The passion to collect can assume many forms. During a year of researching collections and talking to their owners, A&A staff followed leads far beyond the expected categories of paintings, sculpture, photography and design objects. We found collections of antique canes, Turkmen textiles, automobiles, miniature books, naval warship memorabilia and the printed word as art. The collectors, too, are a varied group: investment bankers, executives, psychologists, automobile dealers, actors. Diverse as they are, our 100 Top Collectors share one trait— generosity. In some way, each of them offers something back to their community or to the larger world of the arts. Some make gifts or loans of art to cultural institutions; some sponsor emerging artists; some serve on museum boards; some create programs that foster art appreciation, scholarship or accessibility. Everyone on our list has helped expand opportunities for others.

Art & Antiques honors the public spirit that these collectors exhibited during 2006. Each year their open-handed support of the arts assumes greater importance. Increasingly the price of great works is beyond the purchasing power of all but two or three of our nation’s richest museums, and tax laws that affect fractional gifts are deterring would-be donors. Arts education is in decline because localities, facing financial pressures, see such programs as disposable elements in shrinking school budgets. But as long as big-hearted collectors provide alternate sources of support and supply, art will continue to play an important role in our communal and individual lives. The next time you visit a museum, read the wall card and tip your hat to the generous lender or donor. When you next attend a lecture, visit a collection or see an exhibit that was privately funded, be grateful to our Top Collectors. They’re enriching life for all of us.

MARILYNN ALSDORF
CHICAGO
ASIAN ART
For Marilynn and James Alsdorf, a life committed to art began with the purchase of a Modigliani in the 1950s, the progenitor of a collection of 20th-century works by such greats as Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse and Jasper Johns. Catholic in their tastes, the couple soon grew fascinated by sculpture, acquiring ancient, medieval and, finally, Asian pieces. The Alsdorf collection of Southeast Asian and Himalayan arts is among the country’s largest holdings, distinguished by its breadth and connoisseurship. James died in 1990, and in the ensuing years Marilynn has been supporting a number of art institutions. In 1997 she gave 400 works, mainly sculptures spanning nearly 20 centuries of Asian art, to the Art Institute of Chicago where she is a life trustee. This past year she received the University of Chicago Smart Museum of Art’s biannual Joseph R. Shapiro Award, presented by the then-AIC chair John Bryan, who said, “We are honoring an art patron without equal in our time in Chicago. As an art collector of extraordinary depth and breadth and quality, as a benefactor to so many, many, many art organizations, and as a leader who has given so much time and talent to cultural institutions, Marilynn Alsdorf has no peer.” Alsdorf helped underwrite the AIC’s exhibition “Silk Road Chicago,” which will be on view through October 2007.

DALE and DOUG ANDERSON
PALM BEACH, FLA., AND NEW YORK CITY
CONTEMPORARY CRAFTS AND GLASS
Dale and Doug Anderson give depth to the word “collect.” American Indian art and crafts, studio glass, photographs, fiber, ceramics, contemporary art, Chinese rank badges and shoes for bound feet— they’ve collected them all. The couple gives collections away, advocates for artists, underwrites scholarships and supports museums. They are, in short, ambassadors for crafts and the artists who make them. They’ve donated more than 800 pieces to the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin (Dale is on the board) and another 200 to other institutions. The Andersons don’t store art; they live with it or give it away. “We give really good pieces that make a difference. Not the stuff in a closet that no one wants,” Dale says. In 2003, the Andersons joined with Charles Bronfman and his late wife, Andrea, to form AIDA, the Association for Israel’s Decorative Arts (see “Ready for the World Market,” Art & Antiques, September 2005). AIDA exhibited at SOFA Chicago (Sculptural Objects and Functional Art) in 2003 and has participated ever since, exposing dozens of Israeli craft artists to an international marketplace. “We’ve made a substantial difference in the lives of artists working in Israel, introducing them to dealers, collectors and museums in America and England,” says Doug. “It’s the thing we’ve done in the last five years that makes us most proud.”

JOAN and MILTON BAGLEY
BOCA RATON, FLA.
LATIN AMERICAN ART
Ilike them because they’re earthy, Rubenesque,” says Milton Bagley, talking about his Francisco Zuñiga sculptures. “Because they’re unglamorous and real. Zuñiga venerated the simple peasant.” Joan and Milton Bagley have assembled a collection of more than 60 Latin American paintings and sculptures, which fill their homes. And over the summer of 2006, they filled much of the Boca Raton Museum of Art. “Masters of Latin America: Selections from the Joan and Milton Bagley Collection” featured art from more than 10 countries (heavy on Mexico and Cuba), most of which had never been exhibited before. The Bagleys started collecting 27 years ago. After a brief brush with Abstract Expressionism, they began to buy American Indian art in Santa Fe and Taos, where they often vacationed. Then, warmed by the cultural crosswinds of the Southwest and inspired by seeing Latin American art in the galleries of the area’s finest dealers, they quickly fell in love with the colorful and robust art from south of the border, particularly of the 1980s. And they’ve been unwavering in that love ever since.

BRUCE BARNES and JOSEPH CUNNINGHAM
NEW YORK CITY
AMERICAN ARTS AND CRAFTS
Bruce Barnes and Joseph Cunningham live amidst what many consider a peerless collection of American Arts and Crafts and Prairie Movement decorative art (1890–1920) comprising more than 300 pieces by such designers as Greene & Greene, Charles Rohlfs, Roycroft, Gustav Stickley, Frank Lloyd Wright, Grueby, Newcomb, George Ohr and Teco. Barnes started collecting furniture, then metalwork and lighting. After adding art pottery, “it became an entire period encapsulated in one environment.” Cunningham is currently working with the Milwaukee Art Museum on a Rohlfs exhibition scheduled to open there in 2009, travel to the Dallas Museum of Art and the Huntington in San Marino, California, and finish in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2010. Barnes and Cunningham have established the American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation, which works with museums to foster and support research and collection development in early modern American design—principally through gifts, long-term loans, advising and making the collection available for scholars, curators and patrons. “We try to be helpful to curators in whatever ways we can,” says Cunningham. Recently, the foundation donated pieces to the Met, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Carnegie Museum of Art, in each case honoring the achievements of an important scholar or curator in early modern design.

MAX N. and HEIDI BERRY
WASHINGTON, D.C. AND NANTUCKET, MASS.
AMERICAN ART AND DECORATIVE ARTS
Max and Heidi Berry are well-known figures in the Americana community and philanthropists on the Washington scene. The couple collects American paintings and decorative arts, and has amassed a collection of scrimshaw at their Nantucket home. Max, a lawyer and lobbyist, has served as chairman of the National Board of the Smithsonian Institution and the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art and has been a trustee of the Phillips Collection and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He is founder and past chair of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association and, with Graham Gund, founded the Nantucket Preservation Trust in 1999. He and Heidi, a freelance journalist in the arts, serve on the Collectors Committee of the National Gallery of Art. Max also is chairman of the board of advisors of the Bryant Fellows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which helps underwrite publications and purchases for the American Wing, and, with Heidi, is a supporter of the Decorative Arts Trust.