LEONARD NIMOY and SUSAN BAY NIMOY
LOS ANGELES
MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART
Leonard Nimoy and his wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, have filled their home with modern and contemporary art that they’ve been collecting for 20 years. The couple is committed to supporting working artists, particularly young aspiring ones. Susan was a trustee of Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (1999–2006), where the couple established a $1 million endowment fund in 2002 for young artists. The Nimoy Fund for New and Emerging Artists supports exhibitions and other programs that “challenge traditional categories of art making” and “define new directions in culture.” The couple funds fellowships, exhibitions and artist-in-residence programs for aspiring talents at museums and institutions across the country through their Leonard and Susan Bay Nimoy Family Foundation. In addition, they donate art (Nan Goldin and Hans Hoffmann works to LA MOCA, an April Gornik to the Orange County Museum) and underwrite museum shows and traveling exhibitions. For years they chose to provide support quietly, even anonymously, until they decided that by being more visible they would inspire others to perform similar acts of charity.

STEVEN and NANCY OLIVER
SONOMA COUNTY, CALIF.
SITE-SPECIFIC SCULPTURE
In 1985 Steven and Nancy Oliver commissioned Judith Shea to create a site-specific work for their 90-acre Geyserville ranch, and since that first installation 20 other artists have followed suit, including Richard Serra, Andy Goldsworthy and Bruce Nauman. A trained engineer and construction company owner, Oliver immerses himself in the creative process and in the fabrication of these often-monumental creations, to which he brings his professional abilities. “My children and grandchildren have grown up eating dinner with great artists at the table,” Steven said. “You have this incredible, rich life experience by knowing these people.” Steven is chairman of the board of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and a long-time trustee of the California College of the Arts, which has granted him an honorary Doctor of Fine Art degree and named part of its Oakland campus the Steven Oliver Art Center. He is also a trustee at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden. Last September the Arts Council of Sonoma County honored Oliver with an Achievement in the Arts Awards. Of his investment in these giant, immovable artworks, Oliver told the Financial Times, “I can’t sell it. I can’t give it away. I can only enjoy the experience of its creation and existence.”

DONALD and PATRICIA ORESMAN
NEW YORK CITY
ART ABOUT READING
Donald and Patricia Oresman’s collection is focused not on books but on readers—images of people reading, created by such artists as René Magritte, Richard Diebenkorn and Andy Warhol. The Oresmans are generous supporters of a wide range of projects related to books and their preservation: They made a $50,000 grant to the Library of America’s Guardian of Letters Fund to underwrite the continued printing of works by obscure authors; Donald donated to Washington University in St. Louis his correspondence with William Gaddis concerning the author’s National Book Award–winning novel A Frolic of His Own (1994); the Oresman Gallery in the Larchmont, New York, public library recognizes his fund-raising efforts on its behalf. Oresman is a trustee of the American Academy in Rome, the Library of America and the American Antiquarian Society. He was honored by the 2006 New York Landmarks Conservancy’s Chairman’s Award for his work in helping to preserve endangered buildings. Oresman has chaired this group and served on its board for 26 years.

MARILYN OSHMAN
HOUSTON
CONTEMPORARY AND OUTSIDER ART
Under the curious name of “The Orange Show,” a creative eccentric named Jeff McKissack took found objects and 25 years to create an eye-popping, rambling structure named for his favorite fruit. After his death, Houston collector-philanthropist Marilyn Oshman led a group that preserved the structure as a locus for community art-related activities. The Orange Show is more than McKissack’s unorthodox edifice. Now publicly funded, it’s a vibrant element in Houston’s cultural life, a celebration of creative personal expression. Its outreach programs encourage public participation—at-risk youths have created 28 murals under its auspices. The annual Art Car Parade, which attracts more than 200,000 people, recognizes the “art car” as a creative form. The “Beer Can House” is a testament to what aluminum cans can yield. Now a publicly funded organization guided by Oshman, The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art is a vital center for personal creative expression, in all its wayward forms. Oshman, who has served on the boards of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has a varied personal collection, including works by Ed Ruscha, May Ray and other noteworthy 20th-century artists—but in recent years has focused on “artists working outside the mainstream. I’m always looking,” she says, “to uncover beautiful fresh stuff.”

RONALD A. and ANN PIZZUTI
COLUMBUS, OHIO
CONTEMPORARY ART
A$900 Karel Appel print was the first art purchase Ron and Ann Pizzuti ever made. It was 1974, and Columbus dealer Eva Glimcher let the young and enthusiastic couple pay in installments while introducing them to contemporary art. Since then the Pizzutis have relied on instinct and a good eye to assemble a sizable number of works by Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, Jim Dine, Frank Stella, Franz Kline, Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly, as well as art by less-familiar artists like Jim Hodges and Tim Bavington. “I’m a big risk-taker in business, and I’m a big risk-taker in our collection activity as well,” Ronald says. “If I like somebody, if I like their work and I think they have potential, we’ll take a gamble,” and when he can, he tries to get to know personally the artists he collects. Soon the Pizzuti collection will be accessible to the public: The couple bought a building in downtown Columbus, which they plan to convert to space appropriate for showing their art. He is a trustee of the Wexner Center Foundation (the trustee board for the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University) and a former chairman and honorary trustee of the Columbus Museum of Art.

THOMAS PRITZKER
CHICAGO
ASIAN ART
Thomas Pritzker has a scholar’s interest in Asian art and a home in Nepal from which to pursue it. Over years of trekking the Himalayas in search of Buddhist and Hindu sculptures, paintings, scrolls and fragments, Pritzker has assembled a substantial and wellregarded collection. Twenty-one of his pieces were on display in “Himalayas,” an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. He has published articles and photographs on different aspects of Tibetan, Nepalese and Indian art, and has chaired the Indo-U.S. Subcommission on Education and Culture as well as, since 1989, the AIC’s Committee on Asian Art. This past November, Pritzker (of the family that awards the Pritzker Architecture Prize) was appointed chairman of the board of trustees of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he had served as vice chairman since 1999 and has endowed the Pritzker Chair of Asian and Ancient Art. He also has been a trustee of the University of Chicago since 1995. The Margot and Thomas Pritzker Family Foundation helped underwrite the AIC’s “Silk Road Chicago,” which will be on view through October 2007.

MITCHELL P. RALES
WASHINGTON, D.C.
CONTEMPORARY ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Mitchell P. Rales, a Washington, D.C., businessman, philanthropist and collector, was recently elected a trustee of the National Gallery of Art, capping years of participation in the museum’s Trustees’ Council, Collectors Committee and Legacy Circle. The Glenstone Foundation, Rales’ philanthropic vehicle, has underwritten numerous acquisitions and made partial gifts of art to several institutions, such as a Rachel Whiteread installation to the National Gallery, and a group of early John Baldessaris given to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, where Rales serves as board vice-chairman. In November 2006, Glenstone made another gift to the Hirshhorn of 13 photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto that previously had been exhibited at the museum. The Glenstone Foundation has made gifts to the Whitney, the Guggenheim, the Smithsonian and even Middlebury College in Vermont, where it helped underwrite a library mural.