Roy Neuberger

Roy Neuberger (born July 21, 1903) is an American financier who has contributed money to the cause of public awareness and publicity of modern art through acquisition of deserving pieces. He is the establisher and eponym of the investment firm Neuberger & Berman.

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Neuberger was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and spent his childhood in New York. He was orphaned at the age of 12. He describes himself as having been interested during high school in tennis and "the ladies". He matriculated at New York University, originally to study journalism, but grew restless and dropped out without obtaining a degree to pursue business.

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His first job was working in a Manhattan department store called B. Altman's, through which he learned the ins and outs of business. Among the things he practiced selling were paintings, which nurtured his love of art.

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After his job with B. Altman's, he sailed to Europe at age 20 on an inheritance from his parents and went to live in Paris. He lived his bohemian, Roaring Twenties existence there, where he visited the Louvre three times a week and met his lifelong friend Meyer Shapiro. He painted and studied art throughout his whole duration, until in 1928 he read Floret Fels' biography of Vincent Van Gogh. Neuberger 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.

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He moved back to the United States and entered Wall Street in 1929. It was seven months before Black Tuesday. He started out with Halle & Steiglitz and sold short RCA shares, right through the stock market crash and well into the Great Depression. He founded Neuberger & Berman in 1939 with Robert Berman. By then he had made enough money to buy the first painting that he would lend to rocket the artist to fame: 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 now exposed to the art of Hurd.

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Among the other artists whose works Neuberger has 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, of whose works Neuberger purchased dozens. The first Avery he ever purchased was Gasp? Landscape, which he bought while it was snowing and wrapped neatly specially before going out during the snowstorm, determined to keep the painting intact to make the man famous. Neuberger still has Gasp? Landscape on the wall of his apartment. 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.

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His friend Nelson Rockefeller later became governor of New York and set up the State University of New York system. For his friend Neuberger, Rockefeller set up a museum as part of the new university where Neuberger could display the art he had acquired. With the help of architect Philip Johnson, the Neuberger Museum of Art was built on the SUNY Purchase College campus and opened in 1974.

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Neuberger is a truly appreciative art collector who will look at his pieces again and again -- he says he finds something new every time.

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Although of Jewish descent, Neuberger absolutely avoids anything to do with religion and is a staunch atheist who has never seen any appeal in spirituality, especially Judaism. His son, Roy Neuberger, Jr., who felt his life growing up without religion was empty, turned to Judaism and has since become famous in his own right as a speaker on Jewish spirituality. The two still have a close relationship, and Roy Neuberger Sr. has joked that he has "a wonderful son, but he has a disease". http://www.tosinai.com/tosinai/press/Haaretz1.htm

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Neuberger was married for many years to the late Marie Salant Neuberger, also a distinguished patron of the arts, and together they had three children and many grandchildren. In recent years he has been romantically linked with Kitty Carlisle.

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July 21: July 21 is the 202nd day (203rd in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 163 days remaining....

1903: 1903 has the latest occurring solstices and equinoxes for 400 years, because the Gregorian calendar hasn't had a leap year for seven years or a century leap year since 1600. See 1696....

American: :This page disambiguates the many uses of American. For an article about those various uses, please see Use of the word American....

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