Alexander Heller
New York
The son of New York–based dealer Leila Heller, Alexander obviously learned quite a bit from his upbringing in the art world. “I first attended Art Basel at the age of 4,” Heller recalls. Now, his eclectic collection of roughly 70 pieces is divided, he says, between Western and Middle Eastern work, including that of Farhad Moshiri, Shiva Ahmadi, Afruz Amighi, Damien Hirst, George Condo, and Marilyn Minter.

“The period of art which I most admire is the 1950s and ’60s movement in America, particularly Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg,” he says.  “Leo Castelli is a hero of mine, and one day I hope to have a collection full of works by the artists whom he represented and promoted.”

Jamie Cohen Hort
New York
Daughter-in-law of notable collectors Susan and Michael Hort, Jamie is an art consultant who earned her chops working at the Hirshhorn Museum, the Jewish Museum, and the IBM Gallery. Her family has also been an influence, and last year she curated the installation in the couple’s home for their exclusive Armory Week brunch. In addition Hort often advises the various charities she supports, such as the Jewish Community Project and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, which offers grants to emerging artists (and support to cancer patients). Like her mother- and father-in-law, Hort has a passion for emerging artists. Her particular affinity is for the gallery scene on the Lower East Side, which she told the Financial Times in 2011 “generally has the advantage of a lower price entry point.”

Susi Kenna
New York
Having worked for both Jim Kempner Fine Art and Christie’s auction house, Kenna now runs the Creatives Agency, which offers branding, special projects, and design services to the art world. She’s been actively collecting since 2005. “I can tell you a story about every piece,” she says. “If I can’t connect a work to a meaningful person, place, or thing — it’s not for me.” Recent acquisitions that she’s especially proud of include mixed-media works by Andrea Mary Marshall and Eric Mistretta. They join a collection that includes multiple pieces from Hew Locke, Carlos Charlie Perez, and Sam Schonzeit.

Nathan Köstlin
Berlin
“I don’t see myself as a collector,” says the 39-year-old Köstlin, sitting in the family portrait room of the building — including a two-floor commercial space, formerly his venture, ArtBar71 — he shares with his husband, Ulrich Köstlin. While traditional portraits in the room show the faces of his husband’s family, dating back to the 1500s and further, a hamster cage by Franziska Holstein — homage to Nathan’s pet name — places the Vietnam War orphan in a rightfully different light.

Like his portrait, Köstlin’s collecting is far from traditional. “It’s one thing just to have a Warhol, a Lichtenstein — that becomes status. It’s another to know the artists, to understand their motives and the whole evolution that brought them to create the pictures that you love. But it’s also another thing to support them so that they can make further strides. The only way to get them there is to push them a little bit,” he explains. Thus, while the collection does have a fair share of established names — Christo, Heinz Mack, Thomas Florschuetz, and Manfred Butzmann among them — Köstlin’s focus is on the young and struggling talents in Berlin. Much of the work was purchased directly from studios, including the two large light-box paintings by Cornelia Renz that adorn the cavernous dining room, one of Stevie Hanley’s first corner paintings, and a self-portrait by Michael Müller. “We’re trying to make constant Polaroids with artists who are feeling with their ear to the ground the pulse and the rhythm of where our world is today and then putting it in a historical context,” he says. Perhaps pulling from his own past, one senses that Köstlin sees himself as adopting these “lost souls,” as he calls them, collecting lives as much as tangible works in the process.  — Alexander Forbes

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