The Collector’s Collector: Teresa Vasu DeChant

Curator and collector Teresa Vasu DeChant has been building significant art collections for several decades, primarily for the Cleveland Clinic and MetroHealth Medical Center, as well as for individual corporate clients, private collectors—and herself.

“I have always enjoyed building collections,” she says. “Some of them were value-based, picking artists that sold at Sotheby’s and Christie’s that might go up in value and that I had seen go up in value, and I did some of that for my collection.”

However, Teresa always considers aesthetic as well as financial value. She did so for her own collection and for the Cleveland Clinic collection: while serving as an account executive from January 1982 until September of 2003, she was responsible for building the institution’s fine art and healing art collection of more than 3,000 works in all locations.

“I interspersed that collection and my collection with pieces I absolutely loved and thought were healing and uplifting,” she says. “So the goals for my own collection went back and forth. Many times I did buy for long-term value, but there were times that something beautiful came up that I couldn’t pass on that I may not think will necessarily go up high in value, but the visual value is worth every bit of an Andy Warhol.”

For many years, a central part of the aesthetic for Teresa lay in the healing properties that art possesses, especially when the work features a natural setting centered on flowers, trees, clouds, or bodies of water. She had initially been inspired in the early 1980s, while working as an interior designer for corporate and medical facilities at IKM/SGE Architects in Pittsburgh, by an article about how nature was the best healing art for high-rise buildings.

Teresa then began to apply that concept to the interior designs she was creating for healthcare and corporate facilities. Her research indicated similar findings regarding the power of healing art for pediatric and geriatric care and other medical departments, so she began to incorporate it in her healthcare designs.

“The article explained that nature is a cure for stress, so images of nature in high-rise buildings can create a less stressful environment for the tenants,” Teresa recalls. “I utilized that article for some time. Then when I moved into curating art in healthcare facilities, I thought about that and using nature images in a healing art, so I came up with a healing art program, first at MetroHealth then at the Cleveland Clinic.”

Before entering her professional career, Teresa grew up in Avon when it was still “farm country,” and  graduated from Magnificat High School. She attended The Ohio State University for a few months but didn’t like the experience, so she transferred to Ohio University. After earning her BS in interior design (magna cum laude) in 1978, she became director of interiors, Granzow & Guss, Architects, Inc. in Columbus for about five years.

After her one-year stint at IKM/SGE in Pittsburgh, she returned to Cleveland and planned interior design projects with a corporate architect. In June 1980, she founded and incorporated her business, De Chant Art Consulting, LLC, and shifted her focus to art consulting. She did corporate art projects for prominent architect Donald Hisaka.

“When I did corporate, I was adding value to their collection that they could eventually sell it if they wanted to at some point,” Teresa says. “So I picked more prominent artists that sold nationally along with good regional art. I always felt it was important to put money back into the economy, no matter what project I did.”

At the grand opening party of a consulting client’s Cleveland financial office, Teresa met someone who contributed to her healing art evolution.

“There was a gentleman who turned out to be the architect for MetroHealth,” she remembers. “He had a vision to do art and healthcare like we were doing in the corporate offices, because in that position I did the entire turnkey project, and he loved the idea of incorporating the artwork architecturally and not trying to match paintings from Kmart.”

Teresa began to perfect her healing art approach for healthcare settings at MetroHealth for a couple years before assuming her account executive role, a contractor position at the Cleveland Clinic in 1982. At that time, the Clinic did not have much artwork on display except in the boardroom.

She remembers having lunch with Jim Lees, after he retired as COO of the Clinic, and his wife Charlotte Lees, a prominent artist in her own right who has been close friends with Teresa for more than thirty years.

“Jim said, ‘Charlotte kept telling me that MetroHealth looked better than the Cleveland Clinic,’” she recalls with a laugh. “At that time, the Clinic had zero art, other than in the boardroom, although I do remember when I came onboard Abbott Laboratories had given them a 1945 Milton Avery painting, [The Reader and The Listener], that had been at the Cleveland Museum of Art with an estimated value of half a million dollars. It was worth more than a million by the time I left, and then the Clinic sold it at auction.”

Her comrade in art considers Teresa the ultimate professional when it came to the curation of the various collections at Metro and the Clinic.

“Her main goal was to make life tolerable for the patients, to pick out pieces that they could relate to and that would enhance their experience in the process of being treated,” says Charlotte, adding for full discloser Teresa had placed a few of her works at Metro and some of the Clinic satellite facilities. “She was always searching for new and interesting techniques and expressions and for pieces that would inspire the viewer and serve as healing art.”

In addition to building the Clinic’s significant collection of artwork, Teresa developed several special art exhibitions. One of the shows, Women In Art, intermingled women artists with artists like Alex Katz, who did images of women. She also curated a kinetic art show that included works from The Art Institute of Chicago. The art program she developed for the Intercontinental Hotel on the Clinic’s main campus helped enable the hotel to achieve five-star status.

Two of her favorite special exhibitions were built around artwork from NASA, which holds a special place in her heart because her father was an aerospace scientist there who helped pioneer supersonic transport, so she had spent a lot of time at NASA Glenn Research Center over the years. One of the exhibits featured astronauts’ echocardiograms used by Clinic physician Peter Cavanagh, then head of biomedical engineering, to study the astronauts’ health while they were in space.

Today, Teresa counts many space-related photos from those NASA exhibitions in her personal collection. Her passion for aerospace innovations and her father’s and Cleveland’s role in the development of the space program came full circle when she launched Titans of Space, LLC in April 2019. The nonprofit organization, which she serves as president, is dedicated to preserving the rich legacy of NASA engineers in Cleveland. Currently, she is developing a series of videos to capture that rich history of Cleveland’s contributions to the field of space exploration.

“I have a lot of memories and photographs of my father and then all of the people I’ve worked with for the Titans of Space project,” she says. “Herb Ascherman took beautiful photos of them all, and they are still very dear to me.”

Several favorite works from the private collection that Theresa displays at her home include lovely nature scenes, such as Aalto Vase by Ora Sorenson, Water Lilies by Andrea Hahn, Botanical Garden Trellis by Eddie Mitchell, and Holden Ponds, Water Lilies by Ron Johnston.

Although she no longer actively collects art for herself, Teresa still does a significant amount of appraisal and consulting work to advise other collectors and guide them in the acquisition or sale of their artworks.

“The quality that distinguishes Teresa from lots of other people, not just people that are involved in the field of art, is she genuinely has a heart and compassion,” says her long-time friend Donald Iannone, DDiv, PhD. “She’s been helpful to my wife Mary and I with some of our art at home in terms of placement, and she has always been a great resource willing to give of her time personally and otherwise.”

Drawing on her extensive expertise and experience in collecting art, Teresa offers several pieces of advice for private collectors: Attend CMA shows and watch the museum’s recent acquisitions. Use the museum library to research pieces that you have. Join some of CMA’s specialized groups such as the painting and drawing, contemporary, or photography societies to learn what people who are serious collectors are collecting.

She and her daughter maintain a website on Artsy, which has valuable databases about art that you can use for research.

“The best advice is buy what you love,” Teresa says. “If you are interested in long-term value, buy what is being sold at Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction houses and is being shown at the museum level, whether it’s a young artist just getting into small museum shows or a more established artist.”

Among her favorite investment pieces were two paintings by Willem de Kooning and a couple Jim Dine works that she sold to make a profit, but it was a Tom Wesselmann portrait of Elizabeth Taylor that represents the risks of the art market for her. She had purchased the painting for $5,000 and gave it a prominent placement by her front door. When she later sold it for $20,000, she thought that was a good price.

“It’s now worth close to $80,000, so I’m wishing I had it back,” she says. “At that moment, I needed a little extra cash, so I sold it. But it can still be kind of fun because I had placed the de Kooning and Dine works in my clients’ collections, and I’ve been doing other art appraisals for them, so I still get to visit those pieces!”