Producer Building His Own Personal Art Museum in Bev Hills

Forrest Gump producer/Loews heir/New York Giants co-chair Steve Tisch has an impressive personal art collection and is running out of wall space in his 1928 Paul Williams-designed house in Benedict Canyon. His interior designer, who was attempting "a homey, traditional look," is stumped: "We felt we needed to take the sting out of the pretentiousness so that even art ignoramuses would be comfortable," he tells the Wall Street Journal. So what's the best way to handle that? Donate some of the art so that the public can be exposed to an incredible array of work by Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, Gerhard Richter, Robert Mapplethorpe, John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Willem de Kooning, and Georgia O'Keeffe? Of course not. Tisch is going to build his own art museum, no plebes allowed. He's hired local firm Johnston Marklee "to design a small private museum, no more than 4,000 square feet, that will replace the tennis court on his manicured hilltop estate." Partner Sharon Johnston says "It will be a space for larger-scale art, which is where Steve's collection is going." Here's Ruscha on Tisch as a collector; he's "'not probing,' says the artist, who finds the approach refreshing. 'There's not a lot of time discussing the merits of the work.'"
· A Movie Mogul's Eye For Art [WSJ]