Hester Diamond

Hester Diamond (née Klein; December 10, 1928 – January 23, 2020) was an American art collector, dealer, and interior designer. With her first husband, Harold Diamond, she amassed a collection of Modernist art that the New York Times described as "astonishing". Following her husband's death, Diamond switched her focus to Old Masters, assembling "one of the greatest, most idiosyncratic art collections in America". She was the mother of Mike D of the Beastie Boys.

Early life Hester Klein was born in the Bronx to David Klein, from Bayonne, New Jersey, and Edith (Wilbur) Klein, a bookkeeper. Her parents were both Jewish; her father came from a German-speaking family from Hungary, and her mother's family came from Lithuania. Becoming renowned as dealers as well as collectors, the Diamonds' personal collection included works by Picasso, Fernand Léger, Mondrian, Constantin Brâncuși, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning. She continued her interior design work until 1989.

Diamond died in January 2020. In October 2020, Sotheby's announced Fearless: The Collection of Hester Diamond, an auction of 60 lots from Diamond's collection. In addition to contemporary work by artists such as Bill Viola, it included Baroque sculpture by Pietro and Gian Lorenzo Bernini (August) as well as work by Jörg Lederer, Girolamo della Robbia, Dosso Dossi, and Pieter Coecke van Aelst. The auction, which took place in January 2021, brought $26.7 million. The "extraordinarily rare-to-market" carved marble sculpture August sold for $8.9 million.

Diamond maintained a close relationship with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and made substantial gifts to the museum over the course of her lifetime.

Personal life In addition to Harold Diamond, Diamond was the widow of Ralph Kaminsky, an economics professor, and David S. Wilson, a psychoanalyst. She had one stepdaughter, three stepsons, and three sons: David, Mike, a founding member of the Beastie Boys, and Stephen, who died of neuroendocrine cancer in 1999. Her stepdaughter, Rachel Kaminsky, is an art dealer, and the former head of Christie's Old Masters paintings department.

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