piece probably in 1977, in Marblehead, Massachusetts, when I lived in Stowe, Massachusetts. It was an Edna Hibel lithograph. I guess for me it became a collection when we started buying art together, before we even were married. We bought our first piece of art together in Toronto, where Jerry was attending an editors’ meeting in 1981.

LSU MOA: Describe the theme, purpose or guiding principle of your art collection (if any)?

Jerry: The guiding theme is that we buy pieces that we like. In my case, I buy pieces that make me smile. A secondary theme is that we enjoy buying pieces from local artists wherever we live. For example, from Louisiana we have a Clementine Hunter painting, an Ida Kohlmeyer Menorah, and a wonderful Becky Gottsegen sculpture.

Karen: We buy pieces that we like and we like buying from local artists. We also enjoy perusing the local art scene when we travel. We buy in all media.

LSU MOA: Do you have a favorite work of art in your collection and if so, why?

Jerry: My favorites are a wild and crazy mixed-media Menorah (pictured above) by New Orleans artist Ida Kohlmeyer and a 3-D pop-art display of a New York City newsstand by Red Grooms. I spent 36 years as a journalist, so the Red Grooms piece, Extra! Extra! Read All About It!, had been on my list in case it ever came up at auction. We actually bought both of these pieces by bidding on the phone to auction houses, a terrifying experience. I also am enjoying an unusual “crystallized” book that we just bought after seeing the artist’s work at the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Karen: My favorite pieces are our six Monroe Hodder paintings. One reviewer said her art is “bursting with saturated colors.” I agree. We bought our first Hodder around 1989 at an auction of the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, but she now is known internationally. In recent years, she has shown at galleries in London, New York, and San Francisco. In the late ‘80s, we saw another piece that we wanted at a gallery in Palo Alto, California, but decided we couldn’t afford it. Two years later, we visited Monroe’s home in Palo Alto during open studios. Monroe remembered us and said that she still had the piece we wanted, Richard in Karen’s Studio. It is my favorite piece in our collection. As her style evolved, I wanted to make sure I had a piece from every period. That’s when I knew I was collecting Hodders!

LSU MOA: Do you have a favorite artist, if so why?

Jerry: I can’t say that I have one overwhelming favorite, but I’ve enjoyed getting to know Ida Kohlmeyer’s work since we’ve been in Louisiana.

Karen: My favorite artist in the whole world is Van Gogh, but we don’t have any of his pieces.

We are grateful for all of the lenders and sponsors for making this exhibition possible. Join us for the opening reception of Living with Art: Selections from Baton Rouge Collections on March 5th from 6-8:30 p.m.