Top 200 Collectors

Beth Rudin DeWoody began collecting when she was 12 years old. Her focus at the time? Beatles paraphernalia. Since then, her collection has grown to include over 10,000 works by both established and up-and-coming artists. Adam D. Weinberg, the director of the Whitney Museum, told Sotheby’s magazine in 2015 that she “has a voracious eye, and boundless curiosity. Her range of interests is astonishing.”

These interests also extend beyond the realm of collecting—DeWoody is a prodigious curator who has assembled shows at galleries and other spaces in New York, New Orleans, Chicago, London, and Vermont. Often those shows involve selections from her own collection. “For me, always, the frustration is I’d like more of the work to get out there,” she told ARTnews.

Artist Rob Wynne, whom DeWoody met when she fell in love with a metal fly he had created, told the Wall Street Journal in 2010, “there is no one more supportive.” DeWoody opened the Bunker, an art facility in West Palm Beach, in December 2017. The facility, housed in a 1920s Art Deco building that once served as a munitions factory, was inaugurated with a show featuring artists such as Nicole Eisenman, Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, Nick Cave, and Hank Willis Thomas. The general public shouldn’t expect a glimpse at such treasures anytime soon; the Bunker is open only by invitation. The venue—which hosts one show per year—is open only by invitation and is a hot ticket for collectors, dealers, and other insiders before and after Art Basel Miami Beach each December.