Ben Heller: Collector and Controversy

Esperanza and Irwin, spoke of Ben Heller during episode 81, Saving Barcelona Neck and the Grace Estate, East Hampton. Mr. Heller was part of the ownership of those properties, now in the public domain. But it's Ben Heller the Art Collector, that we speak of today. When he began seriously collecting Abstract Expressionism during the ’50s, museums like MoMA largely ignored the movement. Heller rushed in headlong. “He wasn’t someone to say, ‘Let me take a gamble on this small picture so that I don’t really commit myself.’ He committed himself a thousand percent, which is what he believed the artists were doing,” Ann Temkin, chief curator of painting and sculpture at MoMA, said in an interview. His goal was a simple one that, during his day, was radical: to collect the best art of his time. “He was unerringly spot on all the time,” said Andrew Fabricant, chief operating officer of Gagosian gallery. “The guy was the last of his kind. There’s nobody else in that league.” Listening is Believing.