Brooke Shields learns the art of collecting
Actress’s mother introduced her to art, with Warhol a familiar face at birthday parties
NEW YORK — To walk with the actress Brooke Shields through her West Village townhouse is to spend time with someone in the nascent stages of becoming a collector. She does not go to art fairs, and the only live auctions she has attended have been at her daughters’ school.
In a global art market that one estimate recently valued at $45 billion US, the most that Shields has spent on a painting is about $7,000.
The Keith Harings and Andy Warhols hanging on her walls were not purchases but gifts from the artists, who were her friends when she was growing up and a high-profile model. Shields, 51, has come to realize that those pieces have significantly more than sentimental value. And through her increasing involvement with the New York Academy of Art, where she joined the board last year, Shields has begun to take collecting more seriously.
“I want stuff,” Shields said, sitting on a couch in her home recently, “and I really have to not make rash decisions.”
Shields’s Harings include a heart over her bed, inscribed, “For Brooke Merry Christmas 1984,” and a Buddha in the study of her husband, Chris Henchy, inscribed, “For Brooke … one of the sweetest (honestly) people I’ve met, with lots of love and respect.” A Warhol is in the laundry room.
As a model, Shields spent time around prominent photographers such as Richard Avedon, who shot her Calvin Klein Jeans ads. She and her mother spent Thanksgivings with the fashion photographer Bruce Weber. The celebrity photographer Ron Galella gave Shields his “Windblown Jackie” image of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
But Shields started becoming a more conscious collector through the academy, as a chair of its benefit, the Tribeca Ball, which takes place Monday and this year honours the artist Will Cotton. Henchy commissioned portraits of their two daughters by Cotton as a birthday gift for Shields.
Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Q: How did you become interested in art?
A: My mom introduced me to art, not from a scholastic standpoint — she never went to college, she didn’t study art — she just had an eye for people, artists, fashion. We were like little kids in a playground.
Q: You would pass Haring’s “Crack Is Wack” mural on the East Harlem handball court on the way to school in New Jersey.
A: My mom said: “Notice, Brooke, there is no graffiti over it.” She said, “There’s a respect for him and he deserves it.”
Q: Haring and Warhol were an integral part of your life?
A: They never said no to coming to a birthday party and bringing presents. I was so lucky that these artists were my family.
Q: You’ve recently been evaluating purchases with the help of your friend, an art adviser. How did you buy before?
A: I would talk to my husband about it. I had a period when I wanted a Peter Beard and they were so expensive and I thought: “Why am I doing this? Do I want it because I think it’s cool or do I want it because everybody’s telling me it’s the thing to have?” I really wanted to get a Damian Loeb piece — who has an amazing show uptown at Acquavella — one of his big bright suns. It was just a little bit prohibitive in zeros.
Q: Do you think about art as an investment?
A: I have thought — at times when I haven’t been working or when things are a little thinner — “Thank God my mom kept that Haring, because if it got rough and I needed to, you know …” In fact, except for those pieces that happen to be gifts from the artists, I don’t think there’s any resale value in the stuff I enjoy. And, to be honest, it’s OK.