World-Class Art Museum

World-Class museums don't happen overnight; they emerge. They evolve like "cream rising to the top." Usually they are the combination of a lifetime of gathering, building, selecting, choosing, and perhaps "being in the right place at the right time."

This is what has created The Citadelle in Canadian, Texas. It has been a combination of creativity, the ability to make instant decisions, the keeping of one's "ear to the ground" and decades of searching for "pick of the show." No "also rans" have ever been admitted to the collection.

Although Malouf & Therese Abraham fly in the cheap seats on the airplane and drive old cars, they have spent over forty years in a passionate search for objects that represent human effort in its finest moments, objects that clearly were inspired. Being "pretty" is not enough to get in to this collection.

Malouf & Therese have viewed this exciting journey as "spending money and growing richer." It has been a joy for them to put the house, the gardens, and the collection together. They say it's been a dream come true to live in its presence and to be continually surrounded by such beauty. The time has come to turn the page and begin the next chapter.

Our Earthly lives are transient. Night cometh. Rather than having a three-day auction in New York City, the Abrahams want to keep the collection together at The Citadelle and establish it as a place where future generations can come to be inspired and find themselves surrounded by extraordinary beauty and peacefulness. Then, as they leave, perhaps they will have been somehow changed.