Like many top contemporary collectors, Marilyn and Larry Fields prepared themselves for an extensive stretch of international travel at the beginning of June. A meeting at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam with director Ann Goldstein required a few well-considered selections from Marilyn’s closet, many of which had been acquired from Chicago’s celebrated Ikram boutique—the same shop Michelle Obama consults to learn about the latest designers cutting fashion’s edge. But rather than clothing for parties in balmy Italy and dinners in the cooler clime of Switzerland, the couple’s luggage was filled with athletic gear and hiking shoes. “We had a date with some gorillas in Rwanda,” explains Larry when asked about the decision to bow out of the Venice Biennale/Art Basel tour that has become de rigueur for so many collectors in odd-numbered years. “Besides, going to Basel is like being a kid in a candy store. You can’t resist buying something.”
That sort of playful enthusiasm exemplifies Larry’s general demeanor. A lawyer by training and a former floor trader in the commodities market, he can hold forth about art at lightning-fast speed, forcing even informed listeners to tune in closely, lest they miss one of his keen observations on the practice of the artists the couple collects or the connections among pieces that share space in their home. In fact, as Larry waxes eloquent on the political charge inherent in, say, Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen’s quietly minimal fiber-and-aluminum composition Temperature No. 4, 2010, or Kendell Carter’s My Hommie Marcel Chair, 2007—a knockoff of Breuer’s Wassily chair fitted with a hoodie around its back—it’s astonishing to realize the couple has been collecting seriously for only 11 years.
“I always said he needed a hobby because he traded from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and then he had a lot of free time,” says Marilyn, downplaying her rather significant role in the couple’s engagement with the art world. Marilyn joined the women’s board of Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) in 1998, drawn to the institution’s education initiatives. As her involvement deepened—she served as board president for three years—and the couple’s familiarity with the museum’s programs, collections, and mission grew, they decided to attend the first edition of Art Basel Miami Beach in 2002 with the intention of acquiring. The move to collect had a practical impetus as well. The couple had decided to relinquish the house where they had reared their two children—Adam, now a vice president with Artspace, and Chloe, a graphic designer—in the city’s well-manicured Lincoln Park neighborhood in favor of an apartment in a new mid-rise by architect Lucien Lagrange in the Streeterville district. So while their new home was little more than a blueprint of large, open spaces that had yet to be built, the collecting began in earnest.
“They want to bring varied, international voices to the collection,” says Kristine Bell, of Zwirner gallery.
In Miami, the couple met David Zwirner Gallery partner Kristine Bell. The encounter led to the purchase of Juan Munoz’s Laughing while falling, No. 1, 2001, which in turn spawned “a wonderful working relationship that touched on historical areas of the gallery,” says Bell, referring to its long-standing stable of artists. As the relationship—“They’re like family now”—and the collectors’ knowledge and sophistication developed, Bell worked with the couple on acquisitions of emerging artists, such as Carol Bove and Michael Riedel, as well as gallery superstars. “They aren’t haphazard shoppers,” she says. “They’re very engaged with a lot of social and cultural issues and want to bring varied international voices to the collection.”
As their collecting continued and piece after piece went into storage, the couple worked with Wheeler Kearns Architects principal Mark Weber on their new home. Midway through the project, the unit next door became available, and Weber’s original brief extended from the design of a three-bedroom apartment to that of a floor-through residence that would include a private gallery-cum-guest apartment complete with a separate entrance for museum groups and special events. Today, roughly 120 artworks fit tightly in the gallery and are regularly rehung, allowing Larry to flex his curatorial chops. Simple white-painted walls and concrete floors impart an industrial feel that lets artworks take precedence, while a metal grid on the ceiling accommodates lighting and provides a means for works to be suspended from above. A central rectilinear core affords additional hanging walls and also harbors a Murphy bed and a Pullman kitchen. A half bath, set at the core’s center, is clad entirely in chartreuse fiberglass, endowing the room with a luminous glow. Francesco Vezzoli’s 2005 Caligula Was a Cocaine Addict (Malcolm McDowell) currently hangs on the bathroom wall.
“They’re the type of clients who really understand intention and vision, the sort that make for the best kinds of projects,” says Weber, who won an Interior Architecture Award for the space from the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
At last count, the couple’s collection as a whole numbered some 500 objects from almost 300 living artists. The nearly 150 works in the elegant private residence generally remain static. Visitors entering the front hall are greeted by substantial untitled works by Neo Rauch and Mark Tansey as well as George Condo’s Moonshine, 2011.Translucent glass partitions, inspired by Marilyn’s admiration of French designer Jean-Michel Frank, close off the powder room from the entry as well as a gallery hall from the master suite, where another riff on Frank, squares of goat vellum, configure a headboard on the wall behind the bed. Down the hall, one runs into Stream in the Grid, 2011, Gabriel Orozco’s stark memory of 9/11, beside a kitchen that opens onto a combination breakfast and media room surrounded by lake views. On sliding panels that conceal a flat-screen TV are two Kara Walker cut-paper silhouettes.
“When we finally moved in, we had accumulated three or four years’ worth of art,” says Larry. “It was so much fun, taking it out and trying to decide where we were going to place it,” Marilyn adds. Larry gestures toward Richard Prince’s joke painting Second Opinion, 2002–03, which he originally imagined in the front hall. “But it fit really well here,” he says of a spot across from an untitled 2004 abstract enamel-on-linen work by Christopher Wool.
During their first few years of collecting, the couple worked with an art consultant—“It kick-started us,” says Larry—but they’ve come to trust themselves as well as the advice of the gallerists they view as friends. “We work with different galleries, different programs, different institutions,” Larry continues. “Those relationships are steady, and we’re the better for it.” He acknowledges the couple’s changing tastes. “Certain pieces, like those by Anish Kapoor, you fall in love with and have to have it. But more conceptual work took us a little time,” he admits.
A recent acquisition is indicative of another shift in perspective. The couple had long been apprehensive about the work of Jeff Koons but embraced his recent show—an evolution of point of view they share with critic Jerry Saltz. “When I saw the new work, I called Larry, and he completely responded to the pieces,” says Bell. “He thanked me for keeping at them.” They’ll soon receive delivery on Koons’s Gazing Ball (Little Boy), 2013.
“There’s a lot of modesty there,” says Madeleine Grynsztejn, director of the MCA, where Larry is now a trustee. “They’re amazingly generous and thoughtful about where to deploy their resources.” The couple has endowed a curatorial chair at the museum, currently held by Naomi Beckwith, formerly of the Studio Museum in Harlem. To commemorate her appointment, they donated an untitled 2007 piece by Leslie Hewitt, adding to numerous gifts of artwork that include pieces by Trisha Donnelly, Yang Fudong, Thomas Ruff, and Alec Soth. “They’re very self-aware,” says Grynsztejn, “developing a commitment to diverse global artists that is grounded in ethics over aesthetics.”
It is notable that the collection includes many pieces by African-American artists, but the couple maintains a sort of color-blindness, saying that what appeals to them are the social and political aspects of the works. “Many of these artists delve into their history, which makes the pieces very historical and deferential and personal,” says Marilyn, while Larry takes an art-historical approach. “Kara Walker is in your face, Glenn Ligon is more subdued when discussing assimilation, and Mark Bradford twists things around with social signifiers. Of course, Theaster Gates brings it all home by relating art history to his work as a recycler, community developer, and performance artist.”
The couple has been collecting Gates’s work in depth, a practice they are developing with other artists who have emerged as favorites. In addition to Gates, lately they’ve been concentrating on David Hammons, Jim Hodges, and Wool, to whose Guggenheim-organized exhibition they are supporting for its tour to the Art Institute of Chicago. “We have responsibilities as collectors,” says Larry. “It becomes this idea of a village where everybody is trying to help everybody out—museums do shows, galleries get the artists out there, people collect and show other people their acquisitions, and that just keeps on elevating everyone, which is a virtuous circle when done right.” While the Fieldses are eager students of contemporary art practice and its dialogue, they clearly have some of their own wisdom to impart.
