Most private collections stay private. Russ Chandler decided his didn’t have to.
This May, Chandler opens Maria’s House Museum at 141 Main Street – a free public museum housing more than fifty years of passionate, globe-spanning collecting, offered to the Highlands community simply because, as he puts it, people might find it interesting. That kind of quiet generosity is worth noting before you’ve even walked through the door.
The collection that awaits defies easy categorization. Forty Rembrandt etchings hang alongside 17th- and 18th-century Old Master paintings from the studio of Rubens – acquired at Sotheby’s – while across the room, a coat of armor dating to 1540 stands near the full weapons complement a typical U.S. infantry company would have carried into World War II: M1 rifles, American, British and German machine guns, a rare flamethrower, and Vietnam-era arms, all permanently deactivated.
It is, in the best sense, a collector’s collection – assembled not around a single theme but around decades of curiosity.
Chandler’s biography moves at the same restless pace as his collecting. He began buying antique weapons at a New Orleans gallery in the mid-1970s, sold a major healthcare company in 1983, relocated to Atlanta a year later, and went on to plastics manufacturing in Cartersville and telecommunications, with a detour to help organize the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Throughout, the collection grew: helmets and armor acquired at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in London, Rembrandt etchings purchased at auction on both sides of the Atlantic, military pieces tracked down at English auction houses, Atlanta flea markets, and everywhere in between.
Widely regarded as the greatest printmaker of the 17th century, Rembrandt produced etchings of extraordinary intimacy – small in scale, vast in feeling – and most of Chandler’s 40 are biblical scenes that reward long, quiet viewing. An accompanying printed pamphlet guides visitors through the imagery, a thoughtful touch that turns a viewing into something closer to a conversation across four centuries.
The museum is named for his late wife Maria, with whom he first talked through the idea of sharing what they’d built together. That conversation, and the loss that followed, gives the whole enterprise its particular tenderness.
“We love Highlands,” Chandler says – he’s been coming here since 1994 – and a preview gathering at Highlands Country Club last fall confirmed the instinct.
“It’s a labor of love,” he says, “and hopefully when people look at these things, it will have an impact.”
Admission is free. Maria’s House Museum is open May 1 through November 30, Fridays and Saturdays 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. and Sundays 1:00 to 4:00 P.M. Learn more at mariashousemuseum.com.
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