Artist's daughters sell their late mom's designer duds to benefit museum
Let it never be said that Minnette Duffy Bickel didn't have a thing to wear.
An acclaimed portrait painter, she also expressed herself through her prodigious collection of gowns, handbags, suits and jewelry.
Bickel, who died in March 2007 at 85, painted portraits of Rachel Carson, Sen. Jesse Helms and Henry L. Hillman. She moved tirelessly from city to city as the wife of William Bickel, an executive with Gulf Oil, before returning to his native Pittsburgh. She was a founding member of the Women's Committee of the Carnegie Museum of Art.
But it was her eccentric and charismatic style that was on display Thursday, during a private sale of her clothing and accessories organized by her two daughters. Her Shadyside home was transformed into a colossal walk-in closet, its ornate rooms thronged with racks of clothing.
"We just thought this would be fun because my mother loved clothes," said her daughter Minnette Boesel, who flew from her home in Houston. "And this was part of her artistic expression."
Boesel wore dangling crystal earrings, a silk scarf and a coral-colored necklace, all of which belonged to her mother.
Friends and admirers could purchase a handbag, scarf or designer gown worn by the artist. The proceeds from the sale benefit the Women's Committee of the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Daughter Susan Scioli, of Hyannisport, Mass., spoke of the difficulty of dispersing their mother's clothes. It seemed too impersonal simply to give them to a consignment shop, she said.
Her eyes welled as she remembered Christmas mornings, when their mother invariably wore an elaborate red Christmas sweater. She herself could never pull off something like that, she said, but she couldn't bear to part with it.
"You pick up something she wore and you'd have a memory of her," she said.
The living room held racks of gowns, suits and couture. In the white and gold dining room, with its crystal chandelier from New Orleans, Victorian cornices and colossal gilt mirror, were tables laden with handbags and costume jewelry and scarves.
The backyard was given over to shoes, blouses and sweaters.
"She was a wonderful painter," said Cynthia Cooley of O'Hara, a fellow artist.
If there was the excitement of a sale at Saks, there also was a bittersweet underpinning, when a certain purple silk handbag or Italian gown would remind a browser of the woman who wore them: A rhinestone bustier, a custom-made navy blue ballgown with a matching pink cape, a striking silk scarf.
Catherine Loevner of Squirrel Hill said she was here to bring home something worn by her good friend. "I just want something of hers that I can cherish," she said.
"It's a celebration of a remarkable woman who continues on through all of us," said Ranny Ferguson, of Squirrel Hill, Bickel's friend and former president of the Women's Committee of the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Born in New Bern, N.C., Bickel began painting when she was a teenager. She studied art at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts at Washington University and the Arts Students League in New York City.
Her portrait of Hillman can be viewed in the foyer of the Hillman Cancer Center in Shadyside.
"She's got portraits all over the city and different parts of the United States," Scioli said. "I don't think I could ever live up to her. I'm proud of her."
