In late 2014, a family member told me I should meet a woman she had known for forty years, describing her as an “avid art collector with a gallery in her house” - a description that was colossally understated. When I phoned Diana Zlotnick for the first time, she peppered me with questions, each answer met by a long pause, before she went on to the next. Toward the end of the inquisition, she asked me to bring her a selection of work to view and looked up a suitable day on her surprisingly full calendar for a woman in her late 80s. What I would eventually learn was that she had been named by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as one of the leading art collectors in California, had been a trustee of the Laguna Beach Museum of Art, and served on the steering committee for the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Pacific Standard Time exhibition, among many other accomplishments.
Art Collector Extraordinaire: Diana Zlotnick
Photo credit: © Steven Silverstein. All rights reserved.
Our meeting wouldn’t have happened had it not been for the unlikely path I started down the year before. For forty years, I had been creating fashion, beauty and conceptual photography for the highest level of magazines and advertising in the world, shown in galleries, museums and retrospective books. In 2013, while I was working on a conceptual project for a client, I discovered in-camera light reactions that I had never seen before. The abstractions didn’t work for the client but I couldn’t let it go, becoming obsessed with them. I hunted down a master printer to print for me and had already exhibited in a two-person show at a Houston gallery in mid-2014. Even so, on the designated day to meet Zlotnick, as I carefully wrapped several large prints and put them into a portfolio case, I felt like I was in my twenties again when I presented my work for the first time in Paris.
The vision I had of Diana Zlotnick’s “gallery in her house” was shattered in an instant when I walked in. Her entire house was the gallery. Every square inch was filled with art, and then some. What wasn’t hanging on the walls was hanging from the ceilings, sitting on the floors, raised on pedestals, or leaning, all of which – though not decorative - was carefully arranged and curated. It was a shock to the senses but as I came to know her, it was clear she didn’t collect for the sake of collecting. It was deliberate and measured. The most amazing thing of all was that in every fiber of her being, she understood art. She had no formal training in it, and yet knew as much – and in some ways, more – than many art historians, gallerists, and museum curators who are often caught up in their own insular world. Art should be subjective and Diana had an uncanny ability to look past the chatter, likes, shares, and reviews, and go with her own instincts. And wow, was she right on, amassing a phenomenal collection of over 600 works during 50+ years of collecting. She also didn’t want to just see art. She wanted to share it, constantly rotating it, showing it the way other experts couldn’t or wouldn’t, by outliers and relatively unknown artists sharing space with the international celebrities. The Steven Silverstein’s next to the Andy Warhol’s.
Diana Zlotnick’s house gallery. Center wall (L to R): Kaz Oshiro, George Herms (top), Andy Warhol (bottom); Right wall (L to R): Vija Celmins (top), Andy Warhol (bottom), Steven Silverstein (top and bottom), George Herms. On floor (right): Magdalena Suarez Frimkess
Photo Credit: © Steven Silverstein. All rights reserved.
Diana bought one of my pieces that first day and two more during the course of our seven years knowing each other. She had been winding down, selling off more than she was collecting by then. We talked at least a few times a month, and saw each other regularly, usually initiated by her, either in her home or my studio. It was never just about my art, although she was always interested in knowing what I had been creating, and offered advice and encouragement. We talked on a range of related subjects, the savant teaching the oldest pupil she would ever have, and visa versa. In May and June of 2021, I had long visits with her, about five days before I learned she had a stroke and passed away. Since then, her collection has been broken up, some pieces remaining with family members who didn’t share her passion, others donated to museums, most auctioned off for a multi-million dollar pay day, shattering a number of auction records.
There is no question that Diana Zlotnick was an important collector, not only for her contributions to and knowledge of art, but also for what she gave back to artists on an individual basis. It has been profoundly sad for those whose lives she continued to touch in her later years. I can’t help but think, though, that where she is now, she is still surrounded by artists and their art.