Collectors: Brooke Shields, amid the Harings, learns the art of collecting

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Show Us Your Walls
By Robin Pogrebin

Brooke Shields in her Manhattan townhouse, with a Keith Haring heart above her fireplace and images of her daughters by Will Cotton on either side. Credit Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

NEW YORK---To walk with the actress Brooke Shields through her West Village townhouse is to spend time with someone in the nascent stages of becoming a collector. She does not go to art fairs, and the only live auctions she has attended have been at her daughters’ school. In a global art market that one estimate recently valued at $45 billion, the most Ms. Shields has spent on a painting is about $7,000. Ms. Shields’s Keith Harings include a heart over her bed, inscribed, “For Brooke Merry Christmas 1984,” and a Buddha in the study of her husband, Chris Henchy, inscribed, “For Brooke … one of the sweetest (honestly) people I’ve met, with lots of love and respect.” A Warhol is in the laundry room. [link]