The book on the Edlis Neeson Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago captures one of the world’s greatest collections of contemporary art and reflects the singular commitment to and philosophy of looking, living, and collecting embodied by Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson.
Twenty years ago and early in knowing Stefan he asked me “if I was waiting for the book of the collection to come out.” That was his invitation to go over to their Aspen home and see for myself the extraordinary works with which they lived.
Another highlight was on one of many visits to their Chicago apartment seeing a work from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art hanging. Stefan had agreed to loan an extraordinary gray Rauschenberg painting to an exhibition only on the condition that this work come to live with him temporarily in exchange. The story reflects both his conviction and his wit, collecting not as passive ownership and instead as active engagement and negotiation with art itself.
Stefan later served on the architectural selection committee for the Aspen Art Museum. As we traveled literally around the world together, in Switzerland Stefan would get down on his hands and knees studying the mechanical and architectural details of the museums we visited, curious about them physically, structurally, and experientially.
What made Stefan and Gael especially singular was the rigor of their collecting philosophy. They limited the collection to twenty-eight artists and if a new artist entered the collection, another had to leave. The standard was complete conviction. When Stefan and Gael believed in an artist, they believed absolutely, often paying what at the time seemed like astonishing prices and the market would eventually rise to meet the level of their confidence.
The collection reflects clarity, appetite, discipline, risk, and extraordinary visual intelligence. More than almost anyone I have known, Stefan understood collecting as instinct sharpened through sustained looking over a lifetime.
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