Leonard Riggio, Barnes & Noble Founder Who Amassed a Main Artwork Assortment, Dies at 83

Leonard Riggio, the businessman behind Barnes & Noble who made vital forays into the artwork world, shopping for key works of Minimalist artwork and giving tens of millions of {dollars} to the Dia Artwork Basis, has died at 83. He had been battling Alzheimer’s illness, in accordance with an announcement by his household.

Riggio was within the uncommon class of collectors who may declare that they had each pioneered a complete business and remodeled not less than one high-profile museum.

His artwork accumulating, although maybe much less extensively identified to the world writ massive than his management of the bookselling chain Barnes & Noble, was well-regarded and intently watched—he and his spouse Louise had appeared on ARTnews’s High 200 Collectors record every year since 1999. And had been it not for the couple, the Dia Artwork Basis, a New York group that has been credited with constructing a canon of Minimalist artwork, wouldn’t have been in a position to undertake a variety of initiatives which have allowed it to increase significantly previously twenty years.

Dia honored Riggio on Tuesday by posting a quote from him to its social media: “Then and now, Dia stays rooted in a single concept: to the best extent potential every artist ought to conceive the structure, setting, and context wherein his or her works are considered.”

The quote was paired with a picture of Richard Serra’s “Torqued Ellipses,” a grouping of monumental metal sculptures that guests to Dia:Beacon can stroll into. They’re among the many biggest sights at Dia:Beacon, the group’s Upstate New York museum, they usually had been obtained by the inspiration by means of a $30 million reward from Riggio that supported the acquisition of artworks.

Riggio, who was for a lot of 12 months’s Dia’s largest patron, served as the inspiration’s chairman from 1998 to 2006, serving to lead it through the interval when Dia:Beacon opened to the general public in a former Nabisco manufacturing unit. By the point he departed amid a chaotic interval for the inspiration, he had described his place as one thing like a “full-time job.” It barely appeared to register for him that he was nonetheless govt chairman of Barnes & Noble, so essential was his devotion to that artwork basis.

Leonard Riggio was born in 1941 in New York. For a lot of his childhood, he was raised in Brooklyn. After he graduated highschool, he took evening courses at New York College. However somewhat than spending an excessive amount of time on teachers, he opted as a substitute for a profession within the college’s bookstore, working first as a inventory boy.

He finally dropped out of college, and in 1965, he based the Scholar Guide Alternate, which he positioned as a competitor to NYU’s bookstore. Riggio’s retailer was demarcated by its youthful spirit: he allowed college students to print antiwar leaflets there. Regularly, his retailer grew a following, and he expanded it to incorporate a number of areas.

Then, in 1971, he purchased Barnes & Noble’s solely retailer in Manhattan and remodeled that store right into a bona fide empire. Riggio continued to stay on the helm of Barnes & Noble till 2019, the 12 months that the hedge fund Elliott Advisors acquired the corporate for $638 million.

All of the whereas, Riggio constructed up a major artwork assortment together with his spouse Louise, whom he married within the Nineteen Eighties. Having purchased posters and prints, the couple devoted themselves extra completely to accumulating beginning in 1994, the 12 months they purchased a portray by Alberto Giacometti. They quickly branched out to different modernists, from Pablo Picasso to Piet Mondrian.

Every little thing modified in 1997, when Riggio visited Dia’s Chelsea house and was astonished by the Serra works he noticed there. The couple would set up Serra’s Sidewinder (1999), a 300-ton metal sculpture of their garden; the work is so massive that it may, at one level, be seen by way of Google Earth.

Alongside grand sculptures by Isamu Noguchi, Willem de Kooning, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Mark di Suvero, their assortment additionally included high-quality works by Arte Povera artists, from Mario Merz to Pier Paolo Calzolari.

A lot of this artwork was extremely conceptual; little of it could possibly be hung in a single’s front room and admired by friends. However Riggio appeared prepared to take a danger on artwork like this.

“I like to purchase artwork by really feel greater than by sight, and these artists really feel a sure method to me,” Riggio advised ARTnews in 2016. “They relate quite a bit to different artists solely as a result of we’re the identical collectors. If it seems that they knew one another, it occurs accidentally. We don’t attempt to make a narrative, the story is the artwork itself.”