A Journey from Art Advisor to Collector

Linda Yablonsky did neat little profile of art advisor Allan Schwartzman’s new apartment in the Jean Nouvel building in lower Manhattan. In the process, Schwartzman tells how he evolved from a curator to a collector:

As the New Museum’s first curator in 1977, he learned how to install art to advantage, but not how to buy it. In the next phase of his career, however — as a freelance journalist who focused on the burgeoning art market — he met artists who would become stars in the following two decades. His writings, mainly in The New Yorker and The New York Times, attracted the attention of Howard Rachofsky, a wealthy collector in Dallas, who was impressed by his ability to see into the future. Rachofsky, after deciding to bequeath his Richard Meier-designed house to the Dallas Museum of Art, solicited Schwartzman’s help in shaping a collection that was appropriate to it. Schwartzman assumed it was a one-shot deal, but as the Rachofsky collection matured and became more visible, other collectors came calling. Soon afterward, Marieluise Hessel, a trustee at Bard College, hired Schwartzman to fill gaps in her collection and help create a museum to house it. […]

His relationships with dealers gave him privileged access to a cloudlike 2004 painting by Robert Ryman. It now hangs in his apartment with works by Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Louise Bourgeois and those he’s acquired since, by many younger artists. “The Ryman changed me,” Schwartzman says, still sounding awed. “After that I became just as hungry for art as the collectors I was working with.”