Collector Spotlight: Joan Juliet Buck

PADDLE 8
By Lindsay Talbot
Modern and contemporary mix comfortably in Joan Juliet Buck's home, with a Fernand Léger carpet covering a bench sourced from the boardroom of the New York Times. Behind Buck is her collection of Mexican tin paintings; above them is a Todd Eberle photograph of Robert Wilson's "The Magic Flute" from her final issue of French Vogue.
The former editor of French Vogue needs only to open her jewelry box to summon fond memories of collaborations with famous friends, pre-dawn flea-market raids, and other aesthetic adventures. Within her sanctum, walls flanked with crisp white bookcases—stretch up to meet soaring, vaulted ceilings. Hundreds of titles and tomes are artfully displayed along the shelves, from massive art monographs (Daumier drawings alongside David Salle, Mondrian into Marcel Duchamp, Irving Penn to Peter Hujar to volumes of vintage Thurber and old Hollywood biographies. [link]

A shelf of sphinxes from Vienna—an Empire sphinx made into a lamp, two candlesticks, and a snow globe—joined by André Hambourg's "Oyster" oil painting, ca. 1950s.