One word often used to describe 93-year-old Herbert Lust: eccentric. Educated to be a university literature professor — his profession for years — Lust eventually found himself working on Wall Street, a sojourn that made him an investment banking tycoon. Since then he has become one of the world’s premier art collectors, who has raised millions of dollars for the Tel Aviv Museum and has donated hundreds of valuable pieces of art to it. Why? “Because I’m a Zionist,” he says
Sources: “It came to be like a lot of things — by accident. My real background and training is to teach literature, which I did at the University of Chicago. My first 12 years of education were completely involved in literature. Then by accident, again, I went to Wall Street because I met somebody who courted me. And then I became rich and began collecting. Gertrude Stein inspired me to collect.”
Sources: Sothebys.com, Tabletmag.com
Watch “Incredible, Eccentric, Accidental: The Life of Art Collector Herbert Lust” [8:29] Caution: coarse language. >>
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Photo: Sotheby’s
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