Рой Нойбергер: Американский финансист и меценат современного искусства.

American financier
the author

Roy Rothschild Neuberger (July 21, 1903 – December 24, 2010) was an American financier who contributed money to raise public awareness of modern art through his acquisition of pieces he deemed worthy. He was a co founder of the investment firm Neuberger Berman. Roy Neuberger served for several decades as Honorary Trustee, Benefactor, and member of the Department of Modern Art's Visiting Committee at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Roy Rothschild Neuberger (unrelated to the famous Rothschild family) Born into a wealthy Jewish family, he was orphaned at the age of 12 after the deaths of his father Louis Neuberger, an immigrant from Germany and his mother, Bertha Rothschild, who was originally from Chicago. Neuberger described himself as having been interested during high school in tennis. He matriculated at New York University, originally to study journalism, but grew restless and dropped out without obtaining a degree. His first job was working in the Manhattan department store B. Altman and Company. Appalled that artwork was often only considered valuable after an artist's death, Neuberger vowed to support living artists, claiming "the contemporary world should buy the work of contemporary artists." Neuberger often purchased works from artists who were struggling financially, including Jackson Pollock, Willem DeKooning, and Mark Rothko, believing that the financial support would help the artists stay on their career track. He moved back to the United States and entered Wall Street in 1929, seven months before Black Tuesday. He started out with Halle & Stieglitz

By 1939, Neuberger had made enough money to buy the first painting that he would lend out to promote the artist: Peter Hurd's Boy from the Plains. He allowed Nelson Rockefeller, another avid art collector, to use Boy from the Plains in a travelling American art exhibition. Rockefeller's exhibition travelled to South America, 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, Ben Shahn, William Baziotes, Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis, Louis Eilshemius, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Jack Levine, David Smith and especially Milton Avery. 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, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum, as well as many college and university museums. Rockefeller later became governor of New York and created the State University of New York system. For his friend Neuberger, Rockefeller established a museum at Purchase College as part of the new university where Neuberger could display a substantial amount of the art he had acquired. Neuberger claimed to have never sold a work of art, stating that "It would be a criminal act for me to sell", and that "I buy because I love the work."

Neuberger was married for nearly 65 years to Marie Salant, also a distinguished patron of the arts, and a graduate of Bryn Mawr College; together they had three children: In his later years Neuberger was often seen in the company of Kitty Carlisle Hart.