A Zoom with Agnes Gund: On Living with Art

Conversation · March 2025
Recorded remotely between Nina Pinault in Gstaad and Agnes Gund in New York. Unedited transcript excerpt from the Gstaad Gallery archive.

Nina Pinault: You've lived with art longer than most people have lived with anything. I'm interested in the beginning — not the first acquisition, but the first moment you realised art would stay.

Agnes Gund: It wasn't dramatic. I think that's important to say. People like to imagine a kind of revelation. It wasn't that. It was slower. I found that I didn't tire of looking. That was the first sign. Most things you grow tired of. Art — the right work — resists that.

Nina Pinault: And yet you chose difficult work. Not decorative work.

Agnes Gund: I don't trust easy things. If a painting gives itself to you immediately, it usually leaves just as quickly. The works that stayed with me — the ones I kept — were the ones that didn't resolve.

(Pause)

Agnes Gund: I bought a painting by Mark Rothko in 1967. I went to his studio. It was quiet. He didn't say very much. I didn't say very much either. I chose the painting almost without understanding why.

Nina Pinault: No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe).

Agnes Gund: Yes. I've lived with it ever since.

Nina Pinault: Has it changed?

Agnes Gund: No. I have.

Nina Pinault: There's a mythology around your collection — that it was built with certainty. But listening to you, it sounds closer to doubt.

Agnes Gund: It should be. If you're certain, you stop looking. Collecting isn't about acquiring objects. It's about sustaining attention over time. That's much harder.

Nina Pinault: You've kept works for decades. Others, you've let go — sometimes very deliberately.

Agnes Gund: Letting go is part of it. People don't like to talk about that. But a collection isn't a vault. It's a structure that breathes. You make space. Sometimes for other works. Sometimes for other people.

Nina Pinault: You sold Masterpiece (1962) by Roy Lichtenstein to start the Art for Justice Fund.

Agnes Gund: Yes.

Nina Pinault: That's a very different kind of decision.

Agnes Gund: Not really. It comes from the same place. You live with a work long enough, and eventually it asks something of you. Not emotionally — structurally. What is this for? Who is it for? At some point, the answer can't just be "me."

Nina Pinault: You were deeply involved with Museum of Modern Art — not just as a supporter, but shaping its direction.

Agnes Gund: Institutions matter. They hold memory in a way individuals can't. But they also need pressure. They need people insisting that the collection expands — not just physically, but intellectually.

Nina Pinault: You pushed for more women artists. More artists of colour.

Agnes Gund: It wasn't pushing. It was correcting. The work existed. It simply wasn't being seen properly.

Nina Pinault: I'm interested in how you lived with these works physically. Not conceptually — but in rooms, in houses, over years.

Agnes Gund: You don't "place" a work once. That's a mistake people make. A painting moves. You move it. It follows your life in a way.

Nina Pinault: Even something like the Rothko?

Agnes Gund: Especially the Rothko. There were periods I couldn't look at it. It was too present. Too insistent.

(Pause)

Agnes Gund: And then there were periods I couldn't be without it.

Nina Pinault: You collected across very different practices. Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, Joseph Cornell…

Agnes Gund: They're not so different.

Nina Pinault: No?

Agnes Gund: They all deal with memory. Not in a literal way. But in how something accumulates. Twombly's marks — they feel like something remembered but not fully retrieved. Cornell — that's memory assembled. Johns — that's memory held at a distance.

Nina Pinault: And Rothko?

Agnes Gund: That's memory without image.

Image: 'Cave Soundsuit' A gift from Agnes Gund, celebrates Gund's contributions as a patron of the arts, a collector, and a longtime Trustee of The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA NYC.

Nina Pinault: What have you learned, after all these years?

(Long pause)

Agnes Gund: That you don't "learn" art. You accommodate it. Slowly. Over time, it rearranges how you see everything else.

Nina Pinault: That sounds almost like a burden.

Agnes Gund: It can be.

(Pause)

Agnes Gund: But it's also a privilege. To live with something you don't fully understand — and not need to resolve it.

Nina Pinault: If you were starting again now, would you collect differently?

Agnes Gund: No.

Nina Pinault: Not at all?

Agnes Gund: I would just pay closer attention, earlier. That's all.

Nina Pinault: Last question. What makes a work stay?

Agnes Gund: It refuses to leave.

(Silence)

Agnes Gund: Not physically. You can sell it. Donate it. Lose it. That happens. But something remains. A way of seeing. A way of thinking. That's the real collection.

"I have had that painting for fifty-eight years. I still don't know what it means. But I know I can't be in a room without it." — Agnes Gund on her 1967 Rothko

End of transcript · Gstaad Gallery Archive · Shared with permission

Selected Excerpts

Living with Art: A Conversation with Daniel Saffran and Arno Saffran

Conversation · December 2024
Recorded at Gstaad Gallery, Gstaad. Unedited transcript excerpt from the Gstaad Gallery archive.

Nina Pinault: Daniel, you've lived with these two works — the Rothko and the Richter — for a very long time. Thirty years. That's not casual.

Daniel Saffran: No. It's not casual. It's never casual. People think that because you own something, you possess it. You don't. The painting possesses you. Or at least, it occupies a part of you that you didn't know existed.

Nina Pinault: Tell me about the Rothko. How did you find it?

Daniel Saffran: I didn't find it. It found me. I was in Basel, in a private apartment. Evening. I was not expecting to see anything that evening. And there it was. I spent three hours in front of it. I didn't take notes. I didn't photograph it. I just looked.

Nina Pinault: Three hours?

Daniel Saffran: Three hours. The owner left me alone with it. He understood. Some paintings require silence.

(Pause)

Daniel Saffran: I bought it the next morning. I have never regretted it. Not once.

Nina Pinault: And the Richter? That came later.

Daniel Saffran: The Richter came through Guy. Guy Wildenstein. He said, "There is a painting you should see." I trusted him. He had guided me before. He knew what I could live with.

Nina Pinault: What did Guy understand about you?

Daniel Saffran: That I didn't want to be comforted. I wanted to be challenged. The Rothko challenges you quietly. The Richter challenges you loudly. It is a different kind of presence.

Nina Pinault: You've said that you stopped looking at the Richter for two years.

Daniel Saffran: I did. Every time I looked at it, I felt uncertain. I don't like feeling uncertain. So I stopped looking at it. But it was still there. In the room. In the house. I knew it was there. That was enough.

Nina Pinault: And then?

Daniel Saffran: And then I started looking again. It hadn't changed. I had.

Nina Pinault: Arno, when did you realise that your father's collection was not just a collection?

Arno Saffran: Late. Later than I should have. When you grow up with something, you don't see it. The Rothko was always there. The Richter was always there. I thought every house had paintings like that. I was wrong.

Nina Pinault: When did you understand?

Arno Saffran: When I brought a friend home from university. He stopped in the doorway. He couldn't speak. That's when I understood.

Nina Pinault: Daniel, you've been a quiet supporter of emerging artists. Scholarships to the Royal College of Art. Support for young artists in Switzerland. Always privately. Why?

Daniel Saffran: Because art doesn't need announcements. It needs time. Money buys time. I could give time. So I did.

Arno Saffran: My father didn't believe in announcements. He believed in cheques. And in showing up. He would go to studios. He would sit on the floor. He would look. He didn't advise. He just listened.

Nina Pinault: Did any of those artists know who he was?

Arno Saffran: Some did. Most didn't. That was the point.

Nina Pinault: Daniel, what would you say to someone who wants to start collecting today?

Daniel Saffran: Don't collect for investment. Collect for company. A painting that only goes up in value is a painting you will sell. A painting that stays with you — that's a companion. You don't sell companions.

Nina Pinault: And if you had to choose between the Rothko and the Richter?

Daniel Saffran: I wouldn't. You don't choose between children.

(Laughter)

Daniel Saffran: But if you forced me — the Rothko. It came first. It taught me how to see the Richter.

Nina Pinault: Arno, you inherit this. What does that mean to you?

Arno Saffran: It means I don't own them. I hold them. There's a difference.

Nina Pinault: Will you keep them?

Arno Saffran: Yes. For now. For as long as I can. My father didn't collect for me. He collected for himself. But I am grateful to be the one who keeps looking.

Nina Pinault: Last question for you, Daniel. What have these paintings taught you?

(Long pause)

Daniel Saffran: That you don't need to understand something to love it. That uncertainty is not failure. That a painting can hold more than you can carry.

Nina Pinault: That's three things.

Daniel Saffran: I had thirty years. I could give more.

"I would not part with it even if I were to lose everything. Some things are not for sale. They are for keeping." — Daniel Saffran, on his 1958 Rothko

End of transcript · Gstaad Gallery Archive · Shared with permission of the Saffran Estate

Selected Excerpts