Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation

Profile

THE FREDERICK R. WEISMAN ART FOUNDATION is dedicated to continuing the legacy and vision of Frederick R. Weisman, an extraordinary entrepreneur, philanthropist, and art collector. He held an uncompromising belief in the cultural value of art and understood the importance of both the individual artist and creative process. In carrying out Mr. Weisman's intentions, the Foundation seeks to preserve, collect, and make publicly accessible his collection of modern and contemporary art as a means to strengthen and contribute to the greater artistic and intellectual life of our time.

In 1982, Frederick R. Weisman purchased the Los Angeles estate to serve as a showcase for his personal collection of 20th-century art. He and his wife Billie Milam Weisman, an art conservator and curator, worked together to create a unique environment located within the Mediterranean-style villa. The villa was designed by Gordon B. Kaufmann in the late 1920s and exhibits the craftsmanship characteristics of that period, including hand-painted ceilings, stucco details, and wood-inlaid floors. In 1991, the Weismans added a contemporary annex, or art pavilion, designed by Franklin D.Israel, to accommodate larger-scale works. Today the Foundation estate, annex, and surrounding gardens is made accessible to the public by appointment only on guided tours.

More than four hundred works of art are on display at the Foundation. The collection includes works by European Modernists including Cezanne, Picasso, and Kandinsky and Surrealist works by Ernst, Miro, and Magritte. The holdings in postwar art include works by Giacometti, Noguchi, Calder, Rauschenberg, and Johns; Abstract Expressionist paintings by de Kooning, Francis, Still, and Rothko; Color-Field paintings by Frankenthaler, Louis, and Noland; and Pop Art by Warhol, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, and Rosenquist. Contemporary California works include those by Ruscha and Goode, and Super Realist sculptures by Hanson and de Andrea.

These holdings are part of a larger collection that Mr. Weisman established as the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation in 1982. Currently under the direction of Billie Milam Weisman, the Foundation continues to make the collection available through loans to museums worldwide, docent tours at the Los Angeles estate, exhibitions in public-art venues, and the funding of several art museums, including the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, designed by Frank O. Gehry.