Hester Diamond
Hester Diamond | |
---|---|
Born | Hester Klein December 10, 1928 New York City, US |
Died | January 23, 2020 New York City, US | (aged 91)
Alma mater | Hunter College |
Occupation(s) | Art collector Art dealer Interior designer |
Hester Diamond (December 10, 1928 – January 23, 2020) was an American art collector, dealer, and interior designer. With her first husband,
Early life and education
Diamond was born in the Bronx to David Klein, a structural engineer of
Career
In 1950, she married Harold Diamond, a fourth-grade teacher in Harlem who was from the Bronx neighborhood she grew up in. A Columbia University graduate, he shared Hester's passion for art. They frequented Manhattan art galleries in their spare time, and in the early 1950s began working weekends at art dealer Martha Jackson's gallery. In 1955 they set up eight North American museum shows for the British sculptor
In 1980, Diamond was asked by J. Seward Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, to decorate an apartment he had purchased for his future wife Barbara ("Basia") Piasecka. Although she had no previous experience, Diamond said yes, and shortly thereafter started an interior design business. In a 2008 interview she said: "As a child of the Bronx, my design education came from going to the Museum of Modern Art. The design of that original building always inspired me. It was all about breaking symmetry."[8] She continued her interior design work until 1989.[7]
After Harold Diamond's death in 1982 she began to collect art by Old Masters. To finance her acquisitions, she sold significant pieces from her collection, including works by Henri Matisse, Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky. Her love of the Old Masters inspired her in 1995 to co-found the non-profit organizations the Medici Archive Project, which funds research for students and scholars on Renaissance and Baroque art, and in 2013, a publishing project for scholarship on Old Master sculpture, VISTAS (Virtual Images of Sculpture in Time and Space).[9][10]
Diamond died in January 2020. In October 2020, Sotheby's announced Fearless: The Collection of Hester Diamond, an auction of 60 lots from Diamond's collection. In addition to contemporary work by artists such as Bill Viola, it included Baroque sculpture by Pietro and Gian Lorenzo Bernini (August) as well as work by Jörg Lederer, Girolamo della Robbia, Dosso Dossi, and Pieter Coecke van Aelst. The auction, which took place in January 2021, brought $26.7 million. The "extraordinarily rare-to-market" carved marble sculpture August sold for $8.9 million.[11][12]
Diamond maintained a close relationship with MoMA and made substantial gifts to the museum over the course of her lifetime.[13]
Personal life
In addition to Harold Diamond, Diamond was the widow of Ralph Kaminsky, an economics professor, and David S. Wilson, a psychoanalyst. She had one stepdaughter, three stepsons, and three sons: David,
Gallery
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Entry hall and living room, designed by Hester Diamond
Diamond residence, Central Park West -
Living room, designed by Hester Diamond
Diamond residence, Central Park West -
Hallway designed by Hester Diamond
Diamond residence, Central Park West -
Office, designed by Hester Diamond
Diamond residence, Central Park West
References
- ^ "Sotheby's New York Will Auction Off Hester Diamond's Eclectic Art Collection This Month". Departures. Retrieved 2021-01-16.
- ^ Moore, Susan (9 January 2015). "Art publishing: Old masters in a virtual world". The Financial Times. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
- ^ ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 15, 2021.
- ^ Richards, Judith Olch. "Oral History Transcript". Archives of American Art. Retrieved January 16, 2021.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-01-14.
- ^ "Art: By Appointment Only". Time. Vol. 96, no. 5. August 3, 1970. Retrieved January 15, 2020.
- ^ a b Moore, Susan (January 29, 2020). "Hester Diamond (1928–2020)". Apollo. Retrieved 2021-01-15.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-01-15.
- ^ "Hester Diamond Collection to Sell for as Much as $30M at Sotheby's". TheCollector. 2020-10-17. Retrieved 2021-01-15.
- ^ Penny, Nicholas (January 29, 2021). "Hester Diamond and VISTAS". Sotheby's. Retrieved January 16, 2021.
- ^ "Sotheby's Raked in a Robust $26.7 Million With an Auction of Works Owned by the Eclectic Late Collector Hester Diamond". Artnet News. 2021-02-01. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
- ^ a b Villa, Angelica (2020-10-16). "Sotheby's to Sell $30 M. in Art from Sought-After Hester Diamond Estate". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 2021-01-15.
- ^ "Object of the Week: Hester Diamond Tribute". SAMBlog. 2020-01-31. Retrieved 2021-01-15.