Stefan Edlis, Who Went From Refugee to Eminent Art Collector and Museum Patron, Has Died at Age 94

Stefan Edlis, one of the nation’s most prominent museum donors
and modern and contemporary art collectors, has died at age
94. The news was first announced by the Museum of Contemporary
Art in Chicago, one of several important art institutions that
benefited from the philanthropy of Edlis and his wife, Gael
Neeson.

Edlis was born in Vienna in 1925. He and his family escaped Nazi
persecution in 1941 when they came as refugees to the
US. “When we arrived at the pier in Manhattan, my uncle was
there, greeting me with a sandwich. And life was good,” Edlis told
the
Forward.

In 1965, Edlis founded Apollo Plastics in Chicago and soon was
making enough money to begin collecting art. His earliest
acquisitions were all made out of plastic, according to
ARTnews, though he would eventually move on to collect
some of the biggest names in recent art history, including Jeff
Koons, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard
Richter, Cindy Sherman, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol, among
others.

Edlis has been a trustee at the MCA Chicago since 1981 and was a
vice chair of the museum’s when he died. In 2000, Edlis and Neeson
made a partial donation to the msueum of Jeff Koons’s stainless
steel Rabbit (Edlis reportedly acquired the work for
$945,000 in 1991; another version from the edition sold for a $91 million at
Christie’s last year). The couple made another $10 million
donation in 2012 to fund a new theater at the museum.

“Stefan Edlis was a superhuman being who influenced every great
cultural institution in Chicago,” said MCA director Madeleine
Grynsztejn in a statement. “Stefan’s involvement in the arts made
his life bigger, and in turn, he made sure that art made other
people’s lives bigger, and that is what we loved about him.”

In 2015, the couple donated 42 works by John Currin, Eric
Fischl, Katharina Fritsch, Koons, and others, worth an estimated
$500 million, to the Art Institute of Chicago. Edlis, who
had expressed frustration in the past about donating works
that were quickly whisked away to storage, made the gift with the
condition that the works be kept on display for 50 years.

“I consider Stefan Edlis, along with his wife Gael Neeson, to be
the Nobel Laureates of Chicago Philanthropy: They believe in
investing in the culture of their community and the places they
live and spend time,” said Art Institute director James Rondeau in
a statement.

Edlis made a splash in the 2018 documentary about the art
market The Price of Everything. During an
interview amid his expansive collection at his home in Chicago, he
detailed the extensive Excel spreadsheet system he used to keep
track of his collection, and revealed that he often traded works
rather than buy them with cash.

The couple adhered to a set of rules that informed their
collecting habits, including that they would only own 200 works at
a time by more than 40 artists, which hung in their Chicago and
Aspen homes, according to
ARTnews. Among the works they parted with over the
years were Warhol’s Turquoise Marilyn, which they sold to
hedge-fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen for $80 million in 2007, and
Roy Lichtenstein’s The Ring (Engagement), which sold for
$41.7 million at Sotheby’s New York in 2015.

“The art market marches to its own tune,” Edlis
told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1988. “Anyone who tries
to forecast it is doomed to fail.”

“He was
outspoken, direct, and honest; he said what he thought even when he
knew it would ruffle feathers. And, people forgave him, not just
because of his age and the fact that he survived and thrived
despite his birth in Nazi Austria, but out of respect for his keen
intelligence, abiding humanity, selfless generosity, and his nearly
unerring taste in art,” said Adam Weinberg, director of the Whitney
Museum, to which Edlis was also a donor, in a statement. “Stefan
and his beloved Gael were a legendary team. They shared an
unmatched zest for life. And, together they built one of the finest
contemporary art collections of our time by taking risks, believing
in new artists, and making long-term commitments.”

The post Stefan Edlis, Who Went From Refugee to Eminent Art
Collector and Museum Patron, Has Died at Age 94 appeared first
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