Patron Pamela Joyner’s Guide to Getting Your Collection Started

Pamela Joyner’s collection didn’t start in art school or a benefit auction; it began with childhood trips to the Art Institute of Chicago. She was fortunate to have, as she describes, “a childhood spent immersed in the arts.” These days, the patron and her husband, private equity investor Fred Giuffrida, live immersed in their own formidable collection of 20th and 21st century abstraction by Black artists. It covers nearly every inch of wall space in their Lake Tahoe home in Reno, Nevada (and, in at least one case, tumbles down from the ceiling).

A Harvard Business School graduate and founder of management consulting firm Avid Partners, Joyner built her career helping investment firms diversify their portfolios and expand their client bases. She has turned that same strategic eye on the art world as a trustee for the museum she once frequented as a child, chair of MoMA’s Painting and Sculpture Committee, and many other governance and leadership roles. In 2020, she co-founded the Black Trustee Alliance, with the aim of fostering the development of the next generation of Black art patrons and leaders.

From Richard Mayhew’s Pamela’s Aura, commissioned by her husband as a gift, to Mark Bradford’s 25-foot-tall A Private Stranger Thinking About His Needs, which her Tahoe house was specially designed to showcase, her collection serves as both a personal reflection of her passions and relationships as well as a rich capsule history of Black abstraction. In an interview with CULTURED, Joyner shares a first look inside her Nevada residence, the art market trend she’s glad to see die out, and the advice she’d pass along to those just starting their collecting journey.

Where does the story of your personal collection begin?

Technically, I began collecting a few years after finishing Harvard Business School. Conceptually, the origins date to weekly visits—since the time I can remember—to the Art Institute of Chicago. It was a place of wonder that shaped my imagination and aspirations.

Describe your art collection in three words.

African, diasporic, abstraction.

As the founder of Avid Partners, LLC, you help investment management firms diversify and expand their programs, and better market themselves to clients. That sounds a bit reminiscent of what you do as a museum board member. How does your background in business inform your work in the arts?

The parallels are comprehensive. Building a collection requires developing a set of skills, understanding how an age-old industry functions, and developing and maintaining a network of mutually beneficial relationships with interrelated people and institutions. As a result, when I shifted from simply buying art to endeavoring to build a collection with impact, I felt I was in completely familiar and comfortable territory.

What piece of advice would you give someone who wants to get into collecting?

First, I think it is important to train one’s eye by seeing a lot of art. That is the only way to develop a point of view about what you like, as well as which art is excellent. Collect more books about art before you purchase much and continue adding to that collection as you go. One fascinating and fun aspect of collecting is that it compels you to remain a lifelong learner. Finally, I think it has been especially helpful to me to have an area of focus. This helps to narrow the otherwise vast number of choices. More importantly, being focused enables me to continuously explore new ways to activate the collection so that it might be useful to the art ecosystem and the building of new art histories. For example, we reconfigured our long-standing artist residency program when we moved to Nevada, so that each artist who stays with us is given the opportunity to present work at the Nevada Museum of Art. It’s been a huge success and keeps our collecting journey moving in thoughtful and unexpected ways.