What the World’s Top Collectors Bought in 2024, From Contemporary Still Lifes to 16th-Century Sculptures of Saints

Laurent Asscher

As he readies his new foundation, called AMA Venezia in Italy, set to open next spring, Laurent Asscher recently scooped up Jonas Wood’s L.A. Window (2023); a 2024 paper sculpture, Everyone takes off their pants at least once a day, by Charles Ray; and Jadé Fadojutimi’s Plum are not plums until you think about plums and realise there are no plums here to be seen (2023). 

Pedro Barbosa

When Pedro Barbosa collects an artist, he does so in-depth, as evinced by some of his purchases this year, including multiple works by both Ghislaine Leung and KP Brehmer, as well as an embroidery by Carolina Cordeiro and Leslie Thornton’s 4K video Tunneling (above). They’re all “part of the overall train of thought,” he told ARTnews. 

Allison and Larry Berg

Among recent purchases by Allison and Larry Berg are drawings by Dalton Paula, Rachel Martin, and Bill Traylor; paintings by Gary Simmons, Márcia Falcão, and Aislan Pankararu’s River of Desires (2023, above); and sculptures by Lee Bontecou, Mire Lee, and Ione Saldanha.Several acquisitions followed studio visits while at the 2023 Bienal de São Paulo.

Anita Blanchard and Martin Nesbitt

Chicago-based collectors Anita Blanchard and Martin Nesbitt recently acquired works by Sonia Gomes, Diego Mouro, Dalton Paula, Flávio Cerqueira, Tadáskía, Jordan Casteel, Theaster Gates, Titus Kaphar, and Emanoel Araújo’s Navio (2021, above). 

Suzanne Deal Booth

Suzanne Deal Booth’s latest purchases span historical works by women artists, including pieces by Louise Bourgeois, Agnes Martin, and Yayoi Kusama, as well as recent works by Xiaobai Su, Pedro Reyes, Theresah Ankomah, and Lubaina Himid, winner of the 2024 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize. Another acquisition is Woody De Othello’s 2023 sculpture Full Touch (above) for her Napa home, which focuses on emerging California-based artists.

Estrellita and Daniel Brodsky

Many of Estrellita and Daniel Brodsky’s recent acquisitions are related to the research Estrellita conducts through her Chelsea nonprofit, Another Space. Among these are textile works by Monica
Giron, Lucrecia Lionti, and Claudia Alarcón, one of which was loaned to this year’s Venice Biennale. Alarcón’s The Origin of the River (2023, above) featured in a show of the Brodsky collection focused on the medium at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York.

James Keith “JK” Brown and Eric Diefenbach

James Keith “JK” Brown and Eric Diefenbach purchased works this past year based on exhibitions they saw, including Covey Gong’s TRD-FN-052403 (2024) from his SculptureCenter show and historical paintings by Cynthia Carlson, who featured in “52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone,”at the Aldrich Contemporary Museum. Other additions include a 1982 abstraction by Reinhard Pods and a Joey Terrill 2024 mixed-media collage Still-Life with Triumeq, Spearmint and Generic PrEP (above).

Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

A recent purchase by Patricia Phelps de Cisneros is a woven basket (above) by Dawanedü Emajenewa (Ye’kwana) that fits into her collection of art by the 12 Indigenous tribes of the Orinoco river basin in the Venezuelan Amazon, which her family began more than 40 years ago.

Isabel and Agustín Coppel

Recent acquisitions for Isabel and Agustín Coppel include works by Martha Jungwirth, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, and Theaster Gates’s Blue Roof Study (2023, above). They also are at work finishing a pavilion designed by Rirkrit Tiravanija for their botanical garden in Culiacán, Mexico.

Beth Rudin DeWoody

When it comes to adding to her collection, Beth Rudin DeWoody said, “I buy art because I’m drawn to the piece. It’s usually not about how it fits into the collection.” Recent purchases include works
by Travis Fish, Erin M. Riley, and Julia Scher, as well as photographs from Matias Sauter Morera’s “Pegamachos” series (above).

Lonti Ebers

Over the past 12 months, Lonti Ebers has focused on adding “depth to artists already in my collection,” she said, with purchases of a 1965 wall-hung accumulation by Yayoi Kusama (above), a 1980 mixed-media sculpture by Tetsumi Kudo, and one of Pierre Huyghe’s 2024 “Idiom” masks.

Nicola Erni

Nicola Erni, whose collection pairs blue-chip postwar and contemporary art with fashion photography, recently added to her collection Nick Waplington’s 23-part Living Room Series (1985–97); Robert Rauschenberg’s collaged wall-relief Market Altar / ROCI MEXICO (1985), above; and Nam June Paik’s Fractal Flasher (1994). Of the latter, she said, “I’m fascinated by this pioneer of video sculptures, of which I have some works in my collection. This piece particularly caught my eye because of its connection to photography, since it contains parts of old cameras: light flashers on top and cameras on its sides.”

Michael Forman and Jennifer Rice

A recent purchase by Michael Forman and Jennifer Rice is Love Your Neighbor (above), a painting that South African artist Marlene Dumas made in 1994, shortly after the end of apartheid. “It is visually stunning but also symbolic of the moment in time in which it was created,” they told ARTnews. “The prominence of the figures in the painting tempts the viewer to try to categorize them by their physical attributes, but their identifying characteristics are too ambiguous to do so. Therefore the viewer is granted the opportunity to make their own determination about these anonymous characters—a clear nod to the revolution taking place around her.”

Amanda and Glenn R. Fuhrman

Recent purchases for Amanda and Glenn R. Fuhrman include paintings by Vija Celmins, Somaya Critchlow, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Nicolas Party, and Winfred Rembert, as well as Tschabalala Self’s mixed-media piece Hear No (2023, above).

Q: What’s the best art experience you’ve had in the past 12 months?

A: For over a year we’ve been working with Andy Goldsworthy on a site-specific work for our home in the Hamptons. It has been one of the most rewarding art experiences we’ve ever had. It is extremely rare for collectors to be so involved in the creative process, and we have been so fortunate to work intimately with Andy on the piece. He has stayed at our home for extended periods to get a feel for the land and to ideate on his proposal. We have traveled to Scotland and Maine to see him and walk through other projects he has done that relate to his ideas for us. We will begin installing the work in the fall, which should take a few weeks. We can’t wait to experience the installation alongside him as well as the eventual finished project.

Denise and Gary Gardner

Denise and Gary Gardner have been collecting Jordan Casteel’s paintings for several years now, and this year they added her 2023 still-life Garden (Thai Hot), above, as a way “to give a home to various stages of her career.”

Guillermo Gonzalez Guajardo and Jana Sanchez Osorio

New to this year’s list, Guillermo Gonzalez Guajardo and Jana Sanchez Osorio opened up the Olivia Foundation (above) in an early 20th-century town house in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood during the Zona Maco fair. Among the works on view were abstractions by a cross-generational range of women painters: Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Cecily Brown, Carol Bove, Rita Ackermann, Jadé Fadojutimi, Lucy Bull, and Shara Hughes. More recent purchases include works by Martha Jungwirth and Willem de Kooning.

Hortensia Herrero

A recent purchase by Hortensia Herrero, who debuts on this year’s list, is Anselm Kiefer’s 2018 mixed-media Der Tod und das Mädchen (Death and the Maiden), just ahead of the opening of her new private museum in Valencia, Spain. There, it joins two other major works by Kiefer, in the space’s main gallery.

J. Tomilson Hill

With a collection that pairs the old with the new, J. Tomilson Hill recently purchased a mid-16th-century bronze of Hercules by Francesco Segala (right) and a 2022 painting by Charline von Heyl that recently showed at his Hill Art Foundation in New York. Of von Heyl’s Viper (left), Hill said, “since then I have been looking to deepen my understanding of her practice and bring her remarkable work into
my collection.”

Kent Kelley

Kent Kelley recently purchased Maryland-based, Ethiopia-born artist Merikokeb Berhanu’s Untitled LXXII (2021, above), whose work he first saw at the 2022 Venice Biennale, as well as works by Leyla Faye, Gabriel Mills, and Julie Beaufils.

Elie Khouri

Among Elie Khouri’s latest acquisitions are paintings by Joan Semmel, Roberto Gil de Montes, Louise Bonnet, Kenturah Davis, and Emma Webster’s None of What Kept Time Once Works (2023, above).

Grażyna Kulczyk

Although Grażyna Kulczyk typically focuses on acquisitions related to under-recognized women artists, this year she acquired works by two contemporary artists whose work she has “patiently sought for quite some time,” Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Jenna Gribbon. “Though they are almost the same age, they explore and depict humanity in vastly different ways, each seducing with true emotions,” Kulczyk said of Yiadom-Boakye’s Highlights for Limelights (2024, left) and Gribbon’s The Burden of Restraint (2024, right).

Barbara and Jon Landau

In addition to buying paintings by Tintoretto, Courbet, and Corot, Barbara and Jon Landau purchased two sculptures, of St. Benedict (left) and St. John the Baptist (right), by 16th-century Neapolitan sculptor Girolamo Santacroce. They had first seen the works 30 years ago, but didn’t snap them up. “At the time, we took note of them but weren’t sophisticated enough about sculpture to fully recognize how magnificent they were,” they said. When they saw them again more recently, “we suddenly realized how perfect they both were.” And with their purchase, the Landaus believe these “are among the very greatest objects we have been fortunate to acquire in 40 years of collecting.”

Miyoung Lee

Whitney Museum vice president Miyoung Lee, in her first appearance on the Top 200, has recently been on a sculpture kick, picking up the works of artists she saw at major exhibitions this year: Jes Fan (at the Whitney Biennial), Kapwani Kiwanga (Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale), and Leilah Babirye (Yorkshire Sculpture Park), as well as Jesse Darling’s 2023 Self-portrait (Boring from within), above.

Liz and Eric Lefkofsky

Recent purchases by Liz and Eric Lefkofsky include Gary Simmons’s 1993 Crazy Conductor (above) and Simone Leigh’s Cupboard (2024).

Li Lin

Li Lin recently acquired Andreas Eriksson’s 2022 abstract canvas Single Cutout 12.

Cheech Marin

Cheech Marin made a joint acquisition, with the Wingate Foundation and the Riverside Art Museum, of Israel Alejandro García García’s Mojado No. 1 (2023, above), which includes a digital counter that gives a running total of the estimated number of deaths at the US-Mexico border. “The artist’s work,” Marin told ARTnews, “documents the immigrant experience, emerging from his process of collecting information, ideas, images, objects, and stories from underrepresented diasporic communities.”

Susan and Larry Marx

With deep holdings in Abstract Expressionism, Susan and Larry Marx added a major piece to their collection this year: Grace Hartigan’s 1957 canvas Montauk Highway (above), which sold for just under
$1 million at Phillips in May.

Suzanne McFayden

An important purchase this year for Suzanne McFayden, who joins the Top 200 for the first time, is Henry Taylor’s three-part drawing I got it from (2023).

Q: Can you tell us more about your acquisition of the Taylor drawing?

A: I love the sassiness of the text. Beyond the sass is a reminder of whose shoulders I am standing on, that I am indeed my ancestors’ wildest dreams. On days when things are not going as I’d like them to, the work is a reminder that I have choice and agency, unlike so many before me.

Andrea and José Olympio Pereira

Among recent acquisitions for Andrea and José Olympio Pereira are a drawing by Tadáskía (above), a ceramic installation by MAHKU collective member Kássia Borges, and five paintings by Eleonore Koch.

Marsha and Jeffrey Perelman

Marsha and Jeffrey Perelman’s latest purchases include Vija Celmins’s Blackboard Tableau #10 (2007–15, above) and an untitled aluminum painting from 1983 by Ellsworth Kelly.

Amy and John Phelan

Amy and John Phelan recently acquired an iteration of the late Nobuo Sekine’s Phase of Nothingness (1969/2020, above) for their Colorado ranch.

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi

Recent acquisitions for Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi focus on historical paintings, such as an undated portrait by Kadria Hussein and Mohammad Omar Khalil’s Homage to Paulo Uccello (1966).

Q: Can you tell us more about your Kadria Hussein purchase?

A: One of our recent acquisitions for Barjeel Art Foundation’s collection is a work titled The Spiritual Queen Isa by Cairo-born artist and member of Egypt’s royal family Kadria Hussein (1888–1955). Her legacy as a pioneering female artist in Egypt, coupled with her remarkable, yet under-recognized contributions, represent a vital piece of our cultural history. Preserving and showcasing her art not only honors her memory but also highlights the often-overlooked narratives of women in the Arab world, enriching our understanding and appreciation of their invaluable contributions to art and society.

Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

Known for supporting emerging artists from around the world, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo recently acquired pieces by Precious Okoyomon, Justin Caguiat, Paulina Olowska, Mohammed Sami, and Danielle Mckinney’s She (2023). “Each of these artists, using different media and approaches, compels me to reflect deeply on the complexity of our contemporary moment,” she told ARTnews.

Rubell Family

The Rubell Family recently acquired multiple works by Vanessa Raw, the 2024 artist-in-residence at their Miami museum. In pieces like When I talk to the night (2023, above), they were drawn to Raw’s rendering of “intimate scenes of women gathered within lush, romantic landscapes.”

Pete Scantland

Pete Scantland has been collecting voraciously in the past 12 months. Among his recent purchases are pieces by Carol Bove, Mario Ayala, Sasha Gordon, Rebecca Morris, Li Hei Di, Robin F. Williams, and Louis Fratino. He also snapped up Ryan Preciado’s Time to find me (2023, above). (Read more about Preciado’s practice.)

Jordan Schnitzer

In addition to acquisitions of prints by artists like Mel Bochner, Keith Haring, Jasper Johns, Charles Gaines, Amy Sherald, and Faith Ringgold, Jordan Schnitzer purchased Robert Colescott’s 1971 painting Pancho Villa (above).

 Q: Can you tell us more about the Colescott acquisition?

A: My late mother, Arlene Schnitzer, was Robert Colescott’s principal dealer. We have 17 of his paintings and all his prints. When this came up for sale several months ago, I thought it would be a wonderful addition to our collection. Pancho Villa, 1971, has all the classic Colescott images of folks and people of color dancing and fighting, all set in a historical context that makes us think about our identity.

Sara and John Shlesinger

Recent purchases by Atlanta-based Sara and John Shlesinger include works by Anthony Akinbola, Lauren Halsey, Joan Snyder, Jamaal Peterman, and Glenn Kaino, as well as Rachel Rossin’s Hologram Combine (2023, above).

Gary Steele and Steven Rice

A recent purchase by Gary Steele and Steven Rice is Henry Taylor’s Right hand, wing man, best friend, and all the above! (above), which the artist debuted in the 2023 inaugural exhibition of Hauser & Wirth’s Paris location. A promised gift to the Studio Museum in Harlem, the portrait shows Taylor with the late artist Noah Davis. “We really loved the overall energy of this painting that depicts Henry and Noah Davis, and the deep friendship they had,” they told ARTnews.

Julia Stoschek

Among Julia Stoschek’s most recent purchases are three video works from different eras: Vaginal Davis’s The White to be Angry (1999), Sondra Perry’s Double Quadruple Etcetera Etcetera I & II (2013), and LuYang’s DOKU The Flow (2024, above). “Despite being over 10 years old, it still feels incredibly contemporary,” Stoschek said of the Perry work. “This work’s relevance and impact on digital media and performance art make it a vital addition to our collection, reflecting our commitment to preserving influential and forward-thinking contemporary art.”

Ryutaro Takahashi

Making his debut on this year’s list, Ryutaro Takahashi recently purchased a work by Mitobe Nanae, whose 2D paintings look deceptively like sculpture. Blue figura (2023–24, above) is Mitobe’s largest to date. “I am simply drawn to her sense of excess,” he told ARTnews. 

Carl and Marilynn Thoma

Recent purchases for Carl and Marilynn Thoma are Yinka Shonibare’s 2024 sculpture Refugee Astronaut VIII (above) and Elias Sime’s Tightrope: Dichotomy 6 (2023–24), both of which showed in Venice, as part of the main exhibition and in a collateral solo show, respectively.

Robbi and Bruce E. Toll

Known for collecting art from the Elizabethan era to the early 20th century, Robbi and Bruce E. Toll recently purchased several pieces they saw in St. Tropez, France, for their outdoor sculpture garden by an emerging artist who goes by the name Kai, including Love hold us together (above). Of the current state of collecting, Bruce said, “I do not believe in investing in art strictly for price appreciation. I buy what I like, which is the only way any collector should collect.”

Josef Vascovitz and Lisa Goodman

Josef Vascovitz and Lisa Goodman recently purchased Luke Agada’s 2023 painting Unstill Life II, as well as Bethany Collins’s 2019 In Mississippi (detail, above), reproductions of classified ads embossed on black Stonehenge paper, that formerly enslaved people placed in newspapers after the Civil War in the hope of reuniting with kin from whom they had been separated. The work was included in the traveling exhibition, “The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse,” which the collectors saw at multiple venues.

Mei and Allan Warburg

Each year, Mei and Allan Warburg continue to add major art commissions to their winery in Sonoma, California, called the Donum Estate. The latest is Yang Bao’s towering sculpture, HYPERSPACE (2024, above), which includes a sound component.

Q: Can you tell us more about HYPERSPACE?

A: About two years ago, our beloved lavender field at the Donum Estate, comprising 3,811 bushes planted a decade ago, was devastated by a virus. Since we are committed to regenerative organic farming, we did not want to use chemical treatments, leading us to make the tough decision to remove the lavender. This inspired us to transform the field into something even more extraordinary.

HYPERSPACE is more than an art and sound installation. It epitomizes Donum’s vision to create a holistic sensory wine experience. The [work] features expansive, site-specific sculptures designed to blend seamlessly with the natural environment and interact continuously with their surroundings. The reflective surfaces of the sculptures and their strategic placement create a dynamic soundscape that evolves with the elements, including wind, temperature, and humidity. HYPERSPACE was designed to offer guests an infinite matrix of sensations and imaginations that perfectly complement our landscape and wines.

Wu Tiejun

One of the best art experiences that Wu Tiejun had in the past 12 months was a visit to Beeple’s studio in Charleston, South Carolina. He had already begun collecting the artist’s work but this visit solidified Wu’s passion for Beeple, who will soon have a major solo show at Wu’s Deji Art Museum  that will include S.2122 (2023, left). The recently opened site exhibits Wu’s deep holdings of Picasso, including a recent purchase from the artist’s Blue period: Vase de fleurs (1904, right).

Sonya Yu

Sonya Yu’s recent purchases include pieces Eunnam Hong’s Lies (2024) and Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s “Untitled” (Paris 1989), below right.

 Can you tell us more about your acquisition of the Gonzalez-Torres work?

 Call me a hopeless romantic but Felix’s practice is one I’ve long admired. But finding one of the best examples, particularly one of the puzzles, took quite a bit of time. After years of patiently waiting, the opportunity finally presented itself in Paris at Art
Basel, through David Zwirner.

What makes this work particularly special is, you have all the key tenets of his practice: the public-private (two shadows in a public park), the double, loss and absence, and memory in the most economical of scales (the work measures just under 8-by-10 inches). The tension between love and loss is aptly depicted here, in its intimate image as well as its size. It sits above my bed, a constant reminder of the romance we share, as we share our beds.

Ryan Zurrer

Among Ryan Zurrer’s acquisitions this year are Sam Spratt’s participatory work The Monument Game that debuted during the Venice Biennale, and Urs Fischer’s CHAOS #502 (above), an NFT that combines several floating sculptures from Fischer’s “CHAOS” series, including a coffee pot, hard taco shell, chessboard, and much more.