PARK Magazine

“PALM
BEACH IS
CATCHING
UP TO THE
MIAMI ART
SCENE.”
Beth DeWoody
PHOTOS OF WARHOL POLAROIDS AND THE BUNKER ARTSPACE BY NICK MELE
Robert Mapplethorpe to
Niki de Saint Phalle
Built in the 1920s as a toy factory and utilized as a
munitions armory during World War II, The Bunker
provides the perfect stage to showcase the wide range
of contemporary art by both well-known and emerging
artists she has acquired - from Robert Mapplethorpe
and Niki de Saint Phalle to Lee Quiñones and Jamaican-
born artist Ebony G. Patterson. The collection is
shown by invitation only and through scheduled private
tours. “I created The Bunker Artspace because I wanted
a place to show my art collection and curate thematic
shows. I wanted to invite art lovers and those new to
art, not just to see my collection, but to see that Palm
Beach was catching up to the Miami art scene,” says
DeWoody.
SoHo Art Scene
DeWoody’s interest in art took root as a child where
she attended the Rudolf Steiner School in NYC and the
University of California, Santa Barbara. She also took
classes at the New School - where she met Benny Andrews
and acquired her first piece from him. After marrying
artist James DeWoody, she began to get deeply involved
in the SoHo art scene where she began to nurture young
contemporary artists such as E.V. Day and Tom Sachs.
She and DeWoody share two children: Kyle and Carlton
DeWoody, both now involved in the art world as
well. In 2012, she remarried to photographer Firooz
Zahedi. Beth’s passion, vision and continuing support
of emerging and, at times overlooked, artists have helped
redefine the boundaries of collecting. Along with cocurators
Laura Dvorkin and Maynard Monrow, she has
assembled a collection that is truly unique.
Themed Room: Celebrity
Themed rooms at the Bunker include Feral Friends,
The Puppet Saloon and Celebrity - an exhibition of more
than fifty photographs both by and of the late Andy
Warhol, juxtaposed to one another and curated entirely
from the Collection. Accompanying the artworks are
aluminum-painted walls, an homage to The Factory,
and two antiques—a silver Zenith projector and an
oversized Contax camera presented at the 1939 World’s
Fair. It has been said that “Beth’s collections have collections,”
and this is truly the case with Warhol. An
internal database search will find close to 300 works,
and that includes editioned monographs and rare books
also residing in the Collection. Drawn to atypical or early
examples by artists, she admires works demonstrating
risk or an integral step in the artist’s practice. While her
Collection does not include the quintessential Basquiat,
she has Working Class Heroes, a drawing the artist made
when he was merely seventeen.
Andy Warhol
“I met Andy a few times in New York during the ‘70s
and was friends with many that ran in his circle. My
husband Firooz shot for Interview magazine and knew
Andy well. I always had a sense of Andy’s importance
in the art world and popular culture. I have an extensive
collection of ephemera and photography of this period,