Top 200 Collectors

Now a major early-stage VC investor, Jarl Mohn got his start in radio as a disc jockey in the late ’60s, a career that lasted some 20 years, under the moniker Lee Masters, and included a two-year stint at WNBC-AM in New York. Other major career roles include being a top executive at MTV and VH1 during its transition from playing music videos to hosting original programming, founding E! Entertainment Television, serving as the chairman of Southern California Public Radio, and leading NPR as CEO from 2014 until 2019. On the investment side, he’s thrown his VC support behind companies like StubHub, Oxygen Media, Riot Games, and Fresh Pet.

Within the art world, the Mohns have established themselves as a force in L.A., supporting institutions like the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, LAXART, and the ICA LA, as well as the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time Initiative. At LACMA, his family foundation helped the museum acquire Michael Heizer’s 340-ton Levitated Mass (2012). (The work’s journey to LACMA was highly documented at the time.)

Initially, they started collecting Minimalism and Light and Space, the latter movement being closely associated with the West Coast, in particular L.A. Among the artists they collect from those two movements are Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, James Turrell, Robert Irwin, Mary Corse, DeWain Valentine, Helen Pashgian, and Doug Wheeler.

But around a decade ago, the couple decided to turn their collecting attention to supporting emerging artists in Los Angeles, collecting the likes of Kandis Williams, Lauren Halsey, Liz Glynn, Math Bass, Todd Gray, and Samara Golden.

And on this front, the Mohns are likely best known for supporting the Hammer’s Made in L.A. biennial, funding the exhibition’s main prize (the Mohn Prize), which awards one artist in the show with $100,000. Past winners have included Williams (2021), Halsey (2018), Adam Linder (2016), Alice Könitz (2014), and Meleko Mokgosi (2012), who was the inaugural winner. In 2021, when Williams was announced as winner, the couple committed an additional $5.1 million to create endowments at the Hammer to provide continued support to Made in L.A., the Mohn Prize, and the acquisition of work by emerging or under-recognized artists.

“We love being a part of the L.A. art community and helping establish the careers of emerging artists and helping to honor talented under recognized artists who have worked for decades and not enjoyed commercial success,” Jarl told ARTnews in an email.