Top 200 Collectors

Steven Latner and Michael Latner are sons of the late Albert Latner, who built a family fortune in property development and real estate in Toronto that is believed to be one of the largest in the city. Amazingly, he first entered the building trade out of necessity. While enrolled in law school, Albert’s wife, Temmy Latner, got pregnant, and he dropped out in order to work on a construction crew for a small house-building company owned by his father-in-law, according to the Globe and Mail. He would help to build that company into a powerful force in the industry. Along with his business pursuits, he was active in politics and a lifelong art collector and patron, and he supported public art projects in his hometown.

As collectors, Steven and Michael, who control the Latner family’s holding company for their various ventures and investments, share a 1,000-piece collection that was in part passed down from their father, who he died in 2015 following a battle with Parkinson’s disease. The collection is heavy with big, prestigious names like Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Henri Matisse, Alexander Calder, Georges Braque, and Salvador Dalí. At the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, a gallery named after the brothers is dedicated to the influential Canadian artist Michael Snow, who is perhaps best known as the director of the pioneering Structuralist film Wavelength (1967). 

In 2019, Canadian Business magazine pegged the Latner family’s net worth at a cool $1.12 billion, making them the 93rd richest family in Canada. Also in 2019, Michael Latner was the subject of a court case involving a split from his former partner Lisa Climans; in an appeal decided in 2020, it was ruled that he would have to pay spousal support for 10 years.