Top 200 Collectors

Along with Warren Eisenberg, whose family has also appeared on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list, Leonard Feinstein is a cofounder of Bed Bath & Beyond, which was originally called Bed ‘n’ Bath when it first opened in New Jersey in 1971. He has served as co-chairman of the company since 1999. Along with Warren and Mitzi Eisenberg, Leonard and his wife, Susan, donated a joint $7 million to the New Museum’s building campaign in 2005. “New York City is the cultural capital of the nation, and the new New Museum will provide visitors to the city with an experience that is unmatched by others,” Susan said in a statement to Philanthropy News Digest, adding that “the new building will be a new landmark for the city.”

Susan was elected to the New Museum’s board of trustees in 2004, and she also serves as a trustee of the Jewish Museum in New York and is a member of the Contemporary Collectors Council of the Nassau County Museum. The Feinsteins are noted collectors of Gerhard Richter’s works, a number of which they have gifted to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As part of a joint donation with the Eisenbergs, the Feinsteins gave MoMA Richter’s 2006 series “892-1-12, Abstract Paintings,”which was shown at the Marian Goodman Gallery in Manhattan in 2006. The title reflects the artist’s practice of recording his paintings by number. When asked by ARTnews in 2017 to share the names of the people who inspired them to begin collecting, the Feinsteins replied, somewhat unsurprisingly, the Eisenbergs. In fact, Leonard Feinstein and Warren Eisenberg are so close that they are executors of each other’s estates, according to Forbes.