Imagine: You’re an art collector and have been honing your skills for a decade or more. You’ve refined your eye, befriended gallerists, and regularly visit artists in their studios. Maybe you’ve even joined the board of an art institution. You love living with your art.

Then you have children.

It’s said that having children changes everything. But what precisely shifts when it comes to art collecting? As a new-parent collector, does your taste in art change somewhat, a lot, or not at all? How do you avoid Total Toddler Destruction? When they’re old enough, do you discuss the artworks with the kids, or even let them help decide on new acquisitions? Do parent-collectors think differently about the investment potential of their art, and about building a legacy?

For Iasson Tsakonas, a Greek real-estate developer, fatherhood did not divert the course of his collecting journey. ‘I still buy what I like,’ he tells me on a Zoom call from his office in Athens. For several decades he has collected design, ceramics, and lots of contemporary art from both local and international galleries like Melas Martinos in Athens, Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich, and Karma in New York. The older two of his three boys, aged eleven and ten, have grown up with a rotation of several hundred pieces by artists like Tauba Auerbach, Latifa Echakhch, Carroll Dunham, Martino Gamper, Steven Shearer, Franz West, and a multitude of others, either on view in their Athens home or in the family’s summer house on the island of Antiparos. ‘It’s important for kids to be exposed to high-quality art,’ says Tsakonas. Art has shaped these youngsters’ eyes, minds, and lives.

Americans Tonya and Ato Wright, both doctors, maintained their vision for their collection as their children were born, and it’s continued to deepen. They acquire primarily figurative paintings and works on paper by artists from the African diaspora, often directly from the studio but also from galleries like Brooklyn-based Welancora Gallery and Kampala-based Afriart Gallery. ‘We see our artworks as providing images of affirmation within our living space – positive images rooted in our backgrounds, which our kids may not encounter in school and in textbooks,’ explains Tonya on a call from the family’s home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Tonya, an obstetrician-gynecologist, was born on the Caribbean Island of Anguilla, while Ato, a radiation oncologist, grew up in an art-appreciative family in Ghana. Their collecting focus – which began ten years ago with a commissioned portrait of Ato’s grandmother by Jon Moody – reflects their life trajectories and daily realities. Their boys, aged seven, five, and three, have always lived with original artworks. Hanging in their Pennsylvania home is a multimedia portrait of Kamala Harris that the family commissioned from Chicago-based artist Roger J. Carter: action figures are scattered all over the politician’s painted silhouette.

Growing up with art, offers incredible opportunities for children to learn about and understand art history, develop aesthetically, get in touch with their emotions, and perhaps most of all, maintain their innate creativity. Both families’ kids are avid drawers. According to the Wrights, discussions on what the artworks might mean are astonishingly mature. ‘The kids are definitely drawn to certain images,’ says Ato, and they sometimes ask for specific pieces to be hung in their rooms.

Difficult pieces might be moved out of sight until kids hit a certain age, but thinking or talking about art can become a family exercise that starts early. Tsakonas asks his older boys to weigh in on a work they see in an exhibition, at home, or even a prospective purchase on a studio visit. (In 2023, the family visited painter Joe Bradley in his Brooklyn studio, and spirits ran high.) ‘They both express their opinions,’ he says. ‘But they sometimes tell me an artwork “looks like garbage,” when it’s especially chaotic to their eyes.’ When he and his wife, architect and designer, Argyro Pouliovali, travel with the kids, they send them on one-hour ‘missions’ in museums like the Louvre, to find, say, the Mona Lisa, and describe why a painting might be one of the best.

Berlin-based collector Karen Boros, who with her husband Christian, helms the Boros Collection, which mounts exhibitions in a vast, converted concrete bunker, says that her son Anton, now 21, used to ‘hate’ museum visits. But the family’s apartment sits atop the bunker and as a small child he did however enjoy interacting with art and artists. ‘As a three-year-old, Anton climbed from crate to crate, and later he would watch artists installing their works,’ she explains. ‘Today he takes his friends through [the exhibition] or meets up with our team of mediators.’

Although storing fragile art is a good idea when kids are small, most children have a certain, often unspoken, respect for artwork. ‘Our policy at home is to have no restrictions [on what the children can touch],’ says Tsakonas. ‘Neither of my two older boys have ever destroyed anything. Touch wood.’ His 15-month-old son is more interactive, though, and is currently ‘in love with’ a work by British artist Linder – a folding screen covered in collages of women, frolicking couples, and flowers. ‘We noticed the baby has been scratching at part of it, so we keep any loose pieces in a jar for the restoration when this phase is over,’ he says, sighing. Tonya Wright recalls spying a shiny thin line along the bottom edge of a large painting and hearing that her youngest had been wielding a tube of lip balm earlier that day. Oops. (The painting was restored.)

Children grow up, holdings expand, a family collection can become a legacy, and art and its world a philosophy by which to live, and even a philanthropic endeavor. This is nothing new: Historical art collections were established and expanded by families over generations as cultural and financial assets. Contemporary examples include Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s Turin-based collection and titular foundation and its many activities – especially those that support young artists. Her adult sons Emilio and Eugenio are also involved: The former is a chef running the foundation’s restaurant, the latter is on the foundation’s board but also established Artuner, his own hybrid online-offline sales and curatorial platform.

The Wright children are already seeing what art can do to effect change. The family supports emerging Black artists and recently launched a nonprofit organization: An early initiative was a selling exhibition of 30 commissioned works by artists from the African diaspora that raised money for and awareness of Black maternal mortality, a critical issue in the United States. With even more artworks now on view in their second home on Anguilla, the couple already talk to their sons about how the art will stay in the family. The boys – who’ve also tagged along to studio visits with artists like Amoako Boafo in Accra – are growing up within a dense international network of creative connections.

Still, not every collector assumes that their progeny might share their aesthetic preferences or be ready or willing to steward a collection. Tsakonas doesn’t see himself preserving his collection for his children – unless the boys express an interest. Art movements evolve or new ones emerge, generational tastes change over time, and so does sentimental and monetary value. As highlighted in last year’s UBS Survey of Global Collecting, Gen Z’s collecting behavior already skews toward artists with strong online presences and digital art over established artists in more traditional mediums like painting. And some new heirs, benefiting from the unprecedented transfer of generational wealth currently underway, donate or auction parts of their parents’ substantial collections – which, beyond aesthetic preferences, can also be a tax matter.

Tsakonas’s own interest in art was inspired by a family’s collecting tradition – just not his own. When he was a student at Cornell University in upstate New York in the 1990s, his roommate was the son of prominent collector Dakis Joannou, whose Deste Foundation runs an ambitious program in Athens and a project space on the island of Hydra. Through them, Tsakonas understood how transformative art can be and he soon knew he wanted in. ‘It was my first exposure to art. We’re keeping the same focus on access to art with the kids. And they’ve already cultivated their own tastes.’