The Collector: S.I. Newhouse Jr.

30 July 2025

S.I. Newhouse Jr., the late co-owner of the Condé Nast media empire, began collecting in the mid-1960s, at one point paying the dealer Betty Parsons on an installment plan. Newhouse’s passion for contemporary art was guided by Miki Denhof, the adventurous art director of “Glamour,” and Alexander Liberman, Condé Nast’s suave editorial director and himself an artist. Newhouse soon possessed a collection of postwar art including Piet Mondrian’s “Victory Boogie Woogie” (1944), as well as numerous masterpieces by Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Jasper Johns.

Initially, many of Newhouse’s prized abstract and color field pieces were on display at his townhouse at 235 East 73rd Street. The Billy Baldwin-designed space was filled with densely hung works with installation by James Lebron.

By 1991, Newhouse and his wife, Victoria, had moved into a building in the Beekman Place area. The new apartment introduced physical restraints—fewer walls and smaller ceilings—that necessitated a shift in Newhouse’s collecting habits. After making very few sales during his two decades living at the townhouse, Newhouse sold much of his collection throughout the 1990s. After parting with works that literally no longer fit in his collection, Newhouse would often acquire smaller pieces by the same artists, a testament to his dogged nature and commitment to individual artists.

The collection also expanded in new directions as Newhouse purchased early modern masters like Alberto Giacometti, Henri Matisse, and Paul Cézanne. Newhouse enjoyed juxtaposing different eras of art in the Beekman Place apartment, installing Jeff Koons’ “Rabbit” (1986) across from Picasso’s “Pregnant Woman” (1950) so that the pair of works could be viewed in a line from one to the other across the apartment.

“He had the best eye and the best collection of postwar paintings ever put together,” said his friend David Geffen, who added, “I bought a lot of it.” One such purchase was Jasper Johns’ “False Start” (1959), which Newhouse purchased in 1998 for $17 million at Sotheby’s, setting a new record for a living artist. (Geffen resold it in 2006 for $80 million.) Newhouse also engaged in numerous high-profile deals with casino magnate Steven Wynn, whom he famously outbid for Andy Warhol’s “Orange Marilyn” (1964) at the peak of the artist’s popularity in the late ’90s. Wynn poached several paintings from Newhouse’s collection in return.

Koons’ 3-foot-tall silver bunny was among the works auctioned at Christie’s after Newhouse’s death in 2017. “Rabbit” sold for more than $91 million, the most for work by a living artist at auction.

Photos by Michael Mundy

Image: Jeff Koons, “Rabbit” (1986). In the foreground (L to R) are works by Elizabeth Murray and Howard Hodgkin. In the background at left is a Willem De Kooning.

Authors: Tobias Czudej, Susan McDonough

The Collector

30 July 2025

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