Over the course of a decades-long career in magazines, CULTURED founder and editor-in-chief Sarah Harrelson has seen more than her fair share of homes and art collections. Now, she is assembling the best of them in a new book, The Cultured Collector, which will be published by Monacelli on Oct. 28.
Since Harrelson founded CULTURED in 2012, she has made it a point to cover not only artists, curators, architects, and writers, but also collectors. “I wanted to capture the passion collectors possess for artists and their work, as well as the viral role they play in shaping and supporting artists’ careers,” Harrelson writes in the book’s introduction. Through the magazine’s popular “Collector Questionnaire” column, she has covered a vast range of patrons and art lovers, from museum trustees to working artists who barter with friends for paintings.
These conversations inspired the more expansive look at 30 top art collections around the world featured in The Cultured Collector. In the 256-page book, which includes a foreword by the tennis legend and collector Venus Williams, Harrelson captures the various ways artists, dealers, and entrepreneurs live with art. Never-before-seen photographs are accompanied by intimate conversations about each subject’s experiences viewing, evaluating, and acquiring art.
Featured collectors—spanning New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Milan, Venice, San Francisco and Miami—include artists Jack Pierson, Alex Israel, and Jennifer Guidi; gallerists David Kordansky, Gordon VeneKlasen, and Ellie Rines; musicians Alicia Keys, Swizz Beatz, and Joe Jonas; Metropolitan Museum of Art trustee and Away co-founder Jen Rubio; and restaurateur Simon Kim, entrepreneur Scooter Braun, and journalist Don Lemon.
“In the 16 months I spent visiting collections for this project, I witnessed just how many ways there are to build a home around art,” Harrelson writes. “Collecting is not about expertise or certainty, but about connection—to artists, to ideas, and sometimes even to parts of ourselves we didn’t know we were searching for, but were able to find through art.”
Pre-order your copy of the book here.
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