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John Soane
Born
The architect of the Bank of England crammed his house at Lincoln's Inn Fields with antiquities, casts, drawings and paintings, including Hogarth's Rake's Progress, then secured a private Act of Parliament in 1833 that left it to the nation on condition it be kept exactly as he left it. Sir John Soane's Museum has stayed that way since his death in 1837 and is free to visit.
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Sir Richard Wallace, 1st Baronet
Born
Wallace inherited the Hertford family's great collection of French eighteenth-century paintings, furniture and armour and added to it. After his death, his widow, Lady Wallace, bequeathed the collection at Hertford House to the nation in 1897, on condition that nothing be added to it or taken away. The Wallace Collection opened in 1900 and remains free, and the terms of the bequest have long kept its works from being lent out.
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Henry Walters
Henry Walters, heir to a railway fortune, extended his father William's collecting into some 22,000 works spanning ancient Egypt to Art Nouveau, and on his death in 1931 left the whole collection and its gallery building to the city of Baltimore. The Walters Art Museum is run with public funding and has been free to enter since 2006, which makes it one of the most open of the great American collector museums.
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Andrew Mellon
Born
Mellon, the banker and Treasury Secretary, bought old master paintings including works sold by the Soviet government from the Hermitage, then offered his collection and the money for a building to the United States. Congress accepted in 1937, the year he died, and the National Gallery of Art opened in Washington in 1941. Mellon insisted it not carry his name, which encouraged other collectors to give, and it is free.
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Solomon R. Guggenheim
Solomon Guggenheim, of the mining family, began collecting abstract art in the late 1920s under the guidance of the artist Hilla Rebay, and set up a foundation in 1937 to show it publicly, first in a rented space. The spiral Frank Lloyd Wright building on Fifth Avenue opened in 1959, after his death. The foundation now runs museums in New York, Venice and Bilbao and has long planned one in Abu Dhabi; admission is charged.
More about Solomon R. Guggenheim6
Samuel Courtauld (art collector)
Born
Courtauld, head of the family textile firm, bought French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in the 1920s, including Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, when British museums largely ignored them. He also set up a fund to buy such works for the national collections and in 1932 founded the Courtauld Institute of Art, giving it much of his collection. The Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House charges for entry.
More about Samuel Courtauld (art collector)7
Duncan Phillips (art collector)
Born
Phillips, heir to a steel and glass fortune, opened two rooms of his family home in Washington to the public in 1921 as a memorial to his father and brother, making it one of the first museums of modern art in America. He bought Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party and built a Rothko Room with the artist's input. The Phillips Collection remains independent, with a charge for special exhibitions.
More about Duncan Phillips (art collector)8
Peggy Guggenheim
Born
Solomon's niece Peggy bought modern art at speed in Paris on the eve of war, at one point aiming for a picture a day, then showed it at her Art of This Century gallery in New York, which helped launch Jackson Pollock. From 1951 she opened her Venice palazzo on the Grand Canal to visitors, and before her death in 1979 gave house and collection to her uncle's foundation, which still runs the Peggy Guggenheim Collection there.
More about Peggy Guggenheim9
J. Paul Getty
Born
Getty, the oil billionaire famous for his meanness, opened his ranch house at Malibu as a museum in 1954 and built the Getty Villa there in 1974, though he never visited it. On his death in 1976 he left most of his fortune to the museum trust, making it one of the richest arts institutions in the world. The Getty Center and Villa in Los Angeles are free to enter, with a parking charge.
More about J. Paul Getty10
Dominique de Menil
Born
Dominique de Menil, heir to the Schlumberger oilfield services fortune, collected with her husband John everything from Surrealism to Byzantine icons and African art, and in Houston commissioned the Rothko Chapel. The Menil Collection, in a Renzo Piano building that opened in 1987, has always been free, and shows only a fraction of its holdings at a time in quiet, daylit rooms set in a neighbourhood of bungalows.
More about Dominique de Menil11
Norton Simon
Born
Simon, the food and industrial magnate behind Hunt Foods, built a major collection of European paintings and South Asian sculpture, then in 1974 took over the struggling Pasadena Art Museum, which became the Norton Simon Museum. Critics complained he had effectively absorbed a public institution into a private collection, which is worth knowing. The museum charges admission and lends rarely.
More about Norton Simon12
Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza
Born
The industrialist Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza owned one of the largest private art collections in the world, kept in Lugano. In 1993 Spain bought most of it for about 350 million dollars, well below market value, and housed it in Madrid's Palacio de Villahermosa as the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, opened the year before. A separate collection belonging to his widow, Carmen Cervera, has been shown there on loan under long-running negotiations.
More about Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza13
Eli Broad
Born
Broad, who made fortunes in housebuilding and insurance, and his wife Edythe ran their contemporary collection as a lending library for museums before opening The Broad in downtown Los Angeles in 2015. General admission is free, and the foundation owns the works and the building, so the museum remains a private institution with public access rather than a gift to the city.
More about Eli Broad14
François Pinault
Born
Pinault, founder of the luxury group behind Gucci and Saint Laurent, gave up a planned museum outside Paris in 2005 and instead showed his contemporary collection in Venice, at Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana, then from 2021 at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, leased from the city. The collection stays in his foundation's ownership and entry is charged, so this is access rather than a transfer.
More about François Pinault15
Bernard Arnault
Born
Arnault, head of LVMH, opened the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris's Bois de Boulogne in 2014, in a Frank Gehry building on land leased from the city, which will pass to the city after a long concession. It shows the LVMH collection and big loan exhibitions, with tickets. Paid for largely by the company, which benefited from tax relief for corporate patronage, it is a clear example of corporate and personal collecting blurred together.
More about Bernard Arnault16
Alice Walton
Born
Walton, the Walmart heiress, built a collection of American art from colonial portraits to contemporary works and opened Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas in 2011, in a Moshe Safdie building set in woodland. Permanent collection admission is free, sponsored by Walmart, and the museum has bought major works such as Asher Durand's Kindred Spirits, bringing them to a region with few large museums.
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