“I was born into art,” says Samara Furlong. Growing up amidst her philanthropist grandparents’ collection—which wasn’t childproofed—Furlong’s early memories include playing on a Mark di Suvero swing, watching her grandfather, a real estate developer, play the trumpet in front of a Bob Thompson painting, and listening to her grandmother, a dancer, tell stories about the little girl who lived inside a Joseph Cornell box.
This early exposure sparked Furlong’s belief in the importance of art and its role in our lives. For her, it’s less about the works (although she has plenty—by the likes of Lauren Quin, LaKela Brown, Jo Messer, Jonah Freeman, Nikita Gale, and Cynthia Talmadge, no less) and more about the relationships that such pieces foster. “When you spend time with artists, their work takes on a different meaning,” Furlong says.
Furlong was living in New York when the pandemic hit, and returned to the Detroit area, where she grew up, during lockdown. The founder of Voyeur Ventures—an advisory, curatorial, and experiential service—quickly established herself as a fixture in the art scene, joining the Museum Committee at Cranbrook Art Museum and the Friends of Modern and Contemporary Art board at the Detroit Institute of Arts. She also began to assemble a strong lineup of work by local artists, including Sara Nickleson, Shaina Kasztelan, Paula Schubatis, James Collins, Suzy Poling, and Reeha Lim.
The collector’s passion for art and its ability to deepen the bonds of community was the driving force behind launching her nonprofit residency, Buffalo Prescott. The space, originally a Swedish tool shop on the east side of Detroit, soft-launched in May with five resident artists and a slate of programming (talks, workshops, crits) in the works.
“Everyone thinks that when you have a building full of artist studios there are lots of conversations about the art, but there needs to be infrastructure for that,” Furlong explains. Every artist who participates in the residency will be asked to teach workshops. Fundraisers will be pancake breakfasts for the whole family rather than black-tie galas.
Of course, the tendency to view art as a family affair is innate for Furlong. She recently commissioned the Detroit-based designer Chris Schanck to create a custom table for her art-filled living room, which doubles as her 2-year-old daughter’s playroom. “My grandparents taught me that art is not separate from life,” Furlong says. “It is a way to enhance life through history and beauty—to continue finding new inspiration and modes of expression.”
For more from the 2024 Young Collectors list, read conversations with Daniel English, Gwen Tilghman, and Jen Rubio.
