HANOVER CENTER — Ben Schore’s love of the arts began at an early age when his mother, Edith, taught him to play the piano.
“I can’t remember back to the point where music wasn’t an important part of my childhood home,” Schore said in a 2016 film about his life, Ben Schore, A Life in the Upper Valley.
Later, he skipped school in Brookline, Mass. so that he and his mother could get rush tickets to the Boston Symphony Orchestra. As a young man, he created a jazz band — the Ben Schore Orchestra — the fruits of which helped finance his music education at Brandeis University, where he studied under Leonard Bernstein, and later at Columbia Business School in New York City. His career was in real estate investing and development, which he also taught at Columbia, but he never lost his love of the arts.
Upon moving to Hanover Center in 1980 with his second wife Kira Fournier, a sculptor, Schore shared that love and with Upper Valley arts organizations of all stripes.
Though he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2013 and died in August at the age of 85, Schore’s influence on the Upper Valley’s art scene remains evident, including through a set of glass benches he commissioned in Kira’s memory at the Hood Museum in Hanover, an outdoor sculpture gallery at AVA Gallery in Lebanon and in a cabaret space at Northern Stage’s Barrett Center for the Arts in White River Junction that now bears his name.
“Ben was the friend who was singing along in the audience for sure,” said Carol Dunne, now Northern Stage’s producing artistic director, of her time leading the New London Barn Playhouse.
At Dartmouth College, where she teaches acting and musical theater, Dunne said she could “always count on Ben to be in the front row” and he could often be found conducting along with the music.
When Schore and Dunne would see each other even in recent years, Schore would ask Dunne to sing a few lines from Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” from the musical A Little Night Music that Dunne had performed and Schore had seen years before at the New London playhouse.
In spite of the Alzheimer’s, Dunne said, “Music always got through.”
After Schore’s second wife Kira died of ovarian cancer in 2002, a disease which she faced at least in part through her art, he helped to found the creative arts program at Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s Norris Cotton Cancer Center. The program offers patients the opportunity to paint, and write poems or essays.
“It’s hard to get people to understand how important art is to your personal well-being,” he said in the 2016 film.
Dr. Steve Leach, who directs the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, credited Schore with being “an early visionary of the healing power of the arts for those facing illness.”
Schore also donated the sculpture garden at AVA, Kira’s Garden, in memory of his late wife. The garden, which opened in 2008 and sits alongside AVA’s building on Bank Street in Lebanon, features a work by Kira “Split Woman,” sitting on a bench created by the sculptor Dimitri Gerakaris. It also hosts a rotating exhibit of other sculptures.
It’s “a very private place, that bench,” said Bente Torjusen West, AVA’s longtime director who now serves as strategic advisor. “I often used to go out there and sit there and find a moment of peace.”
In spite of his recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Schore’s real estate experience came in handy when in 2013 AVA was considering purchasing a house that neighbored its Bank Street building in order to make way for what is now the The Bente Torjusen West Sculptural Studies Building and Kelsey Stone Carving Studio.
It was “as if he just snapped back into his time as a real estate developer,” Torjusen West said. Then, Schore also was among those who contributed to make the purchase possible, she said.
Since there is a view from the sculpture building toward Kira’s Garden, Torjusen West said, “I feel that Ben is very much present in both of those places.”
She added that the current COVID-19 pandemic has only added to the value of outdoor spaces such as the garden Schore created in Kira’s honor.
“Beautiful outdoor space has been the saving grace for so many reasons,” she said. “The meaning of that garden has become deeper.”
Derrick Cartwright was director of the Hood Museum when Schore approached him with the idea of commemorating Kira’s life with a work of art.
“It was important that it be a lasting tribute,” said Cartwright, who now directs the University Galleries at the University of San Diego, in an email.
Schore ended up commissioning the glass artist, Howard Ben Tre, to make Kira’s Benches (2007) for the Hood.
“Those works are a lasting gift not just to Dartmouth College, but to the Upper Valley arts community,” Cartwright said. “Like Ben, they are a luminous, durable example of what being close to wondrous things does for us all.”
Schore spoke of his love of three dimensional artwork in the 2016 film.
“I like 3-D,” he said. “3-D lives. And it looks different at all the times of the day. It’s like playing the piano, it plays a tune. What does art give you back? It gives you a play on light.”
In addition to Schore’s great love of art, which he shared and continues to share with others in the Upper Valley and beyond, he also is remembered by those who knew him for his good cheer.
“I will hold onto fond memories of summer afternoons with Ben and Kathy Rines in their boat on Lake Sunapee, laughing constantly, and discussing the museum leaders he knew well throughout the world,” Cartwright said.
It was through their shared involvement with the national Museum Trustee Association that Schore and Rines first came to know each other. Rines’ husband also died in 2002. Rines joined Schore at his Hanover Center home in 2003; the two shared their interests in cultural activities around the Upper Valley and beyond. Schore retained a residence in Boston and Rines in New York City and Detroit, so they often traveled for art shows and musical performances.
“We had so much in common,” Rines said in the film. “So much to talk about. Ben and I were such great pals.”
Schore did not grow up in a wealthy family, but after earning his M.B.A. at Columbia he went on to establish a successful real estate business. He worked as a developer and investor, eventually going on to own several shopping centers.
Once he had a successful career, he felt it his duty both to support the creative arts and to help others like himself who came from modest means. In addition to his visible influence in the Upper Valley arts scene, he also created grants for students studying the arts at various institutions, including his alma mater Brandeis University where he established the Kira Fournier Fellowship in the fine arts.
“His stated aspiration was to give back, and he did so by aiding talented young individuals who had the same passion for art and music that he did,” said Brandeis University President Ronald Liebowitz in an emailed statement.
In addition to writing checks, Schore also traveled to campus to meet the Fournier fellows and to encourage them in their artistic endeavors for many years.
“We are grateful for his belief in Brandeis’ mission and kindness toward our young scholars,” Liebowitz said.
In spite of his illness, Schore and Rines continued to attend art and music events even as recently as July. Schore was out and about until a few weeks before he died. On their final night out on the town, complete with martinis, they enjoyed the Fred Haas Trio on the Lebanon Mall adjoining Three Tomatoes, Rines said.
“He had a huge, huge enthusiasm for life,” she said.
In addition to Rines, Schore is survived by his son David Schore and stepdaughter Marsha Soffer from his first marriage to Rita Fine Soffer Schore.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
