As young newlyweds in 1975, Joseph and Nancy Keithley shared a love of art as they unknowingly were just beginning to collect what would become a historic gift to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2020. But the couple had several decades of learning and acquiring to do first.
While working in his first job as a manufacturing engineer for Eaton Corp’s truck components’ Group, Joseph took a different path than his fellow employees by decorating his small office with vibrantly colored modern art.
“When I bought them, I was clueless who the artists were, but they were kind of neat,” he says with a laugh. “While everyone else displayed sample axles and transmissions in their offices, I learned years later that I had hung posters of Magritte and Helen Frankenthaler paintings.”
Although they are uncertain about what happened with the two abstract works that Joseph later gave to Nancy for her office at Ernst & Young, they spent the next 40 years replacing them with many classical and contemporary masterpieces. They knew immediately that they possessed complementary sensibilities and preferences for art.
“Nancy had Royal Copenhagen plates and flatware that were wonderful, elegant European designs, so I could see how her aesthetic and my aesthetic were perfect for one another,” Joseph says. “So in a way that’s how we started, and we began to put paintings on the walls.”
In 1979, they had an opportunity to live in London for a year while Nancy worked as a consultant and Joseph as a salesman. They lived in a furnished flat, but they spent many hours visiting London galleries and became comfortable traveling to Europe in search of art. When they returned to Cleveland, they moved into a house on Fairhill Road that had an English Cotswold feel to it, so they began to appoint it appropriately with art purchased at Bonfoey and Vixseboxse galleries.
In the mid-1980s, a friend held a small party to introduce them to two artists who went on to become good friends and part of their growing art collection: Joseph and Algesa O’Sickey. That friendship became a turning point for the Keithleys, as they began to realize the joys of knowing the contemporary artists they wanted to collect and learning about the gallerists who represented them, especially in New York, London and Paris, where they began to travel for auctions. However, they knew they still had much to learn about what art is collectable.
“We began to tap into the curatorial staff at the Cleveland Museum of Art,” Joseph informs. “It was surprising how willing they are to work with people who are interested in art, so we had the benefit of traveling with them and growing intellectually, and we had more money to spend.”
“It was truly educational to look at paintings with them and see what they saw,” Nancy says. “That was invaluable.”
The Keithleys grew increasingly involved with CMA, with Nancy becoming a trustee in 2001 and serving as chair of the Accessions Advisory and Collections committees from 2006 to 2011. She is currently a member of the Executive, Buildings and Grounds, and Collections committees.
In 2013 they established the Nancy and Joseph Keithley Institute for Art History at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Museum of Art, which not only provided additional resources to support curatorial and art scholarly education, it also advanced inclusive initiatives, artistic exploration and community engagement for nearly all University Circle institutions.
In the fall of 2019, they began serious talks with Director William Griswold about contributing the majority of their collection. In 2020 their monumental gift to the Cleveland Museum of Art of 114 artworks worth more than $100 million served as a catalyst to elevate the museum’s impact and accessibility.
“Joe and Nancy Keithley are among the greatest supporters of art and culture in Cleveland – and beyond,” William M. Griswold, director, The Cleveland Museum of Art. “Their commitment to the Cleveland Museum of Art, their foundational contribution to our joint program in art history with Case Western Reserve University, and their transformative gift to the CMA of their entire collection of paintings and other works of art in early 2020 place them squarely in the firmament of our community’s most outstanding philanthropists.”
Though they continue to purchase art, especially Asian ceramics, the Keithleys still enjoy looking at the high-resolution facsimiles CMA replaced their donated collection with, and Joseph says they admire them every day.
“When you have the art in your house, you get to spend more than two minutes looking at it,” he says. “You see it in different lights, different moods for yourself, and it begins to be really interesting, particularly, that’s what separates good art from banal art because you keep learning and seeing.”