BY PETER TRIPPI
H I D D E N C O L L E C T I O N
ON FIFTH AVENUE, A CONNOISSEUR’S TAKE ON AMERICAN ART & HISTORY
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ome of America’s leading art collectors remain extremely discreet about their holdings, even as they generously lend specific works for temporary exhibitions or donate them to museums’ permanent collections. This discretion certainly pertains to Judith Hernstadt, the New York-based collector who has spent decades researching and acquiring significant American fine and decorative artworks of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, as well as related works from Europe. This season Hernstadt has kindly granted Fine Art Connoisseur a glimpse of her collection because she will soon be moving house. This, therefore, is an ideal moment to highlight how impressively she has gathered and arranged her treasures before they are relocated to her new home. Having earned an M.U.P. degree in urban and regional planning at New York University and pursued additional coursework at Harvard Business School, Hernstadt was previously president and owner of a broadcast company. Over the years she has become a philanthropist involved in a wide range of organizations related to her own profession, to U.S. foreign policy, and to American visual arts and history. Just for example, Hernstadt has served on the boards of the Decorative Arts Trust, Decorative Arts Society, Georgia Museum of Art, and American Friends of Yale University Art Gallery (steering committee). She has also been an active
(TOP) The dining room looking southwest, with C.B. Ives’s Egeria in the corner. On the left wall hangs J.B. Stearns’s 1850 painting of a woman riding a horse.
(RIGHT) The double master bedroom looking northwest; at center is
the day bed with adjustable back rest made in Philadelphia and dated 1730– 40. At right is a William & Mary period walnut high chest of drawers made in New York c. 1720. At left, the four drawings around the mirror were all made by William H. Bartlett (1809–1854).
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