My friends and I were looking in a restaurant window when the owner opened the door and invited us in. Modesto Lanzone is without a doubt the suavest person I've ever met. (Or maybe I've just never been exposed to that many older Italian gentlemen.) I felt uncomfortable having been caught staring in his window. Unshaven, even.
He chatted at our table for quite a while; my friends knew of his art collection and his long history running various restaurants. He told about selling and giving away a lot of his collection; he said he found it increasingly burdensome as he got older. He sounded intelligent, which more or less sounds like the reason he resigned from the board of directors of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Good for him.
He's still buying new work. He said he'd recently bought the painting in back of him from an Italian painter. It was supposed to be hung vertically, but the restaurant ceiling was too low. So it goes.
It's too bad my snapshot of him is so unflattering. Maybe I'll take a nice picture of him when he takes veal off the menu.
