This story originally appeared in an abridged version on the digital news site NowKalamazoo on
July 10. In collaboration with NowKalamazoo, Encore is giving our readers a version with additional information.
Standing in the doorway of a cavernous warehouse space, Larry Bell stops and smiles. “Did you ever see Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark?” he cracks, referring to the cavern in the opening sequence of that movie.
An even more apt reference would be the Cave of Wonders in Aladdin, since beyond the door of the warehouse is a jaw-dropping treasure trove of items from all over the world and almost every era.
The 67-year-old Bell — who began brewing beer at home as a Kalamazoo College student, opened Bell’s Brewery in 1985 and sold the company to the international beverage distributor Lion in 2021 — has been a lifelong collector of things, although he admits that much of what he now holds came to him during the past 10 years or so.
“I sold the company four and a half years ago,” says Bell, who began collecting beer cans at age 17. “Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to be a little bit more active in acquisition.”
While the Ark of the Covenant is nowhere to be found here, the multiple storage units Bell is wandering through contain ceramics, John James Audubon artwork, postcards, thousands of 78 rpm records, Polynesian prints, African art, a 1924 Model T, neon and porcelain signs, baseball memorabilia, furniture, railroad signage and record albums of speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. If you can imagine an item, it might well be somewhere in here.
But this is not Bell’s private cache, sequestered for his eyes only. He plans to share it with the world.
“Just let me say this,” Bell says. “I am not here to be a competitor to the KIA (Kalamazoo Institute of Arts). I am here to help elevate Kalamazoo as an arts hub and cultural center.
“Can I tell you everything in depth about what I have? No. That’ll be for researchers to do. I can get the stuff I’ve got the eye for: ‘OK, this is something good for us to have, and it will help tell the story.’ But I’m not a specialist on all that stuff. I’m a jack of all trades, master of none.”
As one might expect from a Kalamazoo College history major like Bell, some items in Bell’s collections are historic. “We collect maps,” Bell told the audience at an event in March 2025. “Our oldest map was drawn in A.D. 150 and printed in 1463, a copy of which a guy named Columbus relied upon for finding the New World, so …”
Some pieces are high-end. “In Japanese woodblock prints, the most famous piece ever made is The Great Wave (Off Kanagawa),” Bell says. “We own a Great Wave. The most famous poster in the art poster movement was the three-panel Moulin Rouge by Toulouse-Lautrec. There are only 12 of them in the world; we own one. I think we have 464 pieces by (Czech poster artist) Alphonse Mucha.”
At one point, Bell brings out a genuinely out-of-left-field find.
“Please don’t take a photograph of this,” he requests, displaying a colorful and lively ceramic work with a clown motif by a renowned 20th-century artist Bell would rather not name.
Yes, some of the items in Bell’s collections are wildly eccentric. How many psychedelic Mother Goose jigsaw puzzles do you own? Bell picks up a round cardboard container adorned with screamingly 1970 Day-Glo cartoon butterflies, snails and mushrooms, reading aloud the not-suitable-for-the-nursery rhyme on the back: “Little Miss Muffet/Sat on a tuffet/Grooving the whole cosmic scene/When along came weird Tony/With a big pepperoni/Which they smoked/While turning pale green.”
“I do vintage puzzles,” Bell says, motioning to shelves full of jigsaw puzzle boxes whose subjects range from fine-art reproductions to the iconic Farrah Fawcett poster from the 1970s. “Most of the boxes you see here are empty and have already been done, and the puzzle gets framed.”
Speaking of puzzles, what is all this? Where did it all come from? And where is it going?
‘We don’t use the m-word’
If everything goes according to plan, sometime during the first quarter of 2029 the Larry J. Bell Library Foundation will open at the corner of East Michigan Avenue and North Pitcher Street, in a property that was previously home to Food Dance (which closed in 2022). And that’s where galleries will showcase some of the tens of thousands of items that Bell and his team have brought together.
Since putting 36 years as president of Bell’s Brewery behind him, Bell has focused on philanthropy and giving back to the community. Among his bestowals was an $8.8 million gift to the Gilmore Piano Festival to create the Larry J. Bell Jazz Artist Awards (more on that later), $1 million to support the construction of a new building for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Kalamazoo and $5.25 million to his alma mater, Kalamazoo College, as well as donations to the Wellspring dance company and the North Country Trail Association.
But his biggest gift — and potentially his most enduring — will be the foundation property and all of the uses he envisions for it. In addition to renovating the existing building, which was constructed in 1890 and restored in 2006, Bell intends to expand the building into the parking lot, to construct archives, galleries, a library, a courtyard, a carillon and gathering areas and a 200-seat performance venue.
“There’s a need in town for a quality smaller venue with seating,” says Bell. “For a not-for-profit, you’ve got to find some ways to do revenue. We won’t operate a kitchen, but we’ll set it up with a catering kitchen. If somebody wants to get married in the auditorium and then have their guests have dinner … or come look at all the stuff in the gallery space and make an event about it, you know, that’s what people seem to like to do these days.”
According to an informational handout, Bell’s foundation “seeks to inspire learning and creativity by offering for reference and display artifacts that reflect the interests of our founder.” But please don’t call it a museum.
“It’s not a museum,” Bell says pointedly. “It’s a gallery. We don’t use the m-word. Somebody holds a copyright on ‘Bell Museum.’ We are a library foundation with galleries.”
You won’t see every item from every one of Bell’s collections in the galleries, however. At any given time, Bell estimates, “we are only going to be displaying 2 to 3 percent. Maybe. You know, most of it’s in archives, and then that’s up to a curator to decide what kind of show to put together. My goal for the opening show would be (for it) just to be called ‘Best of the Bell,’ because there’s a lot of people, I think‚ at least if you read subreddit, they think I’m doing this to just put out some dusty old beer bottles.”
There are some beer bottles — and hundreds of beer cans — in the collections’ mix, but they are certainly not dusty. Bell’s breweriana collection provides a remarkable overview of commercial beer brewing, including signage and advertisements for brands both familiar and obscure, tap handles, barrels, steins, coasters and scads of memorabilia: a Schlitz beer lamp featuring a woman in a 1950s swimsuit, a banner touting Pfeiffer Beer with a cartoon fife player (“Tops at the World’s Fair!”), and a 1905 serving tray from Standard Brewing Co. with a jolting image depicting the largest mass execution in American history: the hangings of 38 Sioux Indians in 1862, following the end of the U.S.-Dakota War.
“Yes, we have some politically incorrect stuff,” Bell admits. “Not that we condone what it was but because it is part of the story of American history and has to be handled gently.”
That brewery tray also serves as a reminder that there’s something conspicuously absent from Bell’s treasure trove, or at least from the portion of it that’s on view: Bell’s Brewery memorabilia.
“You know, all the Bell’s stuff is pretty well put away,” Bell says. “I am just mentally now starting to go through all my old boxes of papers and stuff. I’m ready to face that stuff now, but I probably in my lifetime won’t mount a Bell’s show. That’s something for when I’m gone.”
All that jazz
In his building at East Michigan and North Pitcher, Bell foresees a library where researchers can delve into myriad topics. He has extensive book collections on polar exploration, African art, baseball, Mark Twain, Sherlock Holmes and, unsurprisingly, beer brewing. A few years ago he purchased the nearly 40,000-volume library of Southwest Michigan historian Larry Massie.
Bell also has about 2,000 titles on the history of jazz, a topic very close to his heart and one that has strongly figured into his philanthropy. Last year, in conjunction with the Gilmore Festival, he awarded the first Larry J. Bell Jazz Artist Award, which will be presented every four years and funded by his gift to the Gilmore’s endowment.
The Bell Jazz Artist Award provides $300,000 over a four-year period to a musician for personal projects and career development and is the largest in the world for a jazz piano artist. The Bell Young Jazz Artist Awards honor two U.S.-based jazz pianists age 24 or younger. Each receives a $25,000 stipend to support artistic and educational development.
In October, Sullivan Fortner became the first recipient of the Bell Jazz Artist prize, while Tyler Bullock and Esteban Castro received Bell Young Jazz Artist Awards.
“Having the award, I think it just helps ensconce (jazz) as a serious form of music in the world,” Bell says. “Certainly, it’s a very American form of music. Jazz and bluegrass come out of our roots and traditions that came from other countries but (were) adapted in the crucible that is America.
“I don’t think any jazz pianist is going to go out there and work their tail off thinking that they’re going to win this award. That’s not how it goes. But as word gets out on this, I hope it will become something that’s respected.”
The jazz awards may seem like a pet project of Bell’s, but they are actually in line with national trends.
Gilmore Executive and Artistic Director Pierre van der Westhuizen says music industry surveys point to an increasing interest in jazz among concertgoers but a plateaued following for classical music.
“Interestingly enough, many people remarked that this (year’s) festival celebrated jazz heavily, but if you add up all the events, it’s half and half classical and jazz, and it’s pretty much been that way from the beginning,” van der Westhuizen says.
The perception that this year’s festival lineup leaned toward jazz, though, is “totally fair, considering that we celebrated this first-ever Jazz Artist,” he adds. “But I think also it’s totally warranted, considering the impact that Larry made on the organization and the community.”
Bell is a past president of the Gilmore Board of Trustees, and a jazz award had been under discussion since 2014, according to van der Westhuizen.
“This has been a long time coming, and it was part of the strategic conversations of The Gilmore for many years, as we saw this trend of jazz audiences growing,” he says. “The timing was just right, you know, with Larry’s gift to establish this jazz award because it really recognized not only the contributions to the piano repertoire from jazz musicians in the piano world but also recognizes that the jazz audience is growing and that we want to be welcoming to jazz.”
Bell sees the jazz awards as an opportunity to boost the profile of jazz performers.
“There’s a lot of competitions and awards out there in the classical world,” Bell says. “But jazz, you know, there’s not much there. And perhaps, it’s never been taken as seriously in the music world, but there isn’t any reason why it shouldn’t be.
“I think there’s folks my age that looked at jazz and wondered if it would survive, as Louis Armstrong dies and Miles Davis dies and Art Blakey — sort of that golden era of bop and all. Was the genre going to survive and find itself? Which, of course, it has.”
Nurturing the next crop of jazz artists “feels, you know, very fulfilling,” says Bell, a lifelong jazz fan. “I’m really lucky, and it’s nothing that I ever planned. I was going to have the brewery until I died. But — you know? — things happen, and when confronted with the sale (of the brewery), my financial folks said, ‘Look, you’re going to have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to disperse some funds.’”
When Bell thought about setting up a jazz award along the lines of the Gilmore Artist Award, he had a monetary number in mind: $8 million.
“After the (brewery) sale, I was able to make the funds,” Bell says. “Of course, this happened in January of 2022. Then the market took a tumble. It was the worst. And with the endowment rules for The Gilmore, if an endowed fund falls below 90% of principal, you can’t make disbursements. We’d already hired a new jazz director. We have costs, and the fund is …” Bell blows a raspberry.
To keep the effort on track, Bell made an additional gift of $800,000. “I added the additional point eight (million) to it to make sure that we got this thing started,” Bell says. “And now it’s going along just fine.”
Hello, Gabriella
That’s not the only contribution Bell has made to The Gilmore. There is also Gabriella.
On a recent trip to Italy, Bell and his wife Shannon visited the Fazioli piano factory in Sacile, meeting its founder, Paolo Fazioli.
“His son, Luca, is managing (the company) now, and he married a former Gilmore Young Artist Award winner (Rachel Naomi Kudo). They had four pianos, and we were going to buy one.”
In the Faziolis’ at-home concert hall, Kudo played all four instruments and Bell made his choice. “Once the piano was selected, I asked Ms. Kudo, ‘Now, do you feel, does this piano have a gender? And, if so, what is it?’ And she said, ‘I think it’s a strong female.’”
And so, like all the pianos in The Gilmore, she received a name — Gabriella. Gabriella arrived from Italy in April and made her debut at the Gilmore Festival Fellows Showcase on May 8. Gabriella will stay in the Gilmore annex of instruments until she relocates to the Bell Foundation.
The ballad of Larry Bell
Bell’s involvement with music goes back to his childhood in Park Forest, Illinois. “When I grew up, my family, we had a player piano down in the basement,” he recalls. “We probably had 150 piano rolls. My wife laughs (because) I’ll hear some old song, and I don’t even have to open my mouth. She’ll say, ‘Let me guess: That’s a piano roll song.’ I’m like, ‘Yep!’
“Probably the first concert I went to was a jazz concert. There was an old, traditional jazz piano player in my hometown who goes back to, like, the dawn of jazz. His name was Art Hodes. Art Hodes would give concerts at the Park Forest Plaza, and Mom would make us go.”
As a junior high student, Bell had dreams of becoming a jazz drummer in Chicago. Instead, Bell began studying the flute.
“We had a great jazz program at my high school. There were two jazz bands and I played in the second jazz band. We guys followed (trumpeter and bandleader) Maynard Ferguson. We went to see Maynard at all the high school gyms.”
Bell’s flute playing continued when he came to Kalamazoo in 1976. He became a pupil of flutist and saxophonist Ken Morgan. “Actually, on my second try, I was accepted into the WMU School of Music on flute, but I never matriculated,” Bell says.
He shared his love of music as a morning-show DJ on WYYY-AM, then turned into a mellower sort of radio personality on WMUK’s jazz-oriented “Common Ground” program in the early 1980s. Bell was also booking musicians to play at Hobie’s, the forerunner of Harvey’s on the Mall, which was torn down earlier this year.
“My first business card has pictures of musical instruments,” Bell says. “It says, ‘Larry Bell: Booking and Promotions.’
“When I opened the Eccentric Cafe (in 1993), I always wanted to do jazz. I remember having Richie Cole, an awesome alto sax player. We had maybe 10 people come out. But I could get a jam band, and those kids would come and drink like fish.”
In light of the current trends in jazz appreciation, it seems Bell was about 30 years ahead of his time.
Bell’s bells
Going back to the plans Bell has for his Library Foundation building, in July 2025, he and van der Westhuizen traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio, to visit the Verdin Co. to discuss what may be the foundation building’s crowning glory: a 56-bell carillon, a musical instrument consisting of a set of tuned bells in a tower, that Verdin will manufacture.
“They’re sixth-generation bellmakers,” Bell says. “What a cool shop this was. Mostly they have the bells forged in the Netherlands these days, but then they build the actual instrument. They build the superstructure that everything sits on and the connections and the keyboard. The architects are working with them now, and I think the biggest bell will be 5,500 pounds.”
Bell envisions a carillonneur playing the instrument, which is notoriously difficult and physically challenging, allowing guests to watch either through a window or from a limited number of rooftop seats.
Not only will the carillon’s music present frequent aural reminders that the Bell Library Foundation is in town, it will also provide possibilities for artistic ventures.
“You can have your bells just play ‘Windsor Bells’ at the hour, or you can have a little something written that’s unique to you. You know, we could consider the instrument a keyboard, so perhaps there could be a commission in the future,” Bell hints.
It will be only the second carillon in Kalamazoo history. The other was in the former Episcopal Cathedral of Christ the King, a 47-bell carillon removed in 2007 when the cathedral, located on Vincent Drive in Portage, was deconsecrated and sold. Most carillons include about 40 bells, but Bell has his own reason for including another 16.
“If you have 56 bells, do you know what you can do at 5 o’clock every day?” he asks with a sly smile. “Play jazz.”
