Established in 2007 by Marc Fischer, and featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, Public Collectors encourages collectors of material culture--the kind that most museums won't exhibit--to 'open' their collections to the public. Extending the popular website of the same name, this book presents a wide array of collections--some featured on the website, most newly assembled for publication--interspersed with commentary and essays exploring the problems and politics of collecting materials that may lack conventional monetary or cultural value.

This publication is devoted to private collectors and their relationships with and gifts to public institutions in the United States. Thirteen authors bring to life the long tradition of private collecting and public philanthropy in America and reveal new insights into the formation of many of its major art institutions. Public-spirited collectors such as Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, and Solomon and Irene Guggenheim fulfilled their desires by establishing The Frick Collection, the National Gallery of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum, respectively. John G. Johnson?s collection was first left to Philadelphia as a standalone museum, and later fell under the stewardship of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Eleanor and Edsel Ford were instrumental supporters and contributors to the Detroit Institute of Arts. Samuel Putnam Avery was a civic-minded art dealer, adviser, and collector whose porcelain collection helped shape the Department of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Some collectors, including Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, Michael Friedsam, Adelaide de Groot, and Martin A. Ryerson, made significant gifts to pre-existing museums such as The Met and the Art Institute of Chicago. Finally, Robert Gilmor, Jr., and arguably Mary Jane Morgan, had aspirations of building public collections, yet they were not successful for various reasons. ?What?s Mine is Yours? celebrates Inge Reist, founding Director and now Director Emerita of the Center for the History of Collecting at the Frick Art Reference Library.

By 1850 cash-flush Americans like J.P. Morgan, Henry Clay Frick, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Henry E. Huntington, Arabella Huntington, and Mildred and Robert Bliss went on collecting campaigns that netted masterpiece after masterpiece, along with the furniture and fittings of dozens of aristocratic residences. From the outset, these collectors planned to present their trophies to the public as museums in which they could dictate each and every detail of the arrangements. Drawing on a decade of research, Higonnet weaves letters, auction records and photographs into an engrossing account of the founding of both renowned and obscure collection museums. She also explores how these collectors stoked the tremendous values accorded paintings by Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Velazquez, Gainsborough and Reynolds. Also references the Hertford family, Sir Richard and Lady Amelie Wallace, Le duc d'Amale and others.

The at-a-glance layout of this guide allows collectors to plan their next trip to the United States or Europe around their collecting passion, providing them with the necessary information to find collections on, or related to their enthusiasm.