Cottrell-Lovett Collection

Long-term Greenwich Village residents Dr. James E. Cottrell, an anesthesiologist, and Joseph Lovett, a documentary filmmaker, had each acquired contemporary art before they met. But it wasn’t until 1983, when the couple moved into a SoHo townhouse together, that they began purchasing works in a more systematic manner. In the early ’80s SoHo was the epicenter of a rough, DIY, downtown arts scene, and their circle grew as Cottrell and Lovett frequented galleries and alternative spaces and socialized with art world denizens. Over the course of four decades, they amassed some 750 works, many from artists originally based in Lower Manhattan. Their approach to collecting soon evolved from receiving pieces gifted by friends to actively supporting their local community, cultural and otherwise, under the ethos: “If we don’t buy artworks, how will artists survive?”

Neither Cottrell nor Lovett had set out to own “grand or expensive” works, and learning everything about the artists they collected quickly emerged as a central priority. Moreover, their affinity for this generation of artists and the current political situation led them to add artworks addressing the AIDS crisis and LGBTQ+ issues—as well as disability awareness—long before these concerns entered the mainstream discourse. They not only befriended many artists, they also engaged in social and political activism: an early joint purchase of a large work on paper by then-emerging artist Jean-Michel Basquiat occurred while attending a fundraiser for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. They also collected artists’ works in depth over time, acquiring extensive holdings by practitioners ranging from Roland Flexner and Barton Lidicé Beneš to Deborah Kass and Dana Schutz.

“This is a collection that starts with, and is sustained by, the act of looking,” Cottrell observes. “We have to like what we are looking at. While the works must make strong visual statements, it’s important to understand what the artists are about, the journey they are on, and what they are doing with their lives.” The Cottrell-Lovett Collection, comprising some 200 gifts, complements the Grey Art Museum’s deep ties to NYU’s Fales Library & Special Collections, the research facility that most comprehensively documents the downtown arts scene that evolved in SoHo and the Lower East Side from the 1970s through the 1990s. The couple’s advice to young collectors: never stop looking at and learning about art—and buy from your heart.