The couple explains that sometimes loving art means putting it in a sock drawer.
“Pamela Hornik spends all day, every day, obsessing over art.” Those are the words of David Hornik, her husband, who’s well-positioned to know. Not only is Pamela a founding member of the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (ICA SF)—which opened in October 2022 with a solo exhibition by the Choctaw-Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson—she regularly supports emerging artists in countless ways, from funding their exhibitions to publishing their books. Further, she sits on the board of Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center, where she’s volunteered for well over a decade, and serves on the management committee of the Anderson Collection, also at Stanford University—not far from where the couple lives in Palo Alto.
David Hornik is equally invested in the arts. A founding partner of the venture capital firm Lobby Capital, he currently serves as commissioner of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., has sat on GLAAD’s board for nearly a decade (among numerous public and private companies and nonprofits), and teaches entrepreneurship at both Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and Harvard Law School.
Their professional bona fides aside, Pamela and David Hornik have emerged as eccentric yet entirely approachable fixtures on the contemporary art scene, spotted at gallery jaunts up and down the Bay Area—often with their two small dogs in tow. So smitten are they with their pooches that Pamela recently organized an exhibition, “Some Dogs,” showcasing no fewer than 65 canine-related works from the Hornik collection. A second iteration will travel to the Green Family Art Foundation in Dallas in February 2024.
We spoke with the Horniks about the evolution of their collection and their commitment to contemporary artists.
Tell us about a favorite work in your collection.
David: We acquired this unbelievably fun painting by Rebecca Ness called Night out at Boobie Trap from Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco. The little details in the painting of this iconic lesbian bar in Brooklyn are so much fun.
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