Art Tells Your Story

This spring, I had the privilege of attending a private preview of Christie's 20th & 21st Century auctions in New York, where works from the personal collections of two legendary female gallerists, Agnes Gund and Marian Goodman, were on view at once. From the late Agnes Gund’s collection, three 20th-century masterworks by Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, and Joseph Cornell were offered. From Marian Goodman’s collection, eight Gerhard Richter paintings were offered. Both women lived with these pieces, which were in conversation with their cherished art and objects, furniture, and family photos.

While considering the two collections at Christie's, I was struck by how differently two extraordinary women told their stories through art and how clearly each collection was a portrait of these women.

Goodman's collection was a study in devotion to a single artist. She began representing the German artist Gerard Richter in 1985, and played a significant role in building his U.S. market. The eight Richter paintings from Marian Goodman’s personal collection illustrate her decades-long relationship with the artist. Seeing those paintings together was like watching a relationship unfold across a lifetime, told entirely through one artist's evolving language.

Gund's three pieces at auction told a different kind of story. Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, and Joseph Cornell were three artists in conversation with one another on her walls. Where Goodman's collection of Richters speaks to her relationship to the artist and her passion for his dynamic paintings, Gund’s speaks to her tastes across multiple artists and media. In comparing these two offerings, I want to acknowledge that they are just small slivers of their larger collections. Both women had incredible access to art through their personal relationships with artists and their roles in the art world. However, these small slices of two collections demonstrate different modes of collecting. Do you want to tell your story through one artist, movement, or medium? Or, would you rather narrate with multiple voices, styles, and mediums?

Neither approach to collecting is more "correct" than the other. That's really the point. A collection isn't a formula; it's a mirror. The artwork on display this spring acted as portraits of two different women, painted not in oil but in the choices each made about what to live with.

You don’t need a career in the art world to have a collection that speaks of you and your story. That is where I come in: to source highly personalized work that speaks to your story and fits your tastes. Whether your story is best told through a single narrative or with many voices in conversation, the goal is to write in your own voice, consistently enough that, decades from now, the pieces on your walls could still be read like a memoir: unmistakably, entirely yours.

I am here to help you figure that out and continue your narrative, page by page and piece by piece.