Collector’s Birthdate: (Foundation) b. 1993

Harvey S. Shipley Miller is sole trustee of The Judith Rothschild Foundation, created by the will of abstract painter Judith Rothschild who died in 1993. Her will dictates that all resources and assets have to be dedicated to its approved mission and that within 25 years of her death, all assets must be used and distributed, having completed the foundation’s aims the best of its abilities.

In 2003, the foundation spent more than $7 million to build a Contemporary collection featuring works by more than 400 artists, including classic artist Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly and Gerhard Richter as well as newcomers Christian Holstad and Hernan Bas.

Projects undertaken by the foundation include The Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910-1934, which showed at the MoMA as “one of the most definitive collections of the work in the world,” according to Miller. The foundation also gave the Jacques Villon print collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and is currently compiling its third major collection, (to be titled The Judith Rothschild Foundation of Contemporary Drawings Collection) for the MoMA.

Important works owned by the foundation include Douglas Gordon’s “always and forever”, Peter Doig’s “Country Rock Version” and Raymond Pettibon’s “Untitled (Acid Got Me Fired…)”.

Says Miller of the drawing collection: “The final, undiscounted value for insurance purposes would be somewhere between $50 and $70 million. Gary Garrels has said it’s the greatest collection, public or private, of Contemporary drawings in the world, but it’s miraculous because there are things that one couldn’t get again.”

Lindemann, Adam. Collecting Contemporary: Los Angeles, Taschen GmbH 2006.