The Collector: Stefan Edlis

Robert Rauschenberg’s “Retroactive II” (1963) and Jeff Koons’ “Rabbit” (1986)

23 July 2025

The late Stefan Edlis and his wife Gael Neeson are celebrated as much for their philanthropy as their collecting. Born in Vienna, Edlis came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1941 and served in the Navy during World War II. By 1965 he had founded his own company, Apollo Plastics Corporation, which grew into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. In the 1970s he met his second wife, Neeson, who shared a passion for contemporary art. The couple initially bought works made in plastic but soon focused on modern European and Pop works by Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and James Rosenquist. “Most of the sophisticated collectors were buying Abstract Expressionism,” Neeson said in a 2020 interview. “We discovered you could buy art that had just been painted, not just work out of books. And that was even more exciting.” Among their first big purchases was Mondrian’s “Large Composition With Red, Blue, and Yellow” for $675,000—a bargain price today but a big sum in 1977.

Edlis and Neeson set a 200-work cap for their collection by no more than 40 artists which allowed them to evolve their collection and keep artwork out of storage. “So whenever we decided to bring in a new artist, we would deaccession: one in, one out,” Neeson said. “We were very strict. It’s sad, some of the things we’ve sold. But it had to be done.”

The couple often made news when they decided to part with a piece. In 2007, Edlis and Neeson sold Andy Warhol’s “Turquoise Marilyn” (1964) to financier Steven A. Cohen for $80 million. They also gifted many high-value works to institutions, including Jeff Koons’ 1986 “Rabbit,” for which they paid $945,000 in 1991. (In 2019, another cast of “Rabbit” sold for $91.1 million, the largest sum ever paid for work by a living artist. The MCA Chicago values its gifted Koons “Rabbit” at $100 million.)

In 2015, Edlis and Neeson made a gift to the Art Institute of Chicago of 44 works worth an estimated $400 million with the caveat that the works remain on permanent view for the next five decades. It was the largest gift of art in the AIC’s 136-year history, and included works by Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Cy Twombly, Brice Marden, Damien Hirst, and more.

Image: Robert Rauschenberg’s “Retroactive II” (1963) and Jeff Koons’ “Rabbit” (1986). Photographs by David Kasnic.

Authors: Tobias Czudej, Susan McDonough

The Collector

23 July 2025

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