Consisting of over 600 pieces, Esther Grether’s collection of 20th-century art included works by Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Salvador Dalí, and Francis Bacon.

The couple’s collection contained over 700 works including masterpieces of late 19th- and early 20th-century French paintings.

Agnes Gund was a collector and patron who championed contemporary arts, uplifted marginalized artists, and treated philanthropy like a full-time job.

Joan Miró once said that Aimé Maeght has “a personality that will leave its mark on the artistic world of the 20th century.” Indeed, alongside his wife, Marguerite, Aimé would be a preeminent post-war French art dealer, publisher, and collector.

The late collector and philanthropist made his fortune through private equity and was a frequent presence at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in the mid-1990s, spending top dollar for postwar and contemporary pieces.

The art collector and patron Lydia Winston Malbin acquired an impressive collection of 20th century works and was particularly drawn to Italian Futurism.

The cosmetics tycoon’s purchases were driven by instinct and sentimental value rather than market value. “When I bought a picture because I thought I was getting a bargain, it most often turned out to be a mistake,” she once said. “But when I purchased what I knew gave me real inner joy, or because I wanted to encourage an artist whose talent I recognized, I usually chose well.”

Often considered the “Medici family” of modern art, Dominique and John de Menil established a singular style of modernism paired with an appreciation for antiquity.

Enid A. Haupt, a noted philanthropist and horticulturist, made her living spaces into still lifes. Haupt filled her homes with works by 21st century artists like Giacometti, Moore, and Rothko, European furniture and decorative art, Chinese furniture and ceramics, 19th century porcelain and silver, and greenery.

Tucked away on a quiet block in Manhattan’s Turtle Bay neighborhood is Philip Johnson’s Rockefeller Guest House, commissioned in 1948 by Blanchette Rockefeller.

Mark Rothko once dubbed Ben Heller’s apartment “the Frick of the West Side.” The textile executive and New York native filled his home with works by Pollock, Kline, Newman, Giacometti, Johns, Gorky, and Still, alongside pre-Columbian, African, and ancient sculpture.

S.I. Newhouse Jr., the late co-owner of the Condé Nast media empire, began collecting in the mid-1960s and soon owned numerous postwar masterpieces by the likes of Piet Mondrian, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko, and more. 

The late Stefan Edlis and his wife Gael Neeson are celebrated as much for their philanthropy as their collecting. 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.

The entertainment mogul and arts philanthropist David Geffen has acquired one of the most admired—and valuable—collections of postwar American art. His collection is relatively small compared to that of other billionaires—supposedly around 50 pieces—but his savvy taste and deal-making skills have earned him exceptional works by David Hockney, Jasper Johns, and Jackson Pollock. “Piece for piece, work for work, there’s no collection that has better representation of postwar American art than David Geffen’s. Period,” former LACMA curator Paul Schimmel once said. “It is to postwar American Art what the Frick Collection is to Old Master painting.”

The Lang Collection is connected by a focus on Abstract Expressionism and shows the influence of the European Surrealists, which inspired many artists of the New York School.

Rachel Lambert Mellon (1910 -2014), better known as Bunny, was a gardener, horticulturist and wife of billionaire philanthropist Paul Mellon. A close friend of Jackie Kennedy, she created the White House Rose Garden which still grows according to her plans.

Barbara Jakobson’s Upper East Side home is an open book. Since 1965, the collector and MoMA trustee has filled all five stories with paintings, sculpture, photography, and furniture.

In the 1950s, Robert and Ethel Scull began assembling a dazzling collection of Abstract Expressionist pieces.

The late Frederick R. Weisman made his fortune developing Hunt foods and acting as a distributor for Toyota when it was still a little-known Japanese auto company. He and his first wife, Marcia, began collecting art in the 1950s.

The art collector Emily Hall Tremaine began building her collection in the 1930s. Initially, she was guided by Chick Austin, the director of Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum, who introduced her to other modern art collectors.

By the late 1940s, the socialite, patron and collector Peggy Guggenheim was done with New York and moved to an unfinished 18th-century building in Venice.

Victor and Sally Ganz were enterprising collectors who paired their art historical savvy with a willingness to take calculated risks.

Katherine S. Dreier’s treated her West Redding, Connecticut home as a gallery, hosting avant-garde works like Duchamp’s The Large Glass among floral wallpaper.

The Boschi Di Stefano House Museum currently displays around 300 paintings, sculptures, and drawings.

Pamela Joyner and her husband, Fred Giuffrida have curated an impressive collection that focuses on expanding the art history canon to underrepresented artists of color.

Nelson Rockefeller’s collection at his 810 Fifth Avenue penthouse.

Louise and Walter Arensberg’s Apartment on 33 West 67 St, New York, circa 1918.

The Dallas guest house of Marguerite and Robert Hoffman

Claes Oldenburg’s, Mu-Mu, 1961 is now in the collection of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles .⁠
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The private residence of American collector Peter Brant