The private museum boom has transformed art scenes across Asia and Europe, but it has been a bit slower to catch on in New York. That is due to change in autumn 2017, when the billionaire collector James Tomilson “Tom” Hill, the president of Blackstone Alternative Asset Management, and his wife Janine, the director of fellowship affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations, open the Hill Art Foundation in Chelsea.
Tom Hill says the couple were intrigued by “the idea of doing in a public setting what we do in our own home”: juxtaposing works from different eras, from the Renaissance to the present. The 6,000-sq.-ft gallery, designed by Peter Marino, will host a changing collection display and temporary exhibitions. For the first show, Hill suggests pairing works by Christopher Wool (the Hills own 14) with photography and films.
The public got a taste of the Hills’ holdings when the Frick Collection in New York presented a show of their bronzes in 2014. Inspired by a visit to the couple’s Upper East Side apartment, the curator of the show, Denise Allen, decided to include two works by Cy Twombly and a painting by Ed Ruscha—the first time work by a living artist has been shown at the Frick.
The couple have not yet decided whether the foundation will be a permanent home for their collection. (Many museums—including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Tom Hill is a board member—undoubtedly have their eye on it.) “We have a lot of time to figure out which of several different constituencies… most wants or is most in need of each of our different collections and where is the best possibility that each collection will stay intact,” he says.
Although “nobody can compete with major museums”, a private operating foundation has its advantages. “I can take risks,” Hill says.
Highlights of the Hill collection The couple’s holdings—reportedly valued at around $800m—consist of what Tom Hill describes as four “discrete and standalone” collections
1. Renaissance and Baroque bronzes
The Hills’ more than 30 bronze statuettes span the 16th to the 18th centuries and are considered among the world’s finest examples in private hands. The collection includes work by Andrea Riccio, Adriaen de Vries and Giambologna.
2. Old Master paintings
The collection includes five works by Rubens and a gold-ground work by the 14th-century Italian painter Giovanni da Milano that has been promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
3. Modern and contemporary art
The couple intended to buy four works each by eight Modern masters, including Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning. (Hill calls them the “original eight”.) They have since added more examples and other artists, including Agnes Martin.
4. Emerging art
Hill describes this collection as mainly artists in their 30s and 40s, “many of them women who live here in New York”, including Sarah Crowner and Mika Tajima.