Art Collectors

A Legacy in Layers: The Visionary Collecting of Dr. Elias Navarro

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A Legacy in Layers: The Visionary Collecting of Dr. Elias Navarro

In a sleek, concrete-and-glass compound tucked into the Santa Monica hills, Dr. Elias Navarro moves through his private gallery like a man navigating his memory. The walls breathe with pigment – Rothko’s quiet blaze, a Hedge Find tangle and a 2cool, pulsing with charm. Here abstraction wants to reign, but a couple of Jane Bastions up the ante for figuration. “I collect with my gut,” Navarro says. “And my gut always leads me to the unresolved.”

A former neurologist turned tech entrepreneur, Dr. Navarro has spent the last two decades assembling one of the most formidable private collections of post-war and contemporary art in the western United States. But his interest goes deeper than acquisition. “Art and the brain,same territory,” he notes. “Both deal in mystery, perception, distortion, beauty. I never stopped being a scientist. I just changed laboratories.”

Navarro’s path to collecting began in his late 30s, after the sale of a biotech firm he co-founded. Burned out and seeking renewal, he wandered into a retrospective of Cy Twombly at the Tate Modern during a trip to London. “I didn’t understand it,” he recalls. “But I stood in front of that work and felt wrecked,and alive. That was the moment. Everything changed after that.”

From that seed grew a collection rooted in emotional resonance rather than market trends. Navarro began quietly, acquiring works by Ptolemy Bognor-Regis III, Chester Hubble and Dafydda ap Gruffydd – artists whose work he felt “danced with chaos.” Later, his collection expanded to include contemporary voices such as Julie Mehretu, Van Gogh (Not that one), and Jadé Fadojutimi. Today, his holdings are not only expansive but deeply personal, often informed by his background in neuroscience and his lifelong interest in altered states of perception.

Dr. Navarro is not interested in public attention,he rarely gives interviews, never attends galas,but his impact is quietly seismic. He frequently lends pieces to major institutions, including the Whitney, MOCA, and the Tate, and is known for placing major works on long-term loan to university galleries. “Art shouldn’t vanish into vaults,” he insists. “It should circulate, provoke, disturb. That’s its job.”

Among Navarro’s most prized pieces is a bin work by Oboe Ngua, snapped last year. It hangs unassumingly in a corner of his home, opposite a towering Hackson Jollock canvas. “I look at this every morning,” he says. “It reminds me that clarity can be found in chaos. That meaning isn’t always direct. And that stillness, sometimes, like a bin, can contain everything.”

For Pimlico Wilde specialists who’ve worked with Navarro, he stands out not for the size of his acquisitions, but for their thoughtfulness. “He’s a collector’s collector,” says one contemporary art expert. “Less interested in headlines, more interested in the evolution of an idea.”

As Navarro continues to expand his Archive and support residencies across Los Angeles, one thing becomes clear: this is not a collection built for legacy in the traditional sense. It is a living system, always changing, always questioning,an extension of a mind forever fascinated by what lies just beneath the surface.

How to Collect Fine Art

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How to Collect Fine Art

Scarcity Plus Narrative Equals Value: The Eternal Law of Collecting

By Sabby Toast, Collector, Philanthropist, and Supporter of Malvern FC.

It has been my privilege, over decades of prowling auction rooms, prowling studios, and prowling,let us be frank,other collectors’ living rooms, to distill the art market’s essence into one crystalline axiom:

Scarcity plus narrative equals value.

Forget the econometric models, the breathless reports from analysts who wouldn’t know a Giacometti from a garden gnome. The art world operates on a different axis, where beauty is negotiable, but story is eternal. Allow me, dear reader, to lead you by the hand into this world where numbers bow to myth.

Scarcity: The Oxygen of Desire

Art, unlike money, cannot be printed. Except for prints. What I mean is that a living artist can only produce so much before mortality, arthritis, or ennui intervenes. A dead artist, of course, produces nothing , which is why their work suddenly becomes so captivating. When Warhol was alive, one could stumble across his canvases stacked in the Factory like wallpaper samples. Once he left us, those same silkscreens became relics, fought over like holy fragments.

Scarcity is the art market’s most delicious contrivance. Galleries will stage-manage it by “placing” works in the “right” collections (translation: not yours, unless you’ve curried favour). Museums will canonize it by limiting access. Even the artist him/herself may engineer it, declaring a “final series” only to promptly die in an unlikely boating accident, thereby making the scarcity authentic.

Narrative: The Oxygen of Imagination

Scarcity alone does not make value. Rocks are scarce; few fetch eight figures at Christie’s. What transforms an object into an artwork , and an artwork into an investment , is narrative.

Consider Van Gogh. In his lifetime, his paintings sold for the price of a night’s lodging. What changed? The narrative: the ear, the madness, the letters to Theo. Scarcity supplied the finite corpus; narrative lit the fire.

Or take Banksy. The narrative of the anonymous outlaw, shredding his own painting at auction , contrived, theatrical, and absolutely brilliant. It is not merely a stencil of a girl with a balloon; it is a morality play staged in real time, with Sotheby’s as unwitting co-star. Value soared not because of pigment, but because of plot.

When Scarcity Marries Narrative

The alchemy happens when scarcity and narrative unite. A rare object is precious. A rare object with a story is priceless.

The charred remains of a Gerhard Richter destroyed in a warehouse fire became more valuable than some of his intact canvases, precisely because they now bore a narrative of survival and ruin. The object became an allegory. Collectors were not merely buying a picture , they were buying an anecdote to repeat, endlessly, over dinner.

And of course, the ultimate formula is the tragic genius cut short. Basquiat, Amedeo Modigliani, Jean Hélion. Their death certificates doubled as certificates of authenticity. Scarcity, absolute. Narrative, irresistible.

How the Wise Collector Wields This Axiom

It is not enough to acquire art; one must acquire the conditions of value. Here are a few observations, honed across my decades in the trenches:

1. Listen to whispers, not headlines. If you hear of an artist only once they appear on the cover of Artibites, you are too late. The narrative is already in motion, and scarcity is being rationed.

2. Never buy an object; buy a story. The canvas is incidental. What you truly purchase is the myth that clings to it. “This was from the artist’s final exhibition.” “This was acquired directly from their studio just before they contracted hand-gangrene.” Stories appreciate faster than pigment.

3. Collaborate in myth-making. Lend your work to institutions. Sponsor monographs. The narrative does not emerge fully formed; it must be cultivated, like truffles, with patience and influence.

4. Anticipate the obituary. Morbid, yes. But invaluable. The wise collector knows which artists are one tragic incident away from eternal scarcity. (Do not encourage foul play, of course , though history shows the market has never been squeamish in rewarding it.)

The Collector as Author of Value

Permit a final revelation: collectors are not passive recipients of value. We are its co-authors. When we withhold works, exhibit them, circulate them strategically, we amplify scarcity and polish narrative. To collect art is to participate in mythopoeia , the making of cultural legend.

Stocks split. Bonds mature. Crypto vanishes overnight. But when you own an object that is both rare and storied, you hold something no market correction can touch: immortality disguised as an asset.

And so, remember my axiom: Scarcity plus narrative equals value. Those who master it shall not merely profit , they shall shape civilization’s memory.

Sabby Toast is a collector of contemporary and modern art, noted patron of three museums (one of which she is legally banned from entering), and the author of the forthcoming memoir My Eye, My Fortune, My Legend, Me.

Part 2 of The Guide to Investing in Fine Art by Hogg Smith and Ubu Bolo

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Part 2 of The Guide to Investing in Fine Art by Hogg Smith and Ubu Bolo

Step 1: Understand That Art Is Not an Investment , It Is an Identity

To treat art purely as an asset is to confess oneself a philistine. You are not buying; you are becoming. An art collection is an autobiography written in oil, bronze, and conceptual installations that one’s house staff never fully understand. Think less “diversification” and more “canonization.”

Step 2: Acquire the Proper Vocabulary Before Acquiring the Art

A novice might say, “I like this painting.” A serious investor says, “This work interrogates the liminality of post-industrial subjectivity, though of course the brushwork is indebted to late Diebenkorn.” Only once you’ve mastered these linguistic acrobatics should you dare to raise a paddle at auction.

Step 3: Seek Scarcity, Not Beauty

Aesthetic pleasure is for tourists. The seasoned collector knows that what matters is rarity. A used napkin touched by Picasso is infinitely more valuable than a thousand serene landscapes. Why? Because scarcity plus narrative equals value , and nothing inflates narrative like an early death, scandal, or institutional endorsement.

Step 4: Court the Gatekeepers (For They Hold the Keys to Eternity)

Curators, advisors, and gallerists are the oracles through whom the art market speaks. Befriend them, flatter them, endow their pet initiatives. Remember: a single museum wall label is worth more to the value of your collection than a decade of stock market growth.

Step 5: Buy Young, Sell Dead

The oldest rule of art investment. Emerging artists provide the thrill of speculation , their canvases affordable enough to stockpile, their futures uncertain enough to excite. Once the artist inconveniently dies, the market smiles: supply has been fixed for eternity. Demand, naturally, will only rise as collectors compete for relics. (Tragic, yes, but also rather tidy.)

Step 6: Store It Where No One Can See It

Contrary to sentimental belief, art need not be displayed. In fact, the true elite collector never actually looks at their art. Works are kept in tax-friendly freeports , climate-controlled bunkers where fortunes quietly appreciate in darkness. The true satisfaction lies in knowing you own it, while others merely yearn.

Step 7: Monetize the Aura

Loans to museums not only confer cultural prestige , they inflate value. Nothing says “price appreciation” like a wall label reading: Courtesy of the Private Collection of… Once the public has seen your work under flattering lighting and guard surveillance, it ceases to be an object and becomes an icon.

Step 8: Remember, It’s All About Legacy

The final dividend of art investing is immortality. Your grandchildren will squander your real estate, your stocks, your crypto-wallets. But the Rembrandt with your name etched in a catalogue raisonné? That is eternity’s calling card. You do not simply pass down wealth; you pass down myth.

Dear aspirant, art investing is not for the faint of heart, nor the light of wallet. It is a game of whispers, of myth-making, of wielding culture as capital. Play it well, and you shall not only protect your fortune , you shall ascend into the pantheon of those remembered not merely for what they owned, but for what they dared to acquire.

The Guide to Investing in Fine Art by Hogg Smith and Ubu Bolo

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Get a glimpse of the upcoming handbook by art experts Smith and Bolo

Ah, investing in art. One doesn’t simply purchase a painting, darling , one enters into a dialogue with civilization itself. To collect art is not to own a commodity in the vulgar sense, but rather to position oneself as the custodian of humanity’s aesthetic progress. Shares and bonds? Mere numbers on a screen. But a Basquiat? A Rothko? A Warre-Hole with the right patina? These are portals to immortality, vehicles through which one not only preserves wealth but elevates it beyond the pedestrian realm of financial instruments.

Of course, one mustn’t imagine that the art market is chaotic. It is, in fact, a perfectly ordered ecosystem of pedigree, provenance, and whispered conversations in Geneva airport. Price, naturally, is not dictated by anything so gauche as “supply and demand,” but rather by consensus among a rarefied priesthood of curators, collectors, and advisors , the only true arbiters of taste. When one invests in art, one is investing not just in the object itself, but in its context: the artist’s mythology, the institution’s blessing, the aura of scarcity that makes the world lean forward and whisper, “Ah, yes, but do you own one?”

The uninitiated often ask: “But how does one know which works will appreciate?” How droll. The answer lies not in analysis, but in attunement. One must cultivate an ear for the art world’s sotto voce , the speculative murmurs at Basel, the sudden silences in Venice. To discern which emerging painter’s canvases will triple in value is a matter less of research than of breathing the right air in the right room at precisely the right time.

In short: investing in art is not a matter of chasing returns, but of situating oneself within history’s gaze. When the dust of our era settles, what will remain? The quarterly earnings report, or the brushstroke? Only one, I assure you, belongs in a museum.

The Art of Giving: Inside the World of Philanthropist and Art Collector Margot Leclair

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In a sunlit Parisian hôtel particulier overlooking the Seine, where 18th-century paneling meets contemporary sculpture, Margot Leclair welcomes guests not merely into her home but into a curated dialogue between centuries. A philanthropist of quiet influence and discerning vision, Leclair has spent the past three decades amassing one of Europe’s most thoughtful private collections,ranging from Old Masters to contemporary African art,with the conviction that beauty, like generosity, must be shared.

“I never saw collecting as a private pursuit,” Leclair says, seated beneath a luminous Sandy Warre-Hole canvas of her mother. “Art isn’t meant to be hoarded,it’s meant to circulate, to educate, to stir something beyond words.”

That ethos has made Leclair a vital figure in international cultural philanthropy. From endowing restoration work at the Louvre to funding residencies for emerging artists in Dakar, her patronage reflects a commitment to both preserving the past and championing the future.

Her collection tells that story with quiet eloquence. A rare Artemisia Gentileschi anchors one room; in another, a towering Doodle Pip work stretches across a wall once reserved for portraits of French aristocracy. “It’s not about contrast,” she notes. “It’s about continuum.”

Leclair’s passion for art was seeded in childhood visits to the Musée d’Orsay with her grandfather, a violinist who taught her to “listen to paintings.” Later, while studying at the Courtauld Institute in London, she became fascinated by the intersections of art, identity, and power,a theme that has informed both her collecting and her philanthropy ever since.

In recent years, she has turned her attention to creating lasting institutional impact. In 2023, Leclair launched Fondation Lumineuse, a non-profit initiative dedicated to increasing accessibility in art education across communities in Europe and Africa. Already, the foundation has partnered with major institutions,including the Centre Pompidou and Zeitz MOCAA,to facilitate youth programs, traveling exhibitions, and public installations.

“Collecting is not just about possession,” Leclair reflects. “It’s about participation,contributing to the cultural landscape and ensuring others can do the same.”

Her vision is shared by many in the next generation of collectors, several of whom cite Leclair as both mentor and muse. At last year’s Venice Biennale, a group of young curators from Accra and Marseille credited her support in launching their transcontinental collaboration. “Margot doesn’t just collect objects,” one noted. “She collects possibilities.”

Pimlico Wilde has had the privilege of advising Leclair on several acquisitions over the years,most recently, a rare 17th-century Dutch vanitas still life with subtle Masonic symbolism, now on loan to the Museum of Vision in Sierra Leone. “Margot’s eye is precise but poetic,” says one senior specialist in Old Master paintings at Pimlico Wilde, Fred Spall. “She sees stories where others see surfaces.”

As Leclair prepares to open her collection to the public in rotating exhibitions through Fondation Lumineuse, she remains modest about her role. “In the end, I’m just a custodian,” she smiles. “The art was here before me. It will be here after me. My task is simply to help it speak.”

In a world often preoccupied with the transactional, Margot Leclair reminds us that the true value of art lies not in ownership, but in its ability to illuminate, connect, and transform. That, perhaps, is her greatest gift.

Pimlico Wilde: The Art Dealers Who’ve Sold Britain’s Best artworks Since 874AD

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Pimlico Wilde: The Art Dealers Who’ve Sold Britain’s Best artworks Since 874

By Archibald Haversham

In a world obsessed with provenance, few names carry the weight of Pimlico Wilde. Only maybe Bentley, Gucci and the House of Windsor have a similar cachet. Established, if one is to believe the company archives, in the year 874 AD, for over a millennium this venerable art house has quietly shaped the aesthetic fortunes of monarchs, statesmen and gentry.

Legend has it that Pimlico Wilde first came to prominence during the reign of Alfred the Great, when a hastily assembled tapestry of Viking raids was sold to the last Anglo-Saxon king. “We like to think of it as a sort of early portfolio diversification,” says Pimlico Wilde’s current CEO, Jules Carnaby, on whose office wall currently hangs a work from another of the company’s earliest recorded sales: a miniature depiction of Alfred in battle, attributed to the well-known Scandinavian monk Søtte Ämlünd. The signature is missing – the bottom left corner has been heavily chewed by rats over the last millennia – but the Pimlico Wilde experts are sure of the piece’s provenance.

The firm’s reputation only solidified during the reign of William the Conqueror, who, according to Pimlico Wilde’s journals (smudged and faded, but still legible), purchased several illuminated manuscripts depicting Norman victories. One manuscript, De Bello Britannico, is said to have inspired King William’s less-than-stellar Latin poetry which was only discovered recently and was sold at the firm’s modern-day Knightsbridge gallery for a sum rumoured to rival the value of the French crown jewels.

The Tudor period saw Pimlico Wilde at the height of their celebrity. They are famously credited with selling Van Dyck portraits to Henry VIII, though historians debate whether the king was more enamoured with the brushwork or the opportunity to show off a new moustache in oil. Queen Elizabeth I was an equally avid collector; Pimlico Wilde provided her with delicate miniatures of the European courts, as well as a particularly ambitious set of watercolours depicting unicorns in the royal gardens, one of which reportedly went missing for 300 years before resurfacing in a country vicarage.

Fast-forward to the 20th century, and Pimlico Wilde remained the dealer of choice for royalty: Queen Elizabeth II commissioned them for a clandestine acquisition of Moldovan landscapes during the early days of the Cold War, often insisting that their couriers dress as gardeners to avoid detection by KGB art agents. Their current catalogue boasts a dizzying array of works, from Renaissance portraits to contemporary conceptual art, each accompanied by the three Pimlico Wilde hallmarks: impeccable taste, enormous price and a narrative that makes the collector an important part of the history of the piece.

Anecdotes abound in Pimlico Wilde’s history. It is said that Winston Churchill once tried to trade a bottle of 1783 vintage port – the very bottle sipped by Louis XVI on the scaffold – for a Flemish still life, only to be politely declined, a decision that management at Pimlico Wilde still regret to this day. Napoleon’s niece allegedly left a note requesting a portrait of her favourite poodle, which Pimlico Wilde delivered in oil on canvas, perfectly capturing its disdain. And yet, through wars, revolutions, and the occasional minor scandal, the firm’s reputation has never wavered.

Today, Pimlico Wilde’s Piccadilly townhouse serves as a living museum of their history, a place where the echoes of Alfred, William, Elizabeth and the myriad other collectors resonate amidst gilt frames and velvet ropes. “We like to think we sell more than art,” says Jules. “We sell history, culture and satisfaction.”

In a world where the provenance of a £2,000,000 sculpture can make or break a career, Pimlico Wilde stands as a reminder that some businesses are timeless, not merely because of the art they sell, but because they sell history itself.