WASHINGTON D.C. — Rain battered the windshield as Jeff Curry and René Alvarado drove steadily north along I-40 toward the nation’s capital.
Both men were exhausted.
They departed Texas at 8 a.m. May 11, 2019, with an irreplaceable collection of artworks carefully stowed inside their 15-foot U-Haul. To ensure their cargo arrived safely at its destination, Curry and Alvarado were advised to travel across the United States — from West Texas to the other side of Virginia — in as short a time as possible.
In 24 hours, they stopped four times to refuel and once to eat at a gas station restaurant.
The nearly 1,600-mile journey undertaken by the San Angelo men would lead them past the White House and the Washington Monument, past embassies and Secret Service checkpoints and into one of the most elite neighborhoods within the District of Columbia.
Getting there wasn’t easy.
“The weather was bad for most of the trip,” Alvarado said. “It was hard to see the road at times with all the rain … but the excitement of this project kept us going.”
Once upon a thousand miles ago, the skies were merely overcast and rest an option, but east of Dallas the weather turned and torrential downpours jostled the U-Haul across several states.
“We couldn’t sleep,” Alvarado said. “We helped each other watch the road.”
About 9 a.m. Sunday, May 12, they arrived in Washington D.C.
Europe embraces a small West Texas museum
Several days later, Curry and Alvarado were standing outside a sprawling 5-bedroom mansion on the outskirts of downtown D.C. A calm East Coast breeze left the morning air smelling crisp.
The contents of the U-Haul had been unloaded into the mansion’s garage. Joining the pair were San Angelo natives, Mario Castillo and Taylor Velarde, as well as Howard Taylor, San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts director.
With six hours to get a job done and the clock ticking, the five quickly walked up two short flights of stairs and knocked on the front door of the official residence of Stavros Lambrinidis, the European Union Ambassador to the United States.
The Ambassador and his wife, in a bold gesture of international goodwill, had opened their home to 30 pieces of artworks from Texas and around the world — ceramic pottery, paintings and sculpture — all on loan from the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts for the next year.
Not the Smithsonian, not the Guggenheim, nor the Getty … but works of art from a small West Texas museum in San Angelo (population: 100,000+ people), were selected by a foreign ambassador willing to showcase Texas culture in his home and later to some of the most influential people on the planet.
Four paintings lent by Alvarado — a globally renowned artist living in San Angelo — would be hung in the residence as well.
“Wow,” Alvarado said, as he, Curry, a museum board member, and Velarde, the son of a museum board member, donned gloves to protect each painting and ceramic sculpture while they were carried one by one up the stairs.
Inside the main foyer, Castillo and Taylor stood over a circular table. Stacks of paperwork were laid out with information about each piece of artwork, its history and possible arrangement in the ambassador’s home.
The 1959 oil painting New Heights by Chapman Kelley, which depicts a boy climbing to the top of a door-frame in a sunlit room, would hang above a couch in the main living area.
Burnished pottery with intricate black, white, and red patterns by Damián Quezada had a special place reserved inside a brightly lit display shelf near a grand piano.
A massive oil painting, Horse in Open Landscape, by Alvarado would command a prominent view on a wall facing the living area’s main entry way. It featured a white horse standing in a field of colorful plants offset by gray skies and a roaring ocean surf. The horse’s coat was a mesh of golden, geometric patterns, and a purple butterfly appeared to balance on a flower clutched in the horse’s mouth.
Weeks ago, Castillo and the EU ambassador’s wife, Phoebe Kapouano, had reviewed dozens of pieces and she selected works of art created by Texans and other artists from the 1920s to the present. The pieces ranged in styles from surrealism, minimalism, American regionalism and impressionism.
“Careful with that one,” Taylor said, as a sculpture of an artist’s paint bucket, A Gallon of Art, was brought into the room and gently set upon an adjoining table. “Those brushes may look real, but they’re completely ceramic.”
Outside, Curry and Velarde unpacked paintings small enough to be easily carried by one person to larger painted canvases 6-feet in width. From storage crates, they unearthed ceramic sculptures buried in Styrofoam peanut shells. Each was carried gently up two flights of stairs into the ambassador’s home.
Agents with the Secret Service stationed near the EU residence would occasionally glance at the men going back and forth into and out of the garage, before returning to guard checkpoints in the Kalorama neighborhood.
The multi-million-dollar mansions shaded beneath Kalorama’s tree-lined streets are occupied by some of the most recognizable and powerful names in the world: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have a home around the corner, as does Fox news host Chris Wallace, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Amazon-founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos.
In a nine-bedroom mansion three houses from the EU residence live Michelle and former President Barack Obama — entering the street requires Secret Service clearance and traffic is blocked on both sides with cement barricades.
Hours after hanging paintings and readjusting ceramic sculptures to just the right height and angle, works of art on loan from Texas were ready to be viewed by the ambassador and his wife, and whoever they invited into their home.
“Hey, we did it!” Castillo said after the last painting was hung, and high-fived Alvarado.
Past visitors to the EU residence have included Supreme Court justices, officials with the Trump Administration, state governors, international bankers, heads of media, and famous artists, all of whom might soon become more familiar with the people and culture of Texas through its art.
The endeavor behind sharing paintings and ceramics from the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts with the EU was largely thanks to what one museum official called “neighborly diplomacy.”
Castillo deemed it “cosmic intervention.”
“It definitely didn’t happen overnight,” Castillo said. It had taken decades.
‘Neighborly diplomacy’ leads to first-of-its-kind art sharing program
Texas art made its way into the home of Europe’s top diplomat to the United States with help from Castillo, a San Angelo native and lobbyist who moved to Washington D.C. in 1972.
Castillo, a former school teacher who helps underprivileged Texas children, is the next-door neighbor to Ambassador Lambrinidis, and every EU ambassador for the past 23 years.
In February, while visiting his European neighbors, Castillo said he noticed a lot of empty wall space and learned the EU residence was interested in acquiring art and “might welcome an exhibition of ceramics and paintings under the right circumstances” according to a museum news release.
Castillo sent a signature early morning text to Taylor, whose interest was piqued at the opportunity.
“I was very excited by it,” Taylor said. “One of the leading embassies in the world has art from our hometown. You can’t beat that.”
While American art has appeared in embassies and the official residences of U.S. ambassadors around the world since the Kennedy Administration, officials said it was practically unheard of for American museum art to be loaned to a foreign ambassador’s private residence.
Granted, not everyone was receptive to the idea.
“What’s a San Angelo?” asks East Coast reporter
A small museum in West Texas getting to share its art with the European Union Ambassador appeared to baffle one journalist at an East Coast newspaper, who telephoned Castillo directly.
He remembers the conversation well.
“’What’s a San Angelo?’ this reporter asked me,” Castillo said. “He wanted to know why the ambassador didn’t choose works of art from bigger, more well-known museums, like in New York, or better yet, why the ambassador didn’t stick with European art?”
But Lambrinidis didn’t need a mirror; he wanted a window.
The humanities have a life-altering power, Castillo emphasized. Every form they take becomes a bridge you can walk across to experience the customs and cultures of people that were hitherto strange. Art creates a spark of curiosity — then finds common ground, taking the foreign and making it familiar.
What better way to encourage diplomacy and dialogue with another culture than by trying to understand the emotions behind the art its people value most?
“In the end, he didn’t get it,” Castillo said. “He said he ‘was sorry’ but there was no story here he could see, then hung up.”
Castillo remains bitter about that phone call. The Lone Star state is changing as it continues to grow its influence in the world.
“Texas isn’t all cowboys and Indians and oil wells,” Castillo said. “Texas has a diverse identity. It’s multifaceted, multicultural … just look at what (the museum) has to offer.”
European Union Ambassador sees ‘remarkable things’ in Texas
In April 2019, Stavros Lambrinidis presented his credentials as the European Union Ambassador to the United States, and enthusiastically supported the project of hosting art from Texas.
The 57-year-old diplomat from Athens, Greece was no stranger to the U.S. having attended Amherst College and then Yale Law School in the 1970’s. Lambrinidis worked as an international trade lawyer in Washington before returning to his home country to serve in the army. Eventually, he got into politics where he built a career forging cooperative alliances and championing Human Rights.
From his D.C. office perched high above K Street at the European Union Embassy, Lambrinidis explained what appealed to him about the art.
“My residence has European art, but my decision in this particular case was to do something that ambassadors don’t often do,” Lambrinidis said.
“Very often we go around the country telling people (in my case), why they should like Europe — why Europe is important to you.”
“In Texas for example, European companies have created about 550,000 jobs through trade and investment,” Lambrinidis said. “Texas itself exports close to $50 billion dollars in goods and services to Europe.”
“But what I wanted to do in my home was to send a different message: why Europe likes the U.S., and why Europe likes particularly Texas.”
Lambrinidis pointed out the Texas artists whose names now hang on his walls: Duran, Kelley, Brodnax, Chinookoswong, Granados, Livingston, Lammers and Nix.
“We celebrate so many joint histories and roots that come through millions of our people that have grown up in Texas, settled in Texas, settled elsewhere in the U.S. Many of them are of European descent,” Lambrinidis said.
“Their names originate from Ireland, Scotland, France, Spain… In many ways for those artists being exhibited at the EU residence in Washington is like returning home,” Lambrinidis said.
EU home has link to San Angelo’s pioneer past
On the subject of joint histories, Lambrinidis noted the European Union residence itself and the city of San Angelo share a common link.
“There is a connection between my home in Washington and San Angelo that many people don’t know,” Lambrinidis said. “A former owner of my house was Douglas Dillon,” a former U.S. Ambassador to France and Treasury Secretary.
“What most people don’t know, at least here in Washington, is that Dillon’s grandfather was Polish; he left Poland and … settled in San Angelo,” Lambrinidis said.
Historical records show Dillon’s early pioneer relatives were named “Lapowski,” a Jewish family who operated a dry goods store in San Angelo on East Concho near Oakes Street in the 1880’s as well as another dry goods store in Abilene.
“That kind of very strange connection makes our emphasis on cooperation with the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts even stronger,” Lambrinidis said.
Beyond that connection, the diversity of the pieces installed in Lambrinidis’ home left quite an impression on the ambassador.
“As a Greek — given my ancient Greek heritage — (the) ceramics sing to me,” Lambrinidis said. “I have a vase inspired by Asian art and another inspired by Texas-Latin heritage … and yet they tie so well together,” Lambrinidis said.
His diplomatic background working with human rights, especially women’s rights, drew him to one artwork in particular.
“There’s a fantastic painting with three women just sitting on a bench looking at life,” Lambrinidis said. “And you wonder … are they happy where they are, would they like to achieve something more? If so, have they been allowed to? All these questions… Art can invoke anything in you…”
The ambassador asked for a view of Texas, and the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts was happy to provide.
“I’m impressed by their generosity — all the talented people in Texas and in San Angelo is frankly remarkable.”
John Tufts is a journalist covering stories in West Texas. Send him a news tip at JTufts@Gannett.com.
