11 of the world’s most expensive and unique art collections

Sir Elton John began collecting art in the early 1990s — mostly photography. With more than 7,000 works, the musician has amassed one of the largest collections of fine art photography in the world. His collection is so big that he had to purchase an apartment to house it. He has loaned photographs to the Tate Modern, and there’s a gallery named after him at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

In 1993, John bought Man Ray’s “Glass Tears” for more than $190,000 — the most expensive single photograph at auction at the time. Today, the musician’s collection includes works by Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Irving Penn, William Eggleston, Herb Ritts, Diane Arbus, and Ai Weiwei.

His collection also includes contemporary art, works rooted in queer culture, and up-and-coming artists. His Banksy triptych (“Flower Thrower Triptych”) fetched almost $2 million at auction in 2024.

François Pinault purchased his first piece of art, “Cour de ferme en Bretagne” by Paul Sérusier, in 1972. But Pinault really announced himself on the collector’s stage in 1990 when he placed the winning $8.8 million bid on Piet Mondrian’s “Tableau Losangique II.” Since then, the French billionaire has collected more than 10,000 works of modern and contemporary art. His collection, full of artists such as Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, Jeff Koons, and Damien Hirst, is valued at $1.4 billion.

Pinault has purchased and renovated museums in Venice, Italy — the Palazzo Grassi (opened in 2006) and the Punta della Dogana (opened in 2009) — to house contemporary art exhibitions from his collection. In 2016, Pinault announced plans to convert the landmark Bourse de Commerce into a contemporary art museum that would host around 10 exhibitions a year; the museum opened in 2021.

Musical couple Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz (born Kasseem Dean) have art on almost every wall of their New Jersey mansion. The duo has one of the largest collections of Black art in the U.S. (reportedly, over 300 pieces in their collection are by people of color). Their collection features Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ernie Barnes, Kerry James Marshall, Tschabalala Self, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Derrick Adams, Jordan Casteel, and Kehinde Wiley; the couple also has the largest private collection of Gordon Parks photographs.

The Dean Collection began when the hip-hop producer started buying pieces in the early 1990s, such as Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans. Keys and Dean also have pieces by Cecily Brown, Salvador Dalí, Swoon, Takashi Murakami, Keith Haring, Marc Chagall, and Joan Miró. And the couple owns a 19-foot-tall KAWS statue that required the couple to cut a hole in the exterior wall of their home so the work could fit inside.

The most valuable thing inside a JP Morgan Chase office might not be money — it might be the art: Roy Lichtenstein’s “Reflections On Crash,” for example, which the financial institution acquired for $8 million in 2001. The bank’s collection (worth, reportedly, billions of dollars) comprises over 30,000 works of art, including pieces by Alexander Calder, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Sol LeWitt, and Pablo Picasso. The company frequently lends its works to museums and cultural institutions, and it will transform its corporate offices into gallery spaces to highlight emerging artists

You get a Klimt, and you get a Klimt, and you get a Klimt!

Oprah Winfrey was reportedly part of one of the largest private art deals when she sold Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer II” for $150 million in 2016. (She purchased the painting at auction in 2006 for $87.9 million.) She also sold several pieces in her decorative art collection in 2015: Hovsep Pushman’s “The Little Mother”; paintings by Francis Coates Jones and Maude Earl; a Royal Copenhagen Flora Danica dishware set; English, French, and Continental furniture; and Richard Edward Miller’s “ The Red Scarf” — among other items.

Winfrey donated $12 million to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and she owns several works by Black artists — such as Kerry James Marshall, Betye Saar, and Dawoud Bey. The media mogul also owns works by Elizabeth Catlett, Thomas Hart Benton, and Harry Rosewood.

The Niarchos family’s collection is legendary. Stavros Niarchos started the family’s art collection, and his oldest son, Philip, has grown it. The collection has two works by Vincent Van Gogh — including his “Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear.” The collection also features Pablo Picasso’s “Yo, Picasso” (which the family bought for almost $48 million in 1989) and Paul Gauguin’s “Riders on the Beach.” Other artists featured in the collection include Henri Matisse and El Greco.

Phillip has focused on adding post-war and contemporary art to the collection — artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and Maurizio Cattelan.

For over $2 billion, you can own Eli and Edythe Broad’s art collection — but you can see over 2,000 works from the couple’s collection for free at The Broad museum in Los Angeles.

Eli, known as the “Lorenzo de Medici of Los Angeles” due to his patronage and philanthropy, spent over $140 million to build the museum to hold the post-war and contemporary art the couple had collected for over 40 years. They began their collection relatively conventionally: a Miró, a Matisse, a Modigliani, and a Van Gogh—which was in such bad condition that it had to be kept in Eli’s underwear drawer; the couple exchanged it for Robert Rauschenberg’s “Red Painting” and never purchased 19th-century art again.

Other artists featured in the Broad’s collection include Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Joseph Beuys, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Roy Lichtenstein. Eli actually normalized the practice of putting huge art purchases on a credit card when, in 1965, he paid $2.5 million for the Lichtenstein painting “I… I’m Sorry!” Eli passed away in 2021, so he won’t get to add to his collection, but it will forever live on.

Steve Cohen owns the New York Mets, and you can see artwork from his private collection in New York, at the Met. From 2007 to 2010, Cohen lent Damien Hirst’s “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” a preserved tiger shark in a glass tank of formaldehyde, to the iconic museum.

Cohen and his partner, Alexandra, began collecting art in 2000 and today have a world-class collection worth over $1 billion. While Cohen initially focused on purchasing Impressionist and early 20th century art, he has since focused on contemporary art. He owns Alberto Giacometti’s “L’Homme au doigt,” which fetched one of the highest prices at auction; Paul Gauguin’s “Bathers (1902)”; Vincent Van Gogh’s “Young peasant woman”; Edvard Munch’s “Madonna”; and Willem de Kooning’s “Police Gazette” and “Woman III.” Other artists in the Cohen collection include Pablo Picasso, Jasper Johns, Peter Doig, Jeff Koons, and Andy Warhol.

A rapper, a producer, a dancer, a member of the biggest music group in the world, a UN ambassador — and a South Korean art influencer?

RM, the leader of K-pop group BTS, frequently posts photos in different museums and galleries to his 50 million Instagram followers. He spoke at the Met as part of a presidential envoy to present the museum with lacquerware vases by Chung Haecho. Fans flock to museums around the world because he’s been there. And there are Reddit threads and websites dedicated to tracking his personal collection — he has a recording studio that looks more like an art gallery and a home that looks more like a museum.

While he collects art from all over the world — the cast-glass cylinder “Untitled (But the boomerang that returns is not the same one I threw)” by Roni Horn is believed to be his most expensive piece, at $1.2 million — he’s primarily known for his South Korean art collection. He loaned a terracotta horse sculpture by Kwon Jin-kyu to a Seoul Museum of Art retrospective and donated 100 million won to the country’s museum of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art so it could reissue art books and donate them to libraries across the country; Arts Council Korea then named him an Art Sponsor of the Year. And works by Park Soo Keun, Chang Ucchin, Lee Daewon, Kim Chong Hak, Yun Hyong-keun, Kim Jeong-hui, Park Soo Keun, Suh Seung-Won, and Nam June Paik dot his walls.

Meet Daniel and Estrellita Brodsky. He’s a real-estate developer who served as chairman of the Met from 2011-2021; she’s an art historian and collector with a PhD in Latin American art who has held curatorial positions at the Met, MoMa, Tate, and Hirshhorn. Together, the couple has championed Latin American art for decades.

The duo founded Another Space (in New York City), a venue that is dedicated to promoting exhibitions, publications, and research related to Latin American and Latinx art; the space features works from the Brodskys’ collection. The space recently closed the exhibition “Spin a Yarn,” a textile art show dominated by Latin American artists — and by works the Brodskys own — that then took over Guild Hall. Some of Estrellita’s favorite and most recognizable pieces include works by Marta Minujín, Claudia Alarcón, Tomás Saraceno, Gonzalo Fonseaca, Alvaro Barrington, and Mónica Giron.

Much of Madonna’s collection is devoted to female artists, such as Tamara de Lempicka, Marilyn Minter, Jenny Holzer, Yayoi Kusama, Cindy Sherman, and Frida Kahlo, who the singer has described as her “eternal muse.” Madonna actually owns one of Kahlo’s works: “Self Portrait With Monkey.”

And the rest of her collection (estimated to be worth around $150 million) is equally impressive — it reportedly features works by Pablo Picasso, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat (whom the singer dated for a few months and who reportedly destroyed the pieces he gave her), Man Ray, Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, and Salvador Dalí. Madonna sold Fernand Léger’s Cubist painting “Three Women at the Red Table” for $7.2 million in 2013 (she still owns his “Les Deux Bicyclettes”).