Top 200 Collectors

Peter Kraus started collecting art as a way to spend more time with his wife, Jill Kraus, whom he calls his “curator.” The result of all of that togetherness turned out to be an impressive collection of art. Much of it is displayed at Peter’s Wall Street office, where a sculpture by Manfred Pernice and Su-Mei Tse’s video Les Balayeurs du désert  are on display, but the couple doesn’t just keep their collection to themselves. They donated Christian Marclay’s 24-hour video installation The Clock to the Museum of Modern Art, where Jill is a trustee. Works from their collection have also been donated to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. 

The couple certainly keep busy. Jill was the longtime board chair of New York’s Public Art Fund, which commissions artists to create outdoor artworks. (“Jill Kraus brings a remarkable breadth of experience and expertise to this pivotal leadership role,” Nicholas Baume, Public Art Fund director and chief curator, once said in a statement.) Peter was the chair of the board of overseers of the California Institute of the Arts, and the co-chair of the Friends of Carnegie International (the oldest biennial-style show in the U.S.). He also formerly served on the board of directors of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in Manhattan. That’s in addition to his role as chairman and CEO of Aperture Investors, an asset-management firm that he founded in 2018. Between 2008 and 2017, he managed more than $30 billion as chairman and chief executive officer of AllianceBernstein, an international asset-management firm.