Stockyards businessman and noted early Texas art collector A.C. “Ace” Cook is dead.
He was 74.
Cook’s long fight against cancer ended Monday afternoon.
Cook’s burial will be private. A memorial celebration will be held at 2 p.m. on Monday at the Van Cliburn Recital Hall at 4th and Calhoun Streets in downtown Fort Worth.
Read tomorrow’s Static column in Fort Worth Weekly for more information.
Cook’s Hock Shop Collection of early Texas art is a private collection that rivals that of most museums. Cook loved early 20th century landscape paintings that showed Texas as it truly was, and he particularly gravitated toward works that showed minorities in a positive light.
Here are a couple of painting that represent that philosophy:
Since I received in the mail almost a year ago, I have had this picture of Ace with his quote on it on my door…[“The paintings are my family. I love every one of them. I feel the presence of them, and they feel my presence. I’ve had them all over the United States and they love it. They love to perform.”] Ace sparked in me a love for Early Texas art – most specifically the Social Realist painters like Kathleen Blacksheer – and I will never separate the two in my mind.
Those paintings, his family, are no doubt in mourning. The Bullring must be painfully quiet right now.
Godspeed, Ace.