Collecting—the act of evergreen patronage and support of rising talents—can serve as a vital record of identity and belonging. This Pride month, we’re looking back at the works, objects, and obsessions that shape the worlds of 17 inspiring collectors featured in the pages of CULTURED. Their troves form a portrait of contemporary queer life in all its complexity. What unites them is the understanding that collecting creates a world layered in identity and intention, one that they’ve all shared with us with illuminating detail.
Bobbi Salvör Menuez and quori theodor
For this collecting couple, the sidewalk is as good as a gallery. It can yield life-long gems ranging from playing cards to pacifiers. In fact, the supply chain for this duo’s trove spreads across New York streets, shoot sets, thrift stores, and more unexpected planes of intrigue. Multidisciplinary artists Bobbi Salvör Menuez and quori theodor amass items including T-shirts, cassette tapes, and spoons with the same stamina as a blue-chip art collector, but perhaps a more personal bent as well. The objects represent a special brand of nostalgia that relates back to both childhood and their bond with each other.
Salvör Menuez—a creative director, Purple magazine editor-at-large, and actor whose work spans independent film and television (including a recent credit in Landman) treats their collection of baubles as an extension of the professional roles they occupy: talismans that accumulate around a project the way a costume might accrue meaning over time. theodor, a conceptual artist working fluidly between food, social practice, fashion, and research, brings and similarly archival sensibility, tracing desire through found objects and biographical references. “Pairing a Victorian doll’s garment with the plastics of my youth always makes my day,” they share…
Read their full Collector Questionnaire here.
Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka
Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka collect to unsettle. Their first acquisition, one of Robert Longo’s “Wave” studies, marked the beginning of a collection full of often mischievous works that spark manifold reactions from visitors at their Hamptons and New York homes. Patrick Jacobs‘s hidden peepholes shrink viewers into miniature worlds. Andy Warhol’s party photography lines the walls. There’s a Banksy smashed in the fireplace, for goodness’ sake…
Read their full Collector Questionnaire here.
“There’s no algorithm to collecting,” note Rob and Eric Thomas-Suwall, better known as the Icy Gays on Instagram, where they share their enviable trove of work that includes pieces by Salman Toor, Dominique Fung, and Anna Weyant. Starting the account was more out of necessity than aspiration for virality, as the pair sought to get involved in the art world from their remote location in Minot, North Dakota. “Social media is all about connections, and so is the art world,” they say.
Travels to New York, San Francisco, and other hubs helped round out an education in the contemporary players, many of which the pair brought home with them to Minot. After a relocation to Richmond, Virginia, the surgeon and political theorist are continuing to grow their collection of emerging women and queer artists, although hung in a slightly different configuration…
Read their full Collector Questionnaire here.
Imagine a museum-quality fashion collection peeking out of boxes collected in a private home, discontinued Spring/Summer 2018 Calvin Klein boots stacked alongside Pre-Fall 2023 mesh sock-shoes by The Row. Well, we found all this and more within the sprawling trove of Thom Browne Senior Footwear Designer Jeremyn Lee.
In a Dropbox folder, the designer has accumulated meticulously shot photography of each pair, organized by size, and labeled by brand and season. Never before shot in full, Lee’s archive here emerges less like a personal closet and more like a living archive of recent fashion history’s most elusive moments. These are objects once relegated to Tumblr screenshots and youthful daydreams, now catalogued with grown-up finesse…
Read his full Collector Questionnaire here.
For Chicago-based collector Brandon John Harrington, the stage where his collection unfolds is never empty. Harrington’s home brims with theatrical works—Elsa Muñoz’s luminous washes of natural landscape, the sinewy wisps of Emily Weiner’s silhouettes, and the coils of dotted coloration which mark the practice of Brittney Leeanne Williams—that unfold like scenes from an ongoing play. By day, Harrington works at Google DeepMind, shaping the future of A.I.; by night, he serves as the board chair of Porchlight Music Theatre, where his lifelong devotion to performance (and its throughline in his life) deepens. This dual identity infuses his approach to collecting. For Harrington, the pursuit is less about possession than about building connections—between artist and collector, object and audience, history and the present…
Read his full Collector Questionnaire here.
Rodrigo Padilla and Elliot Trice
Rodrigo Padilla was introduced to the art world the way most important information is passed around in New York: by chatting and gossiping at the hair salon. The stylist got his start at the salon of Sally Hershberger, architect of the Upper West Side-defining shag popularized by Meg Ryan, before striking out on his own, where he amassed a clientele including the likes of Uma Thurman, Diane Guerrero, and Emily Sundberg. One of his early clients was Whitney Museum trustee Brooke Garber Neidich, who offered Padilla one bit of advice about entering the art world: “See everything.”
Today, as a member of the Whitney’s Drawing and Print Acquisitions Committee, Padilla helps shape the curatorial vision of one of the city’s most visible art institutions, but, in line with Neidich’s lasting directive, his sights are more frequently set on smaller galleries championing painters, sculptors, and photographers from Latin America or living in diaspora. At home, Padilla and his husband, Elliott Trice, head of product at Kyndryl and occasional model train hobbyist, have assembled a veritable who’s who of talent emerging from Padilla’s native Puerto Rico, Mexico, Venezuela, and more in their Midtown flat…
Read their full Collector Questionnaire here.
Matthew Harris is a self-taught jewelry designer—currently at the helm of the Mateo fine jewelry line. An artisan himself, his pieces are currently for sale at the African American Museum of Art and Culture and the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC.
“My collection is an evolving dialogue between eras, mediums, and perspectives. It brings together works from artists such as Alexander Calder, Sterling Ruby, Titus Kaphar, Ethan Cook, Shikeith, Jem Perucchini, Jean Cocteau, among others—voices that span from modern masters to boundary-pushing contemporary talents. I’m drawn to pieces that balance beauty with depth, that challenge me intellectually while stirring something visceral. Each work feels like a distinct character in a larger story, and together they form a collection that’s as much about emotion and curiosity as it is about aesthetics or chronology,” he told CULTURED…
Read his full Collector Questionnaire here.
Chad Leat collects art the way he lives his life—with bold moves, sharp instincts, and a deep appreciation for meaningful connection. While his name may echo in finance circles, where he’s built a storied career spanning 30 years on Wall Street with Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and other companies, it’s the walls of his homes that truly reveal his inner passions.
Guided by art-world legends like Jock Truman and Holly Solomon in the ’80s and ’90s, Leat has built a wide-ranging trove, from a John Giorno piece that prompts double takes from visitors to works by Wolfgang Tillmans and Jean-Michel Othoniel…
Read his full Collector Questionnaire here.
What initially inspired Ilan Cohen to start his own personal collection sounds almost unbelievable: It was his need to save money. While living in Paris at the age of 19, the Musée d’Orsay was one of the few spots that offered free admission to students. So, naturally, roaming the hallowed halls of the museum became somewhat of a pastime. Though he only lived in Paris for a year, Cohen, who now works in finance, took his newly-discovered passion with him. In 2010, with the encouragement of a few art world titans, the budding collector bought his first two pieces from artist TM Davy. Today, his Chelsea apartment is filled with queer figuration and female abstraction works, largely made by friends and artists that he’s met throughout the years, including Doron Langberg, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Salman Toor, Sam McKinniss, and Louis Fratino…
Read his full Collector Questionnaire here.
Everett Long’s strategy and consulting firm has nurtured the development of executive leadership programs and organizational strategy across industries. With his husband Fred, the couple have collected art across price points, global locales, and points of sentimentality (including a specially-commissioned painting that turned into a proposal gift in lieu of a ring).
“We collect contemporary art, which Fred has taken to describing them of identity, memory, and resilience. We have about 65 pieces with a good balance of figurative and abstract work– lately I’ve been obsessed with contemporary Black abstractionists. (My friend and artist Jamele Wright Sr. has taught me a lot). The collection features many Atlanta and Southern artists, but lately we have been branching out to the national scene as well around the globe. Our most recent purchases were a work on paper by Michi Meko, a set of Ayanna Jackson photos, and a huge Radcliffe Bailey print from his residence at Sam Fox,” he told CULTURED…
Read their full Collector Questionnaire here.
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