The Gochman Family Collection: A Different Approach
Thoughts: Tobias Czudej07.23.2025
The juxtaposition is deliberate, one suspects. In a traditionally appointed Central Park apartment—the kind of domestic space that has housed American collections for over a century—contemporary Indigenous works by artists such as Ishi Glinsky (Tohono O’odham), Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill (Métis), and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation) hang alongside pieces by Alice Neel. The effect is not integration so much as productive tension, raising questions about which narratives have been permitted to coexist within such spaces, and which have been systematically excluded.
What emerges from last week’s visit with the Appraisers Association of America is that the Gochman Family Collection is less a conventional private collection than an experiment in institutional critique through acquisition. The lending programme charges no fees to reduce institutional barriers. When works prove better suited to Indigenous stewardship, they migrate to Forge Project rather than to auction, prioritising cultural appropriateness over market logic. These operational choices represent a different approach to traditional collecting paradigms.
The collection refuses the segregation typically imposed on Indigenous art, positioning it instead as central to understanding contemporary American artistic production. For those working within the art market’s established frameworks, the Gochman model suggests possibilities beyond traditional collecting paradigms.
Image: Interior view, The Gochman Family Collection New York
