Top 200 Collectors

A longtime Wall Street executive, Rodney Miller is currently vice chairman of mergers and acquisitions at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., where he’s worked on numerous multibillion-dollar deals. “All of my deals are significant—I don’t work on them if they’re not significant,” he jokingly told the History Makers in 2021.

After receiving his M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business in 1986, he began working for the accounting firm Touche, Ross & Company as a C.P.A., but soon transitioned to investment banking, getting his start at Credit Suisse First Boston (now Credit Suisse). Miller spent 20 years at Credit Suisse before joining J.P. Morgan in 2007.

Having never taken an art history course in college, Miller got into collecting after attending an event at Sotheby’s in the ’90s. “I wanted to do something different in my non-work hours,” he told ARTnews in 2014. Early acquisitions included William Gottlieb’s photographs of jazz musicians and a William H. Johnson painting.

Over the past 25 years, he’s collected modern and contemporary Black artists, including the likes of Beauford Delaney, Romare Bearden, Alma Thomas, Hale Woodruff, Shinique Smith, Lyle Ashton Harris, Glenn Ligon, Lorna Simpson, Odili Donald Odita, Hank Willis Thomas, and Rick Lowe, whose Black Wall Street Journey #16 he acquired in 2022, shortly after seeing works from that series in the Antwaun Sargent–curated exhibition “Social Works” at Gagosian in New York.

But for Miller as a collector, he prizes above all visiting the studios of artist he admires and collects, such as Faith Ringgold, Reggie Sylvester, and Alteronce Gumby. “Being a collector continues to be a great source of learning,” Miller told ARTnews by email. “Each visit left me with a better understanding of their practice, inspirations, and connectivity to art history.”  

Miller has also been a member of the board of trustees of the Studio Museum in Harlem since 2001 and is currently the institution’s treasurer. As a longtime advocate of equity and inclusion both in the financial and art worlds, Miller recently told ARTnews that he wants to see changes in the art world “continue to grow. We all benefit from having all voices heard and we should all do are part to make that happen.”