Family Collectors

Art gallery interior with colorful posters, including a portrait of Wonder Woman with fists raised, and a purple balloon floating near the ceiling.

A family who collects seriously, in a house that doesn’t announce it. A classic house, and inside it one of the most significant collections we’ve ever built: Nick Cave, Hank Willis Thomas, Mary Weatherford, Phillip K. Smith III, Gisela Colón, Vivian Springford, Ashley Longshore, Katherine Strause, Jen Mann, and many more.

They love light and space. Not as a category to check off, but as a way of living: Smith’s color fields and Colón’s luminous forms in rooms where the family eats breakfast and does homework. When the architecture stays quiet, the collection becomes the architecture. That’s harder than it sounds. Every decision about where a work hangs became a decision about how this family moves through their day.

What I loved most was their daughters. Every time we came to meet or to install, the girls sat in. Listening, talking, asking questions, wanting to know about what they lived with. They weren’t being polite. They wanted to understand the things on their walls, and by the end they could tell you who made what and why it was there. That’s a collection working. It isn’t stored; it’s lived with, all around, every day, and it’s raising the next people who’ll care.

Significance in a collection has to do with the decisions, made one at a time, over years, by people who keep looking. This family kept looking, and they taught their kids to.

An abstract painting featuring a stylized figure of a woman in a blue dress, with a prominent hand in the foreground, painted with bold brushstrokes on a textured white background, framed in gold.
A framed artwork of a face with closed eyes and a neutral expression, displayed on a wall with a blue geometric line pattern background.
A dining room with a chandelier hanging above a dark wood table surrounded by white chairs with dark cushioned seats. On the wall are two large abstract paintings, one with bold pink and orange shapes on a blue background, and the other with a glowing green and black oval shape.
Painting of a outdoor scene with a large white tent and spectators, set against green mountains and trees.
Artwork of a botanical illustration with orchids and blue leaves, featuring labeled text 'NBA' and 'SPAL'.
Abstract painting with warm colors including shades of red, orange, and yellow, displayed on a wall with a neon light strip along the bottom edge.
Two art pieces with human faces, one pink and one blue, featuring cutouts revealing portions of faces inside each, hanging on a textured grey wall.
Framed sign with the message "You are special" in red letters above a drawing of an open oyster shell with a smiling face inside.
Colorful modern art piece with geometric shapes, painted man lying on a painted sofa, animals zebras in a nature scene, and abstract patterns with bright colors.
Interior of a room with a vertical rectangular neon sign on the wall in purple, pink, and yellow colors. The room has dark flooring, black-framed glass doors on the left, and a curved window frame on the right. There is a wall socket and an electrical outlet near the floor.
A large abstract watercolor painting with shades of purple, green, blue, and yellow on a beige wall in a room.