Roy Rothschild Neuberger (July 21, 1903 December 24, 2010) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 financier

Financier

Financier is a term for a person who handles typically large sums of money, usually involving money lending, financing projects, large-scale investing, or large-scale money management. The term is French, and derives from finance or payment...

 who contributed money to raise public awareness of modern art

Modern art

Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...

 through his acquisition of pieces he deemed worthy. He was a co-founder of the investment firm Neuberger Berman

Neuberger Berman

Neuberger Berman Group LLC, through its subsidiaries is an investment management firm that provides financial services for high net worth individuals and institutional investors. With approximately $200 billion in asset under management, it is among the largest private employee-controlled asset...

.

Biography

Roy Rothschild Neuberger was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut

Bridgeport, Connecticut

Bridgeport is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. Located in Fairfield County, the city had an estimated population of 144,229 at the 2010 United States Census and is the core of the Greater Bridgeport area...

, and spent his childhood in New York. Born into a wealthy Jewish family, he was orphaned at the age of 12. He describes himself as having been interested during high school in tennis

Tennis

Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

 and "the ladies." He matriculated at New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

, originally to study journalism

Journalism

Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...

, but grew restless and dropped out without obtaining a degree.

His first job was working in the Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 department store B. Altman and Company

B. Altman and Company

B. Altman and Company was a New York City-based department store and chain founded in 1865 by Benjamin Altman which had its flagship store at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan from 1906 until the company closed on December 31, 1989....

. Among the things he practiced selling were painting

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

s, which nurtured his love of art. He sailed to Europe at age 20 on an inheritance from his parents, and went to live in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. He enjoyed a bohemian

Bohemianism

Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...

 lifestyle there, visiting the Louvre

Louvre

The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...

 three times a week, where he met his lifelong friend, 20th century art historian Meyer Schapiro

Meyer Schapiro

Meyer Schapiro was a Lithuanian-born American art historian known for forging new art historical methodologies that incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works of art...

.

Neuberger painted and studied art until 1928, when he read Floret Fels' biography of Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...

. He was startled when he learned how Van Gogh had only sold one painting, and was heartstricken to learn that Van Gogh, like so many other artists, lived in pain, poverty and misery.

He moved back to the United States and entered Wall Street

Wall Street

Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...

 in 1929, seven months before Black Tuesday. He started out with Halle & Steiglitz and sold short RCA shares, through the stock market crash and well into the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. He founded Neuberger Berman in 1939 with Robert Berman. In 1950, Neuberger's firm started one of the first no-load mutual fund

Mutual fund

A mutual fund is a professionally managed type of collective investment scheme that pools money from many investors to buy stocks, bonds, short-term money market instruments, and/or other securities.- Overview :...

s in the United States, the Guardian Fund, which is still in operation today.

Art Patron

By 1939, Neuberger had made enough money to buy the first painting that he would lend out to promote the artist: Peter Hurd

Peter Hurd

Peter Hurd was an American artist, born Harold Hurd, Jr., in Roswell, New Mexico.Nicknamed "Pete" by his parents, he later legally changed his name to Peter.-Life:...

's Boy from the Plains. He allowed Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the 41st Vice President of the United States , serving under President Gerald Ford, and the 49th Governor of New York , as well as serving the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations in a variety of positions...

, another avid art collector, to use Boy from the Plains in a travelling American art exhibition. Rockefeller's exhibition travelled to South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

, and many people in both South and North America were thus exposed to Hurd's art.

Among the other artists whose works Neuberger collected are Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock

Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...

, Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He is best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content.-Biography:...

, William Baziotes

William Baziotes

William Baziotes was an American painter influenced by Surrealism and was a contributor to Abstract Expressionism.-Life and career:...

, Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...

, Stuart Davis

Stuart Davis (painter)

Stuart Davis , was an early American modernist painter. He was well known for his jazz influenced, proto pop art paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, bold, brash, and colorful as well as his ashcan pictures in the early years of the 20th century.-Biography:He was born in Philadelphia to Edward Wyatt...

, Louis Eilshemius

Louis Eilshemius

Louis Michel Eilshemius was an American painter, primarily of landscapes and nudes. Although he was academically trained, much of his work has the unself-aware character of naive art...

, Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...

, Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence was an American painter; he was married to fellow artist Gwendolyn Knight. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", though by his own account the primary influence was not so much French art as the shapes and colors of Harlem.Lawrence is among the best-known twentieth...

, Jack Levine

Jack Levine

Jack Levine was an American Social Realist painter and printmaker best known for his satires on modern life, political corruption, and biblical narratives.-Biography:...

, David Smith

David Smith (sculptor)

David Roland Smith was an American Abstract Expressionist sculptor and painter, best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures.-Biography:...

 and especially Milton Avery

Milton Avery

Milton Avery was an American modern painter. Born in Altmar, New York, he moved to Connecticut in 1898 and later to New York City.-Biography:...

. The first Avery he ever purchased was Gaspé Landscape, which he bought during a snowstorm and wrapped carefully before going out, determined to keep the painting intact to make the man famous. Neuberger still had Gaspé Landscape on a wall in his apartment at the time of his death. Neuberger also began donating works to institutions, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

, the Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

, and the Whitney Museum, as well as many college and university museums.

Rockefeller later became governor of New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 and created the State University of New York

State University of New York

The State University of New York, abbreviated SUNY , is a system of public institutions of higher education in New York, United States. It is the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States, with a total enrollment of 465,000 students, plus...

 system. For his friend Neuberger, Rockefeller established a
museum at Purchase College

State University of New York at Purchase

Purchase College, State University of New York, is a public four-year college located in Purchase, New York, United States. It is one of 13 comprehensive colleges in the State University of New York system...

 as part of the new university where Neuberger could display a substantial amount of the art he had acquired. With the help of architect Philip Johnson

Philip Johnson

Philip Cortelyou Johnson was an influential American architect.In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and later , as a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture...

, the Neuberger Museum of Art was built on the SUNY Purchase College campus and opened in 1974. Neuberger contributed more than 500 of his paintings toward the collection.

On November 15, 2007, President George W. Bush awarded the then-104 year old Neuberger
the 2007 National Medal of Arts.

Corporate art collection

Regarding the company he co-founded, he said "Art in the workplace has been a part of Neuberger Berman's corporate culture since the investment firm was founded in 1939. In 1990 Neuberger Berman began developing its own art collection, emphasizing the work of emerging mid-career artists from around the world and presenting their works in an enriching environment for employees and visitors."

Family

Neuberger was married for many years to Marie Salant, also a distinguished patron of the arts, and together they had three children. In 1997, he published his memoir, So Far, So Good - the First 94 Years. His life as an art collector is chronicled in his 2003 book The Passionate Collector: Eighty Years in the World of Art. In his later years Neuberger was often seen in the company of Kitty Carlisle Hart

Kitty Carlisle Hart

Kitty Carlisle was an American singer, actress and spokeswoman for the arts. She is best remembered as a regular panelist on the television game show To Tell the Truth. She served 20 years on the New York State Council on the Arts. In 1991, she received the National Medal of Arts from President...

. Neuberger died on December 24, 2010 at the age of one hundred and seven.

External Links

• www.royrneuberger.com Online Memorial Site for Roy R. Neuberger