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In 1951, she opened one of Texas' fi rst modern-art galleries, the Betty McLean Gallery, and hired artist Donald Vogel to run it. Stanley Marcus told her she was crazy to risk it, but he came to the opening party anyway, along with many of the city's art elite. The lineup of works on the gallery walls would take your breath away today: Picasso, Monet, Chagall, Dufy, Homer, Pissarro, Renoir, Vuillard, Cassatt. It was an ambitious effort. But Dallas wasn't ready for modern art and the gallery closed in 1955. "I mean, there was a Picasso for only a few thousand dollars — a seated nude," Betty told Willers. "People in Dallas back then would rather buy Cadillacs!" Her sophisticated eye didn't go unnoticed. Raymond Nasher, who'd seen a $6,000 Brancusi sculpture at Betty McLean's gallery, was so impressed with her fearless acquisitions that he decided to move to Dallas from Boston and invest in modern art. That bargain-basement Brancusi? It sold decades later for $15 million. A year after the gallery closed, Donald Vogel opened Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden, transferring over Betty's artists and contacts. "Because of Betty's connections, Valley House started out in an amazing way," says Donald's son Kevin Vogel, who now owns the gallery with wife Cheryl Vogel. Despite being wheelchair- bound and hard of hearing during the last few years of her life, Betty spent almost every Saturday she wasn't in Newport at Valley House, soaking up the art, and asking questions about the artists. "It was like having a wonderful aunt visiting," says Kevin. With her own gallery shuttered, Betty looked to New York for inspiration. In the 1960s, she and Lupe Murchison helped open the innovative Park Pl ace Gallery in Manhattan, a forum for experimental ideas that drew avant-garde artists, poets, and composers. A hothouse for emerging talent, the gallery was home to abstract expressionist sculptor Mark di Suvero, whom Betty took under her wing, introducing him (continued from page 55) Clark Gable, Betty's former husband Tom Blake, and Gary Cooper, 1950s Betty's childhood home, Almondbury, in Philadelphia, 1926. BLAKE BETTY B O LD F l A V O R S NO f e a r i n g s re s tau r a n t. c o m 2 1 4 . 9 2 2 . 4 8 4 8 2 1 2 1 M c K I N N EY AVE da llas tx 75 2 0 1 Privat e eve n t s Cat e ri n g B O LD F l A V O R S NO f e a r i n g s re s tau r a n t. c o m 2 1 4 . 9 2 2 . 4 8 4 8 2 1 2 1 M c K I N N EY AVE da llas tx 75 2 0 1 Privat e eve n t s Cat e ri n g