Collectors give their art to Medical Research

Want to know how art can fund research in science? Here is how two collectors do it:

Norman and Irma Braman, right, who are among America’s leading art collectors, have revealed that their modern and contemporary works will eventually be sold to fund medical research. Norman Braman says the money that would be raised by the sale of his art has the potential to “do tremendous good” in the fields of breast cancer research and children’s medicine, the two areas the Bramans have supported most generously.

Braman, 79, who previously owned the Philadelphia Eagles NFL team and is worth $1.6bn, according to Forbes magazine, made his fortune from pharmaceuticals and luxury car dealerships. He and his wife have used it to assemble one of the most important collections of modern American art in private hands. This includes the best group of Alexander Calder sculptures not in a public museum, consisting of around 20 pieces, and work by Jasper Johns, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol.

The Bramans’ modernist home on Indian Creek Island, Miami Beach, is filled with and surrounded by art. On the walls are works by Picasso, an artist the couple began to collect only two years ago. Their international contemporary art includes works by Maurizio Cattelan, Damien Hirst and Gerhard Richter.

Braman, who chairs the Art Basel Miami Beach host committee, says he does not intend to leave work to the Miami Art Museum or to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in his native city. He hopes that the sale of his collection, which is worth several hundreds of millions of dollars, will help medical researchers make “important steps forward”.

Well done!

By Cristina Ruiz. From Art Basel Miami Beach daily edition
Published online: 02 December 2011
Norman and Irma Braman
Source: Art News paper