Ian Woodner

Woodner began collecting art in the early 1950s. His collection of drawings included works by Raphael, Tiepolo, Cellini, Correggio, Dürer, Holbein, Goya and Rembrandt. His collections have had major showings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Royal Academy, the Prado and other galleries. The best of Woodner's rare old master drawings, were either sold or donated to the National Gallery of Art after his death.^[3] Woodner's interest in art collecting stemmed from his own work over the years in watercolors and pastels, which has been exhibited in New York, Munich and Jerusalem. Some of his work is still on display today in the lobby of the Woodner Apartments in Washington, D.C.

His collection of drawings includes works from the 14th through the 20th century and includes extremely rare drawings by Botticelli and Cellini. In 1989, when the Woodner collection was shown at the Metropolitan, Woodner said:

I'm an artist and I see these things as an artist, as Vasari did. A collector requires only two basic qualities, taste and boldness: The ability to see a good work and the willingness to buy it on his own judgment alone.^[4]

His family foundation, the Ian Woodner Family Collection, supports exhibitions, museum education programs and university art and architecture scholarships. It has also endowed a professorship of architecture at Harvard University and a curatorship in drawings at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard.^[5]

• Jonathan Woodner