Barbara Jakobson, the discoverer of talent who was a great talent herself

In the fall of 1973, my Wesleyan University art history class took a field trip to New York City. After stops at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim, our tour culminated with a visit to the Upper East Side townhouse of Barbara and John Jakobson. John was a Wesleyan trustee and our professor had arranged with him to see their art collection.

Barbara welcomed our group and led us into the double-height living room which had been transformed into a spectacular gallery. She engagingly spoke with us about the collection and the role of the collector. Behind Barbara, one of the large walls displayed a recent acquisition: a phenomenal Frank Stella painting from his Polish Village series. I was stunned. It was the first time I had seen a great work of art in a private home. It was a foundational experience, part of what inspired me to become an art dealer.

A year later, I was working as a gallery assistant at John Weber in the 420 West Broadway building, upstairs from the galleries of Barbara’s friends Leo Castelli and Ileanna Sonnabend. Barbara remembered me from the Wesleyan class tour when I re-introduced myself during one of her visits to the gallery. It was the start of a friendship and an ongoing conversation that lasted 50 years.

Barbara was central to the art discourse from the late 1950s to 2025. She was an inspiration and confidant to many leading artists, architects, designers, writers, curators and gallerists. She was an influential collector, patron, curator and writer, but her most important role was to connect and develop opportunities for the talented people whom she discovered and nurtured. Barbara was one of the unique people in the art and design world who could make things happen.

Barbara had an uncanny ability to recognize artistic talent. She developed relationships with many of the great artists and architects of our time, but she was also brilliant at recognising promising curators, writers and dealers at the beginning of their careers. Her fascinating collection reflects this unique network of relationships. Beginning with her acquisition of a Jasper Johns Target as a budding collector in the late 1950s, she went on to acquire great works by some of the most important artists and designers, from modern masters like Josef Albers to the present generation.

After being a major collector of Minimalism, Barbara was one of the first to recognise the reinvention of figuration in the late 1970s and early 1980s, acquiring outstanding works by Julian Schnabel, David Salle and Jean-Michel Basquiat. She responded to the new artistic direction in the late 1980s, acquiring Winter Bears, one of the most iconic sculptures from Jeff Koons’s Banality exhibition (Sonnabend Gallery, 1988).

While it was still being debated whether or not photography was art, Barbara began collecting works by Diane Arbus and building a brilliant collection of images of smokers. One of her most vital artistic relationships was her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe. Mapplethorpe’s glamorous portrait of Barbara portrays her as one of the great women of style.

One of Barbara’s most important contributions was the integration of architecture and design into the artistic discourse. Her collection featured furniture by Frank Gehry and Richard Artschwager and a working bar by Tom Sachs that fused sculpture and design. Barbara also brought architecture into the program of Leo Castelli, curating a ground-breaking exhibition in 1980, Architecture II: Houses for Sale. Leading architects were commissioned to design houses for which collectors could purchase the designs and have them built.

Amongst her many interventions into the art and design conversation, Barbara also created a fictional identity, B.J. Archer, for her book projects. One of the most memorable was the book she wrote with Alexandra Anderson, Anderson & Archer’s SoHo: The Essential Guide to Art and Life in Lower Manhattan, published in 1979 just as the neighbourhood was being transformed into the centre of new art and design.

Those who were lucky enough to become friends with Barbara experienced one of New York’s sharpest and most entertaining conversationalists. On the telephone, or in person at one of the restaurants that she frequented, Barbara shared insightful and witty commentary about artists and others who shaped or constrained artistic trends.

Barbara was one of the most socially fluid people I have ever met. She was equally at home in the boardroom of the Museum of Modern Art and in an artist’s studio. She could be as comfortable in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, where she might go to see vanguard architecture, as in Manhattan. Wherever she went or whomever she was with, she was always the same Barbara.

Barbara was one of the rare people who instinctively understood quality in art and design. She was always one of the first to recognise talent in artists and in the people who help make art happen. Every work in her collection is of exceptional quality, even the works by anonymous photographers in her images of smokers, a collection that is an artwork itself.

The Museum of Modern Art was one of Barbara’s great passions. Starting as a dynamic force on the museum’s Junior Council, she became one of the museum’s longest-serving trustees. She worked behind the scenes to secure important donations and was a supportive advocate for the curators of art and design.

Barbara was one of the people who made the art world function as a community, bringing people together and through her networking, collecting, curating and writing, contributing to the intellectual and artistic discourse. Barbara was also had another notable aspect to her personality: She was one of the people who made the art world fun.

Temple of Style: The Barbara Jakobson Collection will be offered in a single-owner section within Post-War to Present on 26 February and a dedicated single-owner online sale from 18 February to 4 March at Christie’s New York.