Ostrander asked Floback to look at the Meckseper piece in December while it was being shown during Art Basel Miami Beach.

“Quirky or contemporary art often requires a lot of thought,” Floback said. “Sometimes you go home and think about it, and I did.”

She concluded Thank a Vet was conveying the same message her father, who worked as an engineer in the defense industry, tried to instill in her 50 years ago: “Believe in the free distribution of information,” and “don’t believe everything the government says.”

Floback bought the piece at a significant discount with the contingency it would be gifted to the new museum.

But for now, the large work of art, about the size of a pool table, is at her main house. It arrived two weeks ago. Professional art installers from Fort Lauderdale took about 3½ hours just to put together the mirrored display on which the eclectic items sit. The Flobacks will have about five months to enjoy it before the work is delivered to the museum.

Floback would not say how much she paid for the work. “Max’s laughing: ‘The silly girl asked the price. We don’t do that within the art world and certainly not for a newspaper story.’ ”

But she did reveal how much she paid for her first piece of art: $120. It was a “wonderful lithograph” of a still life scene of flowers in a vase painted by the great French artist Henri Matisse.

It was about 1969, and she was working for a design company in Boca Raton. A dealer in Paris had brought that lithograph and several edition pieces for the company to place in homes of the wealthy.

“I was so poor; I had a rattan thing I got from the Salvation Army,” said Floback, who grew up in Maryland in a family with five kids who all wore hand-me-downs. “The lithograph was $120, but it might as well have been $120,000. I asked my bosses: ‘If we don’t use it this season, can I buy it on layaway?’ ”

The bosses said yes.

Floback, who graduated from the now-defunct International Design School in Washington, honed her art knowledge while working for a Coral Gables-based design company that dealt with commercial properties. In 1975, Jon Ashton, who would become her second husband, introduced her to the business of plant rentals. She started a Plant Systems franchise in Miami, offering art rental as well. “It took off like a rocket,” she said.

At the same time, she began purchasing works “in her price range” from dealers and at auctions for her own collection. She said she did her homework, evidenced by the stacks of art books in her home, and kept to her budget.

“Mimi is a real expert on getting deals on amazing expensive artists,” Ostrander said.

The Flavin pursuit

Floback has worked with art dealers in Miami, New York, London and Austria. For years, she was trying to get a Flavin sculpture, on the museum’s wish list as a cornerstone piece.

The work of the late American artist was out of her price range until last fall. At a London auction, she acquired a 6-foot high Flavin piece with yellow, green, blue and red fluorescent lights, which Max loves when it is brightly lit.

It arrived from London with two of its bulbs broken. “Good thing we have Island Electric in the Keys,” she said. “The electrician is German and knows about art. But the silly bulbs cost like $40.”