Leonard Nimoy became an instantly recognizable celebrity through his role as Spock on the TV show “Star Trek” and its subsequent spin-off movies.

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 …

Yes, it often seems that people are more interested in prices than art.

[LN] You’re absolutely right, and that’s really unfortunate because so much of the conversation today is about the market, and how much art costs, and how much people are making by buying and selling art. It makes an amazing story, yet it detracts so much from what the work is really all about. It takes the focus off of what the artists are doing.

So what would you say to the argument that the active market sustains an art industry in which artists can thrive?

[SN] Well, I don’t know that that follows, quite frankly. The only person that doesn’t benefit at these auctions is the artist. To me the price of the art today is an absolute turn-off. It doesn’t make me feel that the work is more valuable. And it’s sad because some of the work is so far out of most people’s reach that it’s being bought by a handful of collectors, and then it’s gone!

So if you were offering advice to young collectors just starting out, what would it be?

[LN] You have to look, look, look, look. Look at a lot of work, go to a lot of places, listen to a lot of professional people talking about art. Read about the art, develop your eye and perhaps when you’re ready to buy, buy something that you really love, not because you think you should own it. But it does take time to develop the eye that is necessary. You have to invest some energy.

And what are the rewards of that investment?

[LN] The wonderful thing about the art that we’ve liked is that it fills our home with ideas, and as you walk through the house, no matter how long we’ve had the pieces, they continue to speak to us.