Serious Art Lovers Design Homes Around Their Collections

A king’s mistress, a trio of clowns and a taxidermy chicken helped determine the design of Gary Wasserman’s home in Naples, Fla. When Mr. Wasserman, CEO of Troy, Mich.-based Allied Metals, was building the home, which has sweeping waterfront views, he wanted his art collection to take center stage. So he laid out his dining room around the dimensions of a 12-panel glass-encased painting that reflects on the life of Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV, by artist Ken Aptekar. The piece wraps around the entire room. A series of three bronze clown sculptures by Marshall Fredericks got their own alcove off the bedroom. Most homeowners live with some artwork. Others build their homes around it. Some serious art enthusiasts set up living spaces to highlight everything from old master paintings to contemporary video installations and multimedia sculptures. Some bring in museum-lighting experts or construct gallery spaces to rotate collections. Architects and home builders say working with art-obsessed homeowners brings its own challenges, from installing heavy sculptures and oversize paintings to figuring out how to offset edgy art that may be provocative—or even intentionally offensive—upon first glance. The intensity has ratcheted up as values of both high-end art and high-end real estate rise. Royce Pinkwater, founder and CEO of a high-end global real-estate company that consults with homeowners on home renovation and design, says in the past five years she’s seen an uptick in clients who are highly focused on displaying very valuable collections. “Art and property are the two top hard-asset classes people are investing in most now,” she says. One of Ms. Pinkwater’s clients is working with an HVAC expert to install a museum-grade humidification control in their Manhattan condo to protect their artwork. Another recent client spent $1.5 million on custom lighting for their collection. Mr. Wasserman kept the interior of his home white to provide a blank slate. Dimensions of several rooms were coordinated to match the paintings that hang in them. A gallery-like hallway holds fluorescent paintings and a stainless-steel sculpture of a concrete mixer on a platform by Wim Delvoye. “I live with everything,” says Mr. Wasserman, whose collection includes works by Anish Kapoor, Keith Haring and Koen Vanmechelen, the artist behind the taxidermy chicken that adorns his study, part of a series where the artist works with geneticists to crossbreed chickens from around the world. He declined to say what he spent on the home, which was designed by architect John Cooney and completed in 2008; similarly sized homes in the area are listed for around $8 million. Paulo Bacchi, owner of Brazil-based furniture company Artefacto, combined two adjacent Fisher Island, Fla., condominiums to create a 5,000-square-foot vacation home with 3,000 square feet of balconies. It houses his family and about 25 pieces from his contemporary art collection. A 7-foot tall elliptical-shaped sculpture by Brazilian artist Ascanio MMM, was at the center of the renovation. Mr. Bacchi says his biggest design challenge was figuring out how to make the colorful collection stand out against the condo’s sweeping views. He placed the sculpture between two floor-to-ceiling windows to grab attention; the views serve as backdrop. His home also has minimal, neutral furnishings and gallery-style lighting on pieces by artists like Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol. “The whole idea is to really expose the artwork,” says Mr. Bacchi. The home was completed in January for a cost of around $6 million; Mr. Bacchi says the value of the collection displayed in this apartment is about $1.5 million. In some cases, collectors will spend more on the artwork in their home than on the home itself, in which case security can be a top concern. Some install sensors which set off alarms if anything is touched or moved, similar to systems found in galleries or museums. Others rely on a system that can sheathe a painting with a hard surface on command—useful both for security and to protect the art when residents are away. Sarah Broughton, an Aspen-based architect, says she thinks about designing homes for clients with major collections similarly to designing a museum or gallery space. The process can begin with an extensive inventory of the art to be displayed or rotated through the home. Roofless foam-core models with miniature versions of the artwork and lighting are then laid out in advance. Hamptons-based architect Paul Masi took one client’s art collection as conceptual inspiration for the home’s design. His client, a New York-based lawyer, collected, among other things, Vik Muniz’s portraits made of sugar of child slave laborers harvesting sugar. Taking a cue from the pieces’ cheeky use of materials, Mr. Masi created siding for the home made of skinny wood stakes. An art-centric approach has its challenges. For example, newer building styles in urban areas aren’t always art friendly: Glass-box condos come with few blank walls for hanging. “Some have started collecting sculpture because they don’t have to hang it,” says Ms. Pinkwater. Deborah Berke, a New York-based architect and designer, says one of her biggest challenges can be getting sculptures and paintings into the home, particularly high-rise buildings with small elevators. For example, there was the large sculpture of an imposing nude figure standing on top of a giant ball of red rope. Created by artist Alison Saar, it is one the favorite pieces of collectors David Horvitz and Francie Bishop Good, who worked with Ms. Berke to design their New York apartment around their collection of primarily contemporary pieces by female artists. It was also too large for the building’s elevator. So Ms. Bishop Good says they got the elevator company to place the piece on top of the passenger cab to bring it upstairs, where it now graces the entry of their 3,000-square-foot apartment. In some cases, moving a large piece can involve closing off a street and hiring a crane to hoist it through a window. Despite making accommodations like museum-grade spot lighting in some homes, architect Ms. Berke says she likes to keep even the most art-centric homes looking like a living space first. “You don’t want to make a house feel like a gallery,” she cautions. One solution: a separate building to house the artwork. Ms. Broughton, the Aspen architect, is working on one with a mix of gallery and entertaining space and a few guest bedrooms. Her clients have a collection that includes contemporary video art, and Ms. Broughton says for video projections, it is important to make sure there are rooms free of “wall acne,” or lighting and electrical fixtures that might interrupt the artwork. In 2012, Carol and John Rutherford, the retired CEO of Moody’s, purchased a 3,200-square-foot, 1930s-era house in Jupiter Island, Fla., designed by a well-known local architect. But their eclectic collection—a mix of Southeast Asian sculptures, 18th- and 19th-century American paintings and decorative pieces—wasn’t fitting into their home. So they hired architect Scott Hughes to remodel the historic home and design a 2,700-square-foot contemporary pavilion where the couple could display their art and entertain. Mr. Hughes added a 64-foot pool and a covered breezeway in between to visually connect the two structures. The project, which included the home renovation, took about 2½ years. Mr. Rutherford says the value of the home is about $3 million. Owners say the effort and cost is worth it. “You could buy a table you could put flowers on, but I thought that was a ridiculous waste of money,” says Ms. Bishop Good, the collector with a New York apartment who is also an artist. “I’d rather buy a piece of art to be a focal point.” Write to Candace Jackson at candace.jackson@wsj.comThis article originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal.