Leonard and Susan Nimoy

© Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Nimoy, "Self portrait"

© Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Nimoy, "Self portrait"

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But having announced his retirement from acting in 2003, he now pursues full-time his first love—photography (“I became enchanted with photography when I was about 13,” he said).

He and his wife Susan are also energetically involved in a number of philanthropic efforts. Some years ago, they established the Nimoy Foundation to give grants to support institutions’ artist-in-residence programs, and Susan Nimoy is a trustee of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, where she and her husband have provided financial support for MOCA’s "Focus" series that supports and exhibits emerging artists.

The Nimoys are also passionate collectors of contemporary art, and their long collecting experience formed the basis of their recent conversation with ArtInfo.

Leonard, Susan, tell me, when did you start collecting art?

[Susan Nimoy] It was 1987.

[Leonard Nimoy] Nineteen years. My, how time flies …

Leonard, you’re a professional photographer. Do you bring your photographer’s eye to selecting the work you buy?

[LN] You must understand that Susan is the one with the real eye for contemporary art. I enjoy the art very much, but I’m not the person who finds it usually. Once in a while I’ll find a piece that I’m enamored of and we’ll discuss it, because we must agree, the two of us, on any piece that we buy. But Susan really leads the way.

[SN] We’re still on a learning curve. We had to educate ourselves. Our initial response to contemporary art was not informed; it was an instinctual feeling. But since we’ve been doing it for 19 years, our collecting has become more and more sophisticated, and we’ve come to understand what contemporary art is about: It’s more about ideas and concepts than it is about pretty pictures. Now we aim to collect with our hearts and not with our ears, which is a very important aspect of good judgment.

What does "collecting with your ears" mean?

[LN] It’s when you hear people talking about a piece of art, and you let that influence you.

[SN] You have to collect with your heart and not go with the flavor of the month.

[LN] You have to love a work, you have to be really moved by it, affected by it, intrigued by it, charmed by it, in order for it to have lasting value for you.

Can you remember the very first piece that you bought?

[SN] The first things that we bought together was Outsider Art. But then the first important piece of art that we bought was by Moses Soyer. Then we bought an April Gornik. We saw her work for the first time in the home of some L.A. collectors and we loved it, and they called the dealer.

It was a big 108” x 70” piece that we saw in a transparency, but we couldn’t see it in real life until we flew up to Milwaukee. It was in a show there called “10 + 10,” and we weren’t going to get it for months, and to be sure that we wanted it, we went and visited it, and we decided we absolutely wanted it.

[LN] We still own two other pieces by April Gornik, but that particular piece we gifted to the Orange County Museum.

[SN] The Orange County didn’t have an April Gornik and really wanted it. We have one really large wall in our house, and after owning it for all these years we decided we wanted to put something else up there, so …

Tell me, how do you think collecting has changed in the time that you’ve been involved in it?

[SN] Well, everything is so expensive today. When we started, that was not the case. It was still expensive, but not in the same way as with these insane auctions.

[LN] We have often had the experience in recent years of finding ourselves interested in two or three pieces at an upcoming auction, and we get on the phone—we try to do our bidding on the phone, rather than in person—and the numbers will just take off and go flying past any price that you’re willing to pay! You have to be really obsessed by a particular piece to stay in there and compete. Well, here we are talking about the price of art again …