MARTIN Z. MARGULIES
KEY BISCAYNE, FLA.
CONTEMPORARY ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY
In 1976, luxury real estate developer Martin Margulies bought an Isamu Noguchi work, which launched an enormous and important collection that ranges from European Modernism through Arte Povera to video art. His photography holdings rank among the world’s most important collections. Since 1994 part of Margulies’ collection has been on long-term loan to Florida International University: 55 large-scale sculptures by Sol LeWitt, Richard Serra, Donald Judd, Louise Nevelson and Jean Dubuffet dot the campus (and are known as the Martin Z. Margulies Sculpture Park). Another part of the collection is housed in The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, 45,000 square feet in Miami’s Wynwood district of art galleries, and kuntshalles exhibiting photography as well as sculpture, video and installation art— thousands of works by established artists like Frank Stella and newer artists like Ernesto Neto, Olafur Eliasson and Anri Sala. Warehouse exhibitions are free and open to the public October through April. Margulies believes in using his art holdings for educational purposes, providing not only public access to wonderful contemporary art, as at FIU, but also guided tours, guest speakers and student lectures at the Warehouse (where Margulies himself can be found serving as tour guide). Margulies is a founder of the University of Miami’s Lowe Art Museum and has served on the Collector’s Committee of the National Gallery of Art and the board of the International Sculpture Center, both in Washington, D.C. He is currently on the board of the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York.

LESTER MARKS
HOUSTON
CONTEMPORARY ART
Ibegan to collect seriously in the early 1990s but didn’t go completely crazy until about six years ago,” says Lester Marks, whose enormous contemporary art collection— more than 400 pieces from the mid- 1950s to the present—fills his life, not to mention his home. Marks has assembled one of the finest and most diverse collections in Houston. Works by famous artists— Robert Rauschenberg, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd—keep company with young unknowns whose pieces he likes and whose careers he furthers, including a significant concentration of works by contemporary black artists. “I’m especially proud of the mentoring I’ve given to about a dozen artists at the beginning of their careers,” he says. “I’ve held exhibitions for emerging artists in my home, secured galleries, helped with working capital, introduced them to the art network in Houston and New York.” Marks is a passionate supporter of the arts community. For nine years his family has underwritten free admission to the Contemporary Arts Museum, where he serves on the board. He also is a trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, sits on numerous other arts organization boards and hosts dozens of annual fund-raisers for local and visiting museum groups. “I enjoy groups that are new to the arts, such as high school art classes, religious organizations, senior care centers and even an occasional elementary school class. As collectors we have an obligation, as does the artist, to discover, illuminate, entertain, educate, share and to do so with soul, passion and visual excellence.”

DOANLD and CATHERINE MARRON
NEW YORK CITY
20TH-CENTURY ART
Since joining the board of New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1975, Donald Marron has been a steady and generous supporter (he is the current vice-chairman of the board and a former president). Most recently, in 2006, Marron and his wife, Catherine, who chairs the board of the New York Public Library, made a promised gift to MoMA of an important 24-foot-long Brice Marden painting. In recognition of the deep financial commitment made to MoMA by the Marrons, the towering atrium in the museum’s new building bears their name. Donald heads his own investment firm, Lightyear Capital, where some of his art is always on display. “It’s not a corporate collection,” says Marron’s art advisor and curator, Matthew Armstrong. “It’s a highly personal one. He has a deep love of the art and a very, very keen eye.” Marron has been collecting for a long time. Before he founded Lightyear, he was for 20 years the CEO of PaineWebber (since acquired by UBS), where he built a famously huge and excellent art collection of 850 works that were exhibited around the country. At the time of the acquisition, Marron had been talking with MoMA about a gift of art from PaineWebber. UBS followed through on those discussions, making a gift to MoMA of 44 works.

STEVE MARTIN
LOS ANGELES
MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART
Steve Martin is among those neon names in the Hollywood community who create interesting collections and provide generous support to L.A.’s burgeoning museums. Since his first purchase in 1968 of a painting by Ed Ruscha, the “wild and crazy” guy has put together a notable collection of mostly modern American art, which over the years has included works by Edward Hopper, John Twachtman, Richard Diebenkorn, Willem de Kooning and David Hockney, as well as newer artists like April Gornik and Eric Fischl. He has lent works in his collection to major museums and smaller venues like the Neuberger Museum in Purchase, New York, and the Allen Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio. Martin was a trustee of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 1984 to 2002, and a recent patron of The Huntington in San Marino, California, to which he gave $1 million for the museum’s American art collection. In addition to loaning art to the Huntington, he has helped it acquire a bronze sculpture by American artist John Gregory and sponsored the 2004 exhibition, “Sugaring Off—The Maple Sugar Paintings of Eastman Johnson.” (Back story: Martin discovered the Huntington when filming nearby.)

GLEN and ANDREA McCRELESS
SAN ANTONIO
MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART
The University of the Incarnate Word, chartered in San Antonio in 1881, recently received a series of approximately 25 gifts and loans from Glen and Andrea McCreless, including Renaissance drawings and paintings, manuscript pages from a Medieval Bible and from several versions of the Book of Hours. The most important of their loans is a Renaissance studio-of-Botticelli painting from the 1480s, “Madonna del Libro.” In recognition of these gifts, space in the campus’ J.E. & L.E. Mabee Library has been designated The McCreless Art Gallery. The couple began collecting around 1988, concentrating on Christian art and artifacts. In addition to their gifts to UIW, the McCrelesses established the McCreless Fine Arts Building at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky, in honor of Glen’s father, who had chaired the board of trustees at the college.

RAYMOND NASHER
DALLAS
MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART
Raymond Nasher is a regular on lists like this because of his consistently generous support of the arts. In Dallas, he spent $70 million to establish the Renzo Piano–designed Nasher Sculpture Center, which houses the encyclopedic Raymond and Patsy Nasher collection of modern and contemporary sculpture. Initiated by a wife-to-husband gift of an Arp bronze in the mid-1960s, it has mushroomed into a wide-ranging collection of 20th- and 21stcentury sculpture. The world-renowned collection is distinguished not only for its great historic breadth—works by 80 different artists, but also for the depth of its holdings by giants such as Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and David Smith (11 each), Henry Moore (five), Joan Miró and Auguste Rodin (four) and Alberto Giacometti (17). Nasher also developed a taste for works by living artists, acquiring pieces by Anish Kapoor, Richard Deacon, Jeff Koons and Scott Burton, among many others. Nasher made a recent gift of $10 million to Duke University, his alma mater, to help establish the Nasher Museum of Art, the university’s first stand-alone art museum. It opened in 2005 and enhances the cultural life of both the campus and the greater Research Triangle area.

JEROME and MARGARET NERMAN
KANSAS CITY, MO.
CONTEMPORARY ART
Jerry and Margaret Nerman had the foresight to start buying art in 1976. Today their holdings include paintings by Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Ellsworth Kelly, Mark Rothko and Julian Schnabel, and sculpture by Richard Serra, Mark di Suvero and Isamu Noguchi in their own sculpture garden outside the art-filled house. After abandoning plans to convert their home into a museum, they cast about for “a good person to give some money to, to build a museum” that would promote an appreciation of the arts among young people and new collectors. The result: a naming gift from the Nermans and their son, Lewis, to the Johnson County Community College, which had a director with a good eye for emerging artists and a collection of 400 contemporary pieces—but only modest gallery space. The 30,000- square-foot Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art will open in the fall. “This museum will enable thousands of students and visitors to enjoy major exhibitions and a spectacular permanent collection,” Jerry says. He serves on the Nelson-Atkins Collections Committee; Margaret Nerman is a trustee of the Kansas City Art Institute. They’re still buying art, but now most of it is for the new JCCC museum.