Top 200 Collectors

Norman and his late wife Norah Stone (who died in September 2019) started collecting art more than 30 years ago. “Collecting brings us closer together,” Norah said in a 2016 interview with Architectural Digest. “You won’t always agree, but you know you have to make decisions. That’s life really.” In the couple’s own words, “discovery and learning” have been guiding motivators behind their collecting, and their identification and support of emerging talent early on has netted them some of the best works by artists like Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, and Sigmar Polke. The Stones also turned their eyes toward the past, collecting works by Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and others who have, as the couple once put it, “indelibly marked and influenced the history of 20th-century art.” 

As part of a survey conducted by ARTnews with its Top 200 Collectors in 2017, the Stones pointed to a few prized works as the cornerstones of their collection: Joseph Beuys’s Vitrine with Plateau Central (1962–80); Jeff Koons’s Large Vase of Flowers (1991), as well as his Balloon Dog (1996); a version of Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q., for which the artist drew a mustache on a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, as well as a trio of the Dadaist’s “Erotic Objects” related to his famed final work Étant donnés. Some of the work from the collection has been on display at a 17-acre property in Napa called Stonescape, which includes a Cady Noland cabin, an “art cave” with exhibition galleries, and a James Turrell installation involving an infinity pool.