Joseph Hirshhorn

Joseph Herman Hirshhorn (August 11, 1899 – August 31, 1981) was an entrepreneur, financier, art collector, and philanthropist.

Biography Born in Mitau, Latvia, the twelfth of thirteen children, Hirshhorn emigrated to the United States with his widowed mother at the age of six. Hirshhorn is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent.

Hirshhorn went to work as an office boy on Wall Street at age 14. Three years later, in 1916, he became a stockbroker and earned $168,000 (equivalent to $ million in ) that year. A shrewd investor, he sold off his Wall Street investments two months before the collapse of 1929, realizing $4 million (equivalent to $ million in ) in cash.

In the 1950s, he and geologist Franc Joubin were primarily responsible for the "Big Z" uranium discovery in northeastern Ontario and the subsequent founding of the city of Elliot Lake. Hirshhorn Avenue, a residential street in that city, is named after him. By 1960, when he sold the last of his uranium stock, he had made over $100 million (equivalent to $ billion in ) from the uranium business.

From 1961 to 1976, Hirshhorn lived in a three-story Norman chateau in a estate at the summit of Round Hill, a rise in north-central Greenwich, Connecticut, with a view of the Manhattan skyline.

Art collecting

When Hirshhorn began to make money, he began to buy art, both paintings and sculpture. He amassed a collection of paintings and sculptures from the 19th and 20th centuries. Applying himself seriously to the study of art, he would question dealers, critics, and curators, and visit artists in their studios. He made quick decisions on buying a piece. "If you've got to look at a picture a dozen times before you make up your mind", he once said, "there's something wrong with you or the picture".

Hirshhorn graced his Greenwich mansion with paintings by Joseph Glasco (also sculpture), Willem de Kooning, Raphael Soyer, Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, and Thomas Eakins, and the grounds outside with sculptures by Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder, Richard Bernstein (artist), George Rickey, and Henry Moore. He allowed many nonprofit groups to use tours of his sculpture garden for fundraising. Later, while in negotiations to build the Hirshhorn Museum, Hirshhorn visited Ferus again, offering to buy all the works in a recent show by Ed Ruscha. The gallerist added 30 percent when calculating the total, and when Hirshhorn asked for a discount, a 30 percent discount was granted.

Personal life Hirshhorn's first wife was Jennie Berman. They were married in 1922 and separated in 1941 (19 years). They had four children, daughters Robin Gertrude (b. 1923), Gene Harriet (b. 1926), and Naomi Caryl (b. 1931), and son Gordon (b. 1929). He was married to portraitist and book illustrator Lily Harmon from 1947–1956 (9 years). Hirshhorn's third wife was Brenda Hawley Heide.