One of the world’s finest private contemporary art collections is now on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla

“I majored in art and always admired Helen Frankenthaler,” says Iris Strauss, speaking of the first significant painting she bought with her late husband Matthew, who passed away last year at the age of 91.

In the years since the acquisition of that first work four decades ago, Iris and Matthew assembled one of the world’s finest private contemporary art collections including more than 300 works, 22 of which are now on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla.

A San Diego native, Matthew founded the commercial real estate firm M.C. Strauss and Company in 1960, and the couple raised a family in Del Cerro before moving to Rancho Santa Fe in the 1980s.

“The new home was much bigger, with many empty walls,” Iris says, explaining their sudden need for fine art. It was shortly thereafter when the Strausses joined the Museum of Contemporary Art, traveling to art shows with Hugh Davies, the museum director at the time, as well as other collectors.

On their first visit to Europe, they went to Documenta, an exhibition of contemporary art that takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany, where they purchased two paintings by the then relatively unknown artist Gerhard Richter.

Matthew, who was still collecting at the time of his death, was a newcomer to the art world back then, but he immediately recognized that if he was going to be a collector, he wanted to acquire works created in his lifetime. Most of the collection dates from the 1970s to the present, and Richter is far from the only artist whose work the Strausses bought before the artist reached their peak of fame. 

Ultimately, their collection grew so large that in 1999 they purchased the 6,000-square-foot home next-door to create a gallery for their work. Realizing they were merely custodians of the art, they opened the collection to the public in 2008, hosting many tours for local art institutions, museums, colleges, and universities. Matthew took tremendous pride in leading the tours himself, his greatest pleasure being that moment when visitors put away their phones and really started to look at the art and ask questions. 

As the Strauss collection grew in scale and importance, their support of the arts in San Diego and MCASD also grew. Iris served on the San Diego Arts Commission, and Matthew held leadership positions at MCASD for more than three decades, including serving as president from 2013 to 2016, helping initiate the recent expansion that enables the museum to display its own remarkable collection along with the many traveling exhibits it hosts.

“The Strausses are intricately linked with the museum’s history and holdings, but the collections are also complementary,” says Kathryn Kanjo, MCASD’s current director and CEO. As with most museums, MCASD receives the majority of its works through gifts, and as Kanjo notes, the Strausses “could buy pieces that were out of our reach.”

Recognized as among the world’s top collectors, the Strausses began to look for works that could represent an artist’s sensibility and body of work. “But it was still a private collection,” says Kanjo. “So it always had to be a piece they loved.” And, as Iris says, “We both had to agree on it.”

A museum’s job is to represent art history and provide a larger narrative. Covering more than 50 years, the Strauss collection is “part of that larger historical narrative,” says Kanjo. “It’s their personal take on it.”

The Strausses favored works that were exuberant, colorful, and figurative, even when the trends were minimalism and abstraction.

Although the Strauss exhibition includes two sculptures, including a full-size Nick Cave Soundsuit, the emphasis is on painting in the last half-century, with works by Jennifer Bartlett, Cecily Brown, Alex Katz, Robert Rauschenberg, Julian Schnabel, Mickalene Thomas, and others.

There are abstract and neo-expressionist paintings, as well as works that blur the distinction between painting and sculpture, seeming to come off the wall. There is even a piece in the exhibit that is only five years old, highlighting the Strausses’ ongoing collecting and the incredible pace of the art world.

As Kanjo notes, “There are paintings from the 1970s and artists who were born in the 1970s.” 

Matthew felt the collection made a person look at art differently, offering new perspectives and a deeper understanding of the world around us. He wanted it to be a testament to the transformative power of art and its ability to connect diverse audiences.

“The exhibition is a window into a life devoted to contemporary art at the highest level,” says Kanjo. Fittingly, it will be displayed until August 3 in the museum’s new Strauss Galleries, named in honor of Matthew and Iris. mcasd.org