Homecoming

Death, travel and hope bring a philanthropist back to Miami

By Cynthia Archbold

Lin and Sarah Arison pose in the atelier of Charles-François Daubigny in Auvers-sur-Oise. Photo by Robert Leslie.

Lin Arison is in the ballroom of a Miami Beach mansion in March, on a clear, starry night worthy of a Vincent Van Gogh painting. She signs copies of her new book, Travels with Van Gogh and the Impressionists: Discovering the Connections.

It is a heartfelt and compelling work of art history, memoir and travelogue with photography by Neil Folberg that sheds new light on the lives of the French artists of the late 19th century and the movement they created — Impressionism.

 “Hope you enjoy the journey,” she writes inside the cover. The book is a product of Ms. Arison’s own journey, a spiritual and intellectual one she did not anticipate when she took her granddaughter on a trip to France in 2000.

The adventure brought Ms. Arison back to Miami, where she lived in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, during the first decades of her marriage Ted Arison, the visionary and billionaire who founded Carnival Cruise Lines, the New World Symphony Orchestra, National Foundation of Advancement in the Arts and the Miami Heat. They moved to Israel in 1990 and loosened their ties to the symphony and NFAA.

Arison told the audience of 100 philanthropists, gathered for a private book signing reception at the home of Luis and Norma Quintero, that going to France in 2000 with granddaughter Sarah was a “life-changing” event for both of them. Ms. Arison was deeply grieving the loss of her husband the year before, and wrote in the foreword of her book, “during our thirty-one years of marriage, Ted’s dynamism and creativity had shaped so much of my life; consequently, his death in 1999 left me uncertain as to my own future.”

She planned the trip to France to come to terms with the loss of Ted and to help her granddaughter Sarah “get over her stage fright” of speaking French aloud in conversation, rather than just reading and writing it. Sarah, meanwhile, was a 15-year-old girl happy to act as translator for her grandmother in France, but not necessarily to immerse herself in French art and artists; she was preparing to study for a career in medicine and wanted to get away from art.

“Everyone was an artist,” explained Sarah Arison, now a 23-year-old willowy blonde with a big smile. “My mother was an artist. My brother was an artist. My sister was an artist. And therefore I wanted nothing to do with art — I was rebelling. I wanted to be a doctor. I was positive that this was my life path.”

But the trip to France gave her an entirely new perspective. The trip was a revelation for her grandmother as well. Although she had years of experience interacting with young artists in NFAA and had written about artists in Israel as a journalist, she admits she did not know one Impressionist painter from another. All that changed one afternoon when she and Sarah visited the Village of Auvers-sur-Oise, where Vincent Van Gogh resided during the last few months of his life. Lin Arison says they accidentally stumbled upon the inn where Van Gogh painted 70 of his works in a flurry of creativity before he died at the age of 37.

They found Auberge Ravoux, and the tiny room that served as the death chamber where Van Gogh dragged himself to die after blasting himself with a shotgun in a wheat field. Just a week earlier, the Arisons had been admiring the famously vibrant colors of Van Gogh’s paintings in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

But in that desolate room at the inn they encountered the bleak reality of the artist’s pain, the loneliness and poverty that drove him to commit suicide. “I knew his paintings are selling for $80 million now — so valued, so precious, and to see this is how he lived,” Sarah remarked. The encounter with Van Gogh’s despair proved a catharsis for both of them, as it mirrored their grief as they mourned the loss of their family patriarch.

Lin Arison began a quest to discover who the Impressionists were, making many trips to France to immerse herself in the 19th century; visiting artists’ ateliers and museums; and tracking down the lives of the painters who radically changed the face of art.

In doing her research, Lin Arison began to see that the Impressionists deliberately sought each other out. Beleaguered, penniless, shunned by salon society, they encouraged one another, painted together, exhibited together, even fed one another. “They could not have made it without each other,” she said.

Seeing how important mutual support and social acceptance had been to the survival of individual Impressionists (Van Gogh aside) made Ms. Arison realize how much she missed NFAA and the youngARTS competition, the organization she and Ted founded to create recognition and social interaction for young artists. In her work with NFAA she noticed how frequently the most talented students were depressed and isolated unless they were practicing or working on their art.

“At their schools, budding artists are often looked at as oddballs or even become outcasts,” she said. “The Impressionists had the same experience.”

The NFAA allows artists to celebrate their achievements and connect during the annual youngARTS competition, which culminates in ARTSweek, an event that brings together the top high school artists in the country to compete for awards in painting, sculpting, dance, music, theater, filmmaking and writing, as well as the chance to become presidential scholars in the arts.

“It’s the Heisman Trophy for young artists,” Arison said.

Arison wrote the book about Impressionists in order to mourn Ted, “To immerse myself in 19th-century France so that I didn’t have to be in a world that didn’t have Ted.” The time in France was not only profoundly healing; it was creatively inspiring for Lin Arison as a writer and philanthropist.

Eight years after that first encounter with Van Gogh in France, Lin Arison is re-energized and reconnecting with the New World Symphony and NFAA. She wants to make NFAA and its mission more visible, gaining recognition for the teen artists who compete every year to win a place in NFAA’s national youngARTS competition.

After all, both the New World Symphony and NFAA emerged from Ted and Lin Arison’s love of helping young artists. As a child Ted Arison was a promising pianist with a passion for music. When Ted and Lin decided to give something back to Miami, establishing arts programs seemed a natural fit. Back in 1981, Miami was a cultural wasteland. “There was nothing, absolutely nothing,” Lin Arison recalled.

Travels with Van Gogh is Ms. Arison’s second book and second collaboration with photographer Neil Folberg. Folberg captured the spirit of the Impressionists’ work in photographs of contemporary France. Her first book, Love Story in Mediterranean Israel, is about her life with Ted in Israel and evolved out of an article she wrote about art, culture and restaurants off the beaten track.

She’s also getting ready to publish her third book, this one on Umbria, which features another collaboration with Folberg and young artists from the New World Symphony. Arison, along with NWS Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, brought them to Italy to perform in small concerts in Umbrian villages.

Meanwhile, after the trip to France, and Van Gogh’s plight brought her to tears, Sarah had a complete change of heart about her teenage plans to become the next Dr. Arison. She says the Impressionists gave her insight into struggles faced by the artists in her family and an appreciation for her grandparents’ quest to encourage young artists across the nation. She majored in French at Emory University and now dedicates her life to promoting young artists, serving on NFAA’s board, as well as the New World Symphony’s. She is also president of the Arison Arts Foundation.

Sarah and her grandmother now share the same mission, bringing them both to Miami. “The end of this book is really just the beginning,” Lin Arison said.