It is not unusual for me to contact an auction house like Christie’s or Sotheby’s requesting information about an object that passed through its doors. Similarly, if an object that was once on loan to the Carlos is being put up for sale by the owner, the auction house will reach out to the museum to request and verify information. What I have come to understand and appreciate over the years is the vast knowledge and experience that the individual staff members of the auction houses possess.
While prepping for an upcoming sale, Maxwell Murphy, Associate Specialist at Christie’s New York, came across a 1959 catalogue for an exhibition of The Phil Berg Collection at the Los Angeles County Art Institute Galleries. Recognizing an Assyrian inscription that is now in the Carlos collection (2006.9.1), Maxwell emailed our curator Ruth Allen to share the reference. I had honestly not spent much time on this object, but I was thrilled to learn of this new provenance information.
The Carlos purchased the inscription from an anonymous donor who purchased it from the December 9, 2005, Antiquities sale at Christie’s New York. The inscription had been consigned for sale by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). According to LACMA, the inscription was gifted to that institution in 1971 by The Phil Berg Collection. We had already noted in our database that the relief was exhibited at LACMA as part of The Phil Berg Collection in the spring of 1971, but with Maxwell finding the 1959 catalogue reference we were able to push the date of Berg’s ownership of the inscription back over a decade. I then began wondering about Phil Berg and why he had an antiquities collection.
Phil Berg (1902-1983) moved to Los Angeles in 1924 to work as a talent agent in Hollywood’s burgeoning film industry. He represented such stars as Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, and Frank Capra. Berg would create a “package deal” for his clients. He would find a script, a director, and the actors, and the whole package would be sold to a producer. This method proved wildly successful, and Berg was a millionaire before the age of 30.
During World War II, Berg served in the US Navy, and that experience shifted his priorities in life. He told a reporter from the Daytona Beach Morning Journal in 1959, “I just decided there were more important things in life than worrying … if Clark Gable’s mustache should be trimmed 1/8th of an inch”. Berg retired from Hollywood in 1948 to pursue his passion in archaeology. Every January, Berg and his wife Leila Hyams (herself retired from Hollywood) would board a ship and set sail to meet up with archaeologists at sites in Mexico, Greece, Iraq, and Egypt. The archaeological excavations benefited from the large amounts of money Berg was able to pay for the experience of feeding his mind and spirit.
Because Maxwell reached out with information found through his research, I was prompted to learn more about Phil Berg. I now know that Berg received a portion of the finds from certain excavations, while other objects in his collection were purchased on the open market. Stay tuned to see if these new avenues of research uncover any more information about this history of our Assyrian inscription!
