Barbara Jakobson, an iconic collector known for his network of relationships with artists, dealers and curators, died in Manhattan on August 25. The cause is pneumonia New York Times.
Jacobson, appears in ArtnewsFrom 1990 to 1992, the “Top 200 Collectors List” was the central figure in the New York art world for decades. She has close ties with some of the top dealers of the era, including Sidney Janis, Ileana Sonnabend and Leo Castelli.
She is also a long-time trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, joined the junior committee in the 1960s, and became the head of the group in 1971, and was elected to a full-time board member in 1974. But her history at the institution stretches to her aunt, who gave her Moma membership at her age 12, said in a visit to Moma or Momal that she said in a 1997 interview.
While serving on the Junior Committee, Jakobson also became a founding member of the Harlem Studio Museum, which opened in 1968.
As a MOMA trustee, she convinced Castelli to donate to Robert Rauschenberg’s bed (1955), the artist was the first “merger” of the museum; now, it is the cornerstone of the permanent collection of MOMA. She is also a member of the committee and chose Yoshio Taniguchi as MoMA’s $850 million expansion architect, who opened in 2004.
In an interview eradealer Jeffrey Deitch described Jakobson as “one of the few people who are crucial to how the entire system works, how the art and quality consensus is formed.”
Jakobson moved into her three children in the Upper East Side townhouse in 1965 and moved to her collection. She told contain 2021 is its “Great Room” column. “I will make a transformation as a proof of life.”
At the bottom floor, it was a bar made of Coned roadblocks, designed by Tom Sachs. Elsewhere are the works of Matthew Barney, Richard Artschwager, Barbara Bloom, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Richard Avedon, Peter Halley and Robert Morris, whose feelings have not wavered since she obtained her portrait in 1970. Portrait of Robert Mapplepe, who is among many artists, is willing to provide her with friendships on the above.
In 2005, she sold 41 works of art and design from her collection and began assembled at Christie’s in the 1950s. These include Italian designers Carlo Mollino and Josef Albers Respect to the square: consonant (1957), Diane Arbus Christmas tree in Livertown’s living room (1963) and Frank Stella Felstzyn III (1971). (The outline of the location where Stella once hung can still be seen in her townhouse.)
Several of these plots exceeded their pre-sale estimates, although Stella is priced at $72,000, compared to $80,000 to $120,000. The sale made $1.9 million, and 10% of the gains benefited MOMA’s acquisition fund. She also used the funds to pay new commissions for her home, including a bar designed by Tom Sachs.
Jakobson was born on January 31, 1933 in Brooklyn. She grew up on Oriental Road opposite the Brooklyn Museum. She studied art history at Smith College, and in her junior year she married John Jakobson, who started at Smith when she was 17. At the time of marriage, John was a student at Harvard Business School and would continue to work as a stockbroker. (The couple divorced in 1983.)
They moved to New York in the mid-1950s, and Barbara Jakobson would soon be immersed in the city’s thriving post-war art world. She soon met Castelli through her cousin’s introduction and purchased Jasper Johns’ work from the artist’s first Castelli show in 1958.
Her first purchase was by German artist Adolf Fleischmann, because she couldn’t afford the work of her favorite artist Piet Mondrian, so “I just found the closest I could to Mondrian,” she said in Moma oral history.
Jakobson will continue to develop her collection over the next seventy years, but it is her love for art and artists. “This is what drives me and it’s what makes me interested in art, the art of my own time,” she said in oral history. “I want artists to let me know what we’re going to think, because artists are always there first, they’re always these [C]Assandras, whether it is a new way of painting, that’s why it’s interesting for me to see new artists’ work. ”
