Top 200 Collectors

Steve Tisch has an Oscar (he won an Academy Award as one of the producers of 1994’s Best Picture: Forrest Gump) as well as a Grammy, an Emmy, and a Super Bowl ring (that last one thanks to his role as chairman of the New York Giants). He also has a private museum in a shed behind his Los Angeles mansion, filled with work from his massive collection and curated by Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Tisch repaid Govan the favor by hosting a LACMA fundraiser at his house and used the opportunity to show off the 4,500-square-foot space for the first time—“for the Jews here, tonight is the bris,” he told the New York Times. (And for the gentiles? During dinner, a muralist painted, on an 8-by-16-foot canvas, the attendees at the table as they ate—for a sort of L.A. billionaire version of The Last Supper.) And then the big reveal happened, with visitors taking in works like Ed Ruscha’s A Blvd. Called Sunset and Gerhard Richter’s Two Women at Table. 

Unlike some private museum owners who allow a trickle of visitors inside their lairs to qualify for tax exemptions, Tisch has been steadfast about keeping his shed exclusive. The website Curbed Los Angeles called his admittance policy “no plebes allowed,” but Tisch was unmoved. “I feel very comfortable with my philanthropy,” he told the Times in 2016. “Very simply, I wanted a home for my art, and I’m looking forward to using the space for entertaining and hanging out with my friends.”