Legendary Art Historian Jean Stern to receive his fourth Lifetime Achievement Award
By MARRIE STONE
In 1991, Joan Irvine Smith (philanthropist, arts patron and heiress to the Irvine family fortune) strolled into a Los Angeles gallery looking to buy art. She planned to open The Irvine Museum the following year. The owner, George Stern, suggested she go upstairs and visit his brother, Jean, who had an office there. That encounter would prove fortuitous not only for Stern and Smith, but for a generation of California art enthusiasts. In Stern, she recognized the right man to lead the way, with his decades of experience in the art world, his congenial personality and his passion for sharing wisdom.
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Courtesy of Jean Stern
Joan Irvine Smith and Jean Stern on the opening night of The Irvine Museum, January 14, 1993
Stern served as the Irvine Museum’s executive director and curator for 27 years, delivering hundreds of lectures, penning dozens of books and becoming the preeminent international authority on California Impressionism (a term coined by Stern himself). He assisted Smith in showcasing California’s artistic heritage.
“Mrs. Smith told me I was the only art historian she enjoyed reading because I didn’t have footnotes everywhere,” Stern said. “I just wanted to teach. Not to other art historians, but to ordinary people.”
It’s the rare scholar who’s honored with multiple Lifetime Achievement Awards. This month, Stern will receive his fourth. The Laguna Beach Arts Alliance (LBAA) plans to bestow the honor at their 17th Annual Art Star Awards ceremony on Wednesday, April 23. He previously received this award from the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association (2013), the Plein Air Painters of America (2014) and Plein Air Magazine (2014). In 2017, Stern received the prestigious Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture.
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Courtesy of Jean Stern
Stern upon being awarded Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Consul in March 2017
The four-time Lifetime Achievement Award winner is a worthy recipient, having spent his life steeped in the arts. Stern and his two brothers learned to appreciate art at the knee of their father, a Hungarian immigrant who sold paintings in Morocco, New Orleans and Los Angeles. The boys were born in Morocco, with French as their first language. When the family immigrated to the U.S. in 1955, their father first opened a gallery in New Orleans before relocating to the West Coast.
“We were all drafted to work at the gallery after school and got to know a lot about art and painting,” Stern said. “We ended up going three different ways, but eventually all of us became art dealers.”
His father’s gallery, which specialized in 19th century French paintings, gave Stern ample time to learn what makes a work of art successful. “I did nothing but look up painters and look at art, deciding why I liked certain paintings and understanding what makes a painting good or bad,” he said.
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By the time the boys entered college, they were all eager to open a family gallery, but their father declined the offer to come work for them. Instead, youngest brother George put himself through law school by dealing art out of his car and apartment, older brother Louis opened a gallery in West Hollywood and Jean earned his master’s in art history from San Diego State. Jean also pursued post-graduate studies in American painting at UCLA. Eventually, even George would find his way, full-time, back into the art world.
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Courtesy of Jean Stern
(L-R) Jean, Louis and George Stern
But Jean never wavered from his passion for art. For more than a decade, he worked at Petersen Galleries in Beverly Hills, becoming their executive director, guiding their focus on late 19th and early 20th century California art, and overseeing their success at becoming the first gallery in the country to develop a national clientele for this style.
His keen eye for California Impressionism resulted in an extraordinary opportunity for the Petersen Gallery. “I was approached by a member of the Bischoff family. Franz Bischoff had died in 1939 and his estate had stayed dormant for years. They finally wanted to sell,” Stern said. “We bought 85 paintings. Not long after, the Sam Hyde Harris family approached us. Harris was also a well-known California painter. Then we dealt with the family of Alson Clark, another important eastern artist who came to California. We bought four or five estates, or parts of them, and published an illustrated catalog which made them easy to learn about and easy to accept because there were lots of color photographs of these gorgeous paintings. Then the movement took off.”
Stern curated retrospective exhibitions of these and other notables, continuing to publish illustrated catalogs and articles to educate the public on the importance of including California in the impressionist canon.
“I published an article in 1980 labeling this period of art between 1910 and 1940 as ‘California Impressionism.’ That got me into a lot of trouble with art history people because they didn’t think California was part of the impressionist movement,” Stern said. “But then an important art historian wrote a book on American Impressionism and included a lot of our California paintings and the artists we dealt with. That was great vindication.”
Stern remained with Petersen until they closed in 1991.
So, what good fortune when Smith crossed Stern’s path that year. At The Irvine Museum, the two became a powerhouse team. Stern curated three exhibitions per year for the museum. He also coordinated a series of traveling exhibitions, visiting more than 70 venues throughout the U.S., including New York, Chicago, Charleston and Memphis. Each traveling exhibition was accompanied by a fully illustrated book. In 2002, The Irvine Museum organized Masters of Light, the only exhibition of California Impressionism to tour Europe, with venues in Paris, Krakow and Madrid.
“Mrs. Smith was very open to getting these exhibitions done,” Stern said. “We never had a fundraiser, which made us different because every museum has to raise funds. But because she was wealthy, she supported everything we did.”
The result was a steady production of high quality, expensive books offered to the public and educational institutes at affordable prices. Together, Smith and Stern published more than 15 books for their various exhibitions.
“It was important to her to collect the paintings that depicted her family’s ranch,” Stern said, noting that those early Laguna painters like William Wendt and Anna Hills were painting on Irvine Ranch property. “The family was very concerned about water security and the ecology of the land. Mrs. Smith put pressure on the city to make sure there would always be water available for the growing city of Irvine. She was just a remarkable person.
“I always characterized my relationship with her as a bit of a bobblehead doll saying, ‘Yes Joan, yes Joan, yes Joan.’”
The two would often work late into the night. “I’d be writing books and she’d be dictating. We’d stop, have a little snack and I’d tell her some humorous story. Then we went back to work. So many times, I didn’t get home till 11 p.m. or midnight,” Stern recalled.
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Courtesy of Jean Stern
Joan Irvine Smith and Jean Stern at The Irvine Museum
In 2016, Smith gifted her collection to UCI and Stern “retired.” But retirement looks a bit different for Stern than for most of us. Three years ago, he became a curatorial fellow for the Laguna Art Museum (LAM) and still regularly lectures at both the Hilbert Museum and the Bowers. The monthly “Jean Stern Presents” series at LAM draws large audiences with events frequently sold out. He’s curated several of their shows, including the current exhibition on Donna Schuster and the wildly popular 2023 show on Joseph Kleitsch.
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Courtesy of Laguna Art Museum
LAM Executive Director Julie Perlin Lee and Jean Stern at LAM’s Director Circle event in 2023, with Stern as the recipient of the museum’s William Wendt award
Stern has a knack for plucking hidden gems like Schuster from obscurity and igniting the public’s enthusiasm for their work. No surprise, perhaps, that his other passion is collecting rocks, fossils and gems. Stern is known around LAM for his whimsical lessons to the staff’s children about coprolite (otherwise known as “dinosaur poop”). His charm, sense of humor and facility for teaching, as well as his deep knowledge of the subject matter, has benefited the Southern California arts community for more than five decades. And hopefully will continue for years to come.
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Courtesy of Laguna Art Museum
Jean Stern poses with a favorite from the Joseph Kleitsch show
Join the LBAA on Wednesday, April 23, as they anoint Stern with his fourth Lifetime Achievement Award. For more information about the event, visit their website here. To learn more about Stern’s curation of the current Donna Schuster exhibition at LAM, visit their website here. Stern will present a talk about Schuster on June 7.
