Being a true collector involves a lot more than just buying art. Sometimes, it requires advocating for artists inside bureaucratic institutions, match-making between creators and museums, and even selling yourself to a protective art dealer in order to convince them you will be a fitting custodian of a great work. Our 2026 Young Collectors share a commitment to going above and beyond for the chance to live with art they love.
Age: 34
Based In: New York
If you can’t find Lee at a museum, there’s a good chance she’s at a runway show or the ballet. The former fashion executive has applied the sense of proportion, novelty, and style she cultivated in business to her art collecting, with a focus on work both subtle and searing.
Who do you credit with teaching you how to navigate the art world?
One memorable impression was walking through Masterpiece London alongside the late chairman, Philip Hewat-Jaboor. He had a way of moving through a fair that I’d never witnessed before—pausing at a Sèvres or a Chippendale giltwood and unfolding its entire world for you: the history, the anecdotes, and what it was answering to at its moment. He treated objects as living arguments, and that contextual education was inspiring.
Institutional experiences have also shaped me. My involvement with the Whitney has put me around curators, artists, and patrons whose looking is so much deeper than mine. I’ve learned the most by simply being quiet in those rooms. Then there’s my fashion background, which taught me to trust my eye before I had the vocabulary to defend it, and to never shy away from my own curiosity.
Do you see collecting as an extension of skills you’ve honed in your day job, or an escape from them?
Collecting is very much an extension of the skills I developed having worked in fashion. So much of that world is a daily practice in editing: weighing countless components, narrowing down, and refining until you arrive at something that feels right. You learn to trust your eye, to be decisive, and to know what you want even when the options are endless. Collecting asks for the same discipline: a clear point of view, conviction in your choices, and the patience to keep refining as your taste evolves.
If you could sit down for lunch with one artist, living or dead, who would it be?
Andy Warhol, so I can tag along to Studio 54.
What area of collecting are you excited to dig deeper into?
Works on paper. For a long time, I shied away from the medium. The fragility made me anxious, and I worried about caring for something so delicate. But the more I’ve sat with it, the more I’ve come to see that fragility as part of its beauty. Works on paper often capture the inception of an idea, and for some artists this is part of their main practice. I am steadily warming up to the medium.
Name three artists you are particularly excited about right now.
Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts, Tara Donovan, and Josh Kline. Cornelis’s works are simply breathtaking. There’s a quiet beauty in how he plays tricks with your eyes. Tara’s work is endlessly engaging and genuinely speaks to me. The way she transforms the most ordinary materials into something organic and other-worldly invites you to slow down and really look.
As for Kline, when I visited the exhibition “Project for a New American Century” at the Whitney and experienced so many of his works in one space, I came to appreciate just how prophetic he is in projecting the future. He has a remarkable ability to hold up a mirror to where we’re headed, and I’m genuinely excited to see what his next conversation will be. His article in the journal October was also enlightening.
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