Top 200 Collectors

Estrellita Brodsky has long been a champion for Latin American art and the need for institutions to take it seriously. “In a perfect world, there would be no need for Latin American art departments, for this art would be perfectly integrated,” she told Arte Al Día. But, because this has not been the case in most museums until relatively recently, the Brodskys have made it the focus of their philanthropic endeavors to do something about it. One way has been by endowing curatorial positions at some of the world’s top art museums, including Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Daniel has been a trustee since 2001 and served as board chairman from 2011 to 2021. 

No doubt Estrellita’s passion for supporting and collecting art from Latin America led her to study it—deeply. She has a Ph.D. in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. (Daniel, for his part, is the principal of the New York–based real estate company the Brodsky Organization.) And Estrellita is on MoMA’s Latin American and Caribbean Acquisitions Committee and was previously on the board of El Museo del Barrio in New York. The couple also founded Another Space in Chelsea, an arts venue that promotes exhibitions, publications, and research related to Latin American art.

Over the years, Estrellita has received eclectic gifts from the artists she collects. Fred Tomaselli gave her a San Pedro cactus after she included him in a show at Another Space. Julio Le Parc drew a multicolored, meticulously drafted labyrinth in colored pencil during a dinner. Artur Lescher designed a sculpture with “uniquely pierced small stars,” a reference to her name, which translates from Spanish as “little star.”

In 2024, Estrellita became the chair of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s board of trustees succeeding Dan Sallick. In her new role, she hopes to build on the launch of a $60 million renovation project for the museum’s sculpture garden and support for the museum’s digital initiatives.