Hill Art Foundation

Hill Art Foundation
Name	Hill Art Foundation
Established	2016
Location	10 West 28th Street, New York City
Type	Art museum, private foundation
Director	Anne Dias (former director: Anna Sperber)

Hill Art Foundation The Hill Art Foundation is a private contemporary art museum and foundation in New York City founded by collectors J. Tomilson Hill and Marie Johns Hill. The foundation presents rotating exhibitions of contemporary art, historical works, and photography by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Diane Arbus, while engaging with institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate Modern and Guggenheim Museum.

History

The foundation was established in 2016 by collectors associated with the private equity firm Blackstone Group and the art world networks that include dealers such as Larry Gagosian, David Zwirner, Pace Gallery and Hauser & Wirth. Early programming involved loans and collaborations with curators from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Morgan Library & Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and university museums like the Harvard Art Museums and Yale University Art Gallery. The founders mounted exhibitions reflecting dialogues between figures including Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Eadweard Muybridge, Ed Ruscha and Cindy Sherman, and coordinated with collectors such as Charles Saatchi, Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr., Alice Walton and Francois Pinault for loans. Partnerships and loans connected the foundation with auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s and with legacy institutions such as the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Collections and Exhibitions

The foundation’s collection spans modern masters and contemporary practitioners, featuring works by Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Louise Bourgeois, Kara Walker, Rachel Whiteread, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Yayoi Kusama, Ai Weiwei, Kehinde Wiley, Elizabeth Peyton, Brice Marden, Donald Judd, Eva Hesse, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Alexander Calder, Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Wolfgang Tillmans, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Thomas Ruff, Annie Leibovitz, Willem van de Velde the Younger, Giorgio de Chirico, Rene Magritte, Egon Schiele, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Peter Doig, Glenn Ligon, Shirin Neshat, Marina Abramović, Bruce Nauman, Bill Viola, Mary Heilmann, Gillian Wearing, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Andreas Gursky, Nan Goldin and Sally Mann. Exhibitions have juxtaposed photographic histories alongside painting and sculpture, staging dialogues between Daguerre, Talbot, Eadweard Muybridge, and contemporary photographers from the Magnum Photos cooperative.

Special exhibitions highlighted thematic pairings—such as modernism and postwar abstraction—bringing together works with loans from institutions like the Tate Modern, the Centre Pompidou, the National Portrait Gallery (London), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The foundation has also mounted monographic and survey exhibitions focused on artists connected to galleries like Gladstone Gallery, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Hauser & Wirth, Gagosian, Pace Gallery and Perrotin.

Building and Architecture

Housed in a limestone and glass building on West 28th Street, the space was designed to accommodate galleries, a study center, and storage, reflecting conservation standards practiced at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery, London. Architects and designers engaged for the project have worked on institutional commissions for the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Neue Nationalgalerie, and private collections such as the Rubin Museum of Art. The interior features movable walls, climate-controlled cases for photographs, and lighting systems comparable to those used at Tate Modern and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to protect works by Marcel Duchamp, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Pablo Picasso and others.

The building sits in a district alongside landmarks like the Empire State Building, the Flatiron Building, and cultural institutions including the International Center of Photography and the Rubin Museum of Art. Its galleries have been used for loans, scholarly access, and collaborations mirroring partnerships between the Getty Research Institute and university collections.

Programs and Education

Public programs have included artist talks, panel discussions, and lectures featuring curators and scholars from MoMA PS1, The Frick Collection, The Cloisters (Met) and academic partners such as Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, Yale University, Harvard University and Stanford University. Education initiatives have ranged from docent-led tours to graduate-level seminars connecting pedagogy used at the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. The foundation has hosted workshops with photographers associated with Magnum Photos and conversations involving curators from The Met Breuer, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and The Phillips Collection.

Residency and research fellowships were established to support scholars linked to archives at the Frick Art Reference Library, the Getty Research Institute, and the Smithsonian Institution, encouraging cross-institutional study alongside museum catalogs from Yale University Press and Thames & Hudson.

Governance and Funding

Governance of the foundation follows a private-board model with trustees drawn from collectors, art advisors, and legal counsel connected to firms such as Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and finance networks linked to Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Funding primarily comes from the founders and philanthropic contributions, alongside underwriting for exhibitions by patrons associated with auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s and corporate sponsors in the art market. The foundation collaborates on loans with institutions including Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, and LACMA, while publishing exhibition catalogues consistent with standards used by Thames & Hudson, Rizzoli, and Phaidon.

Category:Museums in New York City