: : About the Collection : :

“All of us who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s recognize that film and photography is our medium. Contemporary life incorporates film, photography, Virtual Reality – many things that are generationally different. In photography, art and technology are inseparable. We went from salt albumen prints, silver, platinum, then to a variety of color processes that began in the 1930s, and now to digital. Photography is the mixture of technology and artistic vision. We find that very exciting.”

— Richard Sandor

“I was showing my work in New York in the 1980s, and got Richard involved with the post-modernists. As far as the market is concerned, the value of the post-modernists is greater, but I still think it’s the historical images that are most important.”

— Ellen Sandor

Richard and Ellen Sandor have been collecting photography and outsider art for over 40 years, and have amassed one of the premier private art collections in America, with over 2,500 works spanning the period from the1840s to the present. The Sandors were active collectors when photography collecting was still in its infancy. In 1988, 2001 and 2002 the Sandors were listed by the Editors of Art & Antiques as one of "America's Top 100 Private Collectors” and have been recently interviewed in B&W, Metropolitan Home, Chicago Tribune Magazine, Crain’s Chicago Business, Chicago Gallery News, and Private Air. In 2015, they were listed by newsartnet.com as one of the “World’s 12 Most Influential Photography Collectors.”

The Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection contains definitive examples of photography that are complemented by paintings, drawings, sculpture and new media artworks that drive the major themes in the collection, such as 19th and 20th Century Icons, Paris Between the Wars, the American West, Hollywood Portraits, Surrealism, Feminism, African American History, and Chinese Contemporary photography. Unique pairings are featured throughout the collection that relate to a wide range of media, artistic processes and objects d'art. Various artworks from the Sandor’s private collection have been included in numerous exhibitions in the U.S. and internationally. The Sandors have generously donated artworks to museums and are Major Benefactors of the Art Institute of Chicago.

*An Opportunity To Be In A Room With The Greats, Executed In Earnest*, 2022, Luke Pelletier, 40”x30” Acrylic on handmade wood panel, Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection

Richard L. Sandor (Ph.D., Dr. sc. h. c.) is CEO of Environmental Financial Products (EFP) which was the incubator to the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) and the American Financial Exchange (AFX), of which he serves as Chairman Emeritus. He is currently the Aaron Director Lecturer in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School and an honorary Professor at the School of Economics at Fudan University and the University of Hong Kong. He formerly taught at graduate and undergraduate levels at several universities throughout the United States and lectures widely throughout Europe and Asia.

Internationally regarded as the “Father of Financial Futures,” in 2002 he was named by TIME Magazine a “Hero of the Planet.” In 2007 as one of the magazine’s “Heroes of the Environment” for his work as the “Father of Carbon Trading.” In October 2013, Dr. Sandor was awarded the title of Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honor) in France, for his accomplishments in the field of environmental finance and carbon trading. He has authored and co-authored numerous academic and popular press publications and books on finance and environmental subjects. His most recent books include “As I Saw It,” a compilation of 5 years of monthly articles from Environmental Finance, and “Electronic Trading and Blockchain: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” published by World Scientific in February 2017 and April 2018, respectively.

He is a co-founder of the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection and is a member of the Committee on Photography, Art Institute of Chicago.

Ellen Sandor is a new media artist and Founding Director of (art)n, with works in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, International Center of Photography, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and Victoria & Albert Museum. As a recent Visiting Scholar of Culture and Society, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she co-edited and contributed to New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts. In 2014, she received an honorary doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was the 2016 Artist in Residence at Fermilab. In 2017, she was honored by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for her longstanding commitment to integrating art and science. Recent exhibitions include: LACMA, King’s College, London; Victoria & Albert Museum South Kensington; iLon Gallery, NY; Jean Albano Gallery, Chicago, IL, Shingoethe Center, Aurora University, Aurora, IL; and Galerie Bijon, Arles, France.

Sandor is additionally a Life Trustee Emeritus, Art Institute of Chicago. She is Secretary of the Board of Eyebeam and is a Board Member of the American Friends Musée d’Orsay et de L'Orangerie; John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art; and Asolo Repertory Theatre. In 2012, she received the Thomas R. Leavens Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts through Lawyers for the Creative Arts. In 2013, she received the Gene Siskel Film Center Outstanding Leadership Award as longtime Chair of the Center, from 2001-23. She is also co-founder of the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection.