WHILE THERE'S NO telling how many Northwesterners collect art, the names of some who do have grown familiar over the years because of their generosity to local cultural institutions — people such as Virginia and Bagley Wright, Ann Gerber, Jon and Mary Shirley, Anne Hauberg, and Joseph and Elaine Monsen. Usually, their collections are familiar, too: Serious art collectors often plan on leaving their works to a museum and frequently loan pieces for specific exhibitions.

Seattle's most prodigious collector, though, has become famous for his secrecy. Paul Allen was listed this year on New York-based ARTnews magazine's list of the world's top 10 most active collectors. But it seems that anybody who sees his collection is sworn to silence about it. Too bad, because when the folks at ARTnews talk "Top 10," they're not talking peanuts. In any given year, at least five people are spending at least $100 million on art, one source told them.

That's one extreme. But you don't have to be super rich to have a passion for art. Pacific Northwest magazine decided to introduce a few people whose names are not yet so well known, but whose collections are intriguing nonetheless. They were kind enough to allow us a look at the art they live with every day.
 

Mark Groudine has filled his home with an amazing group of carved wood sculptures, including the one he's facing — an ancestor figure from New Guinea. Behind him stands a massive carving from a chief's hut in New Caledonia.

Mark Groudine

WHAT HAPPENS when an ardent art collector cohabits with someone who likes to keep things spare?

That's the dilemma Mark Groudine confronted when he and Cynthia Putnam married in 1985. Putnam said "I do" to Groudine, but she wasn't so sure about his enormous collection of African and Oceanic art. It's not stuff that hangs meekly on the walls. Groudine goes for big, elongated carved wood figures that stand elbow to elbow in their stately old Capitol Hill house.

"When I first met Mark, the house seemed more like a museum," she says. "So we talked about culling a little bit. . ."

"You talked about culling," Groudine cuts in, laughing.

OK, so they compromised.

The household hovers in a state of tenuous balance that Groudine maintains by constantly giving away and trading pieces — so he can acquire new ones. To date, he has donated more than 100 objects to the University of Washington's Burke Museum, Seattle Art Museum and the Anchorage Museum of History and Art. Eventually, he says, all the pieces will go to museums, and some may be repatriated to a museum being built on the Pacific island of New Caledonia.

Groudine is a molecular biologist and physician who works at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and teaches at the UW Medical School. He stumbled into tribal arts after moving to Seattle in 1976. One day, out shopping for basketball shoes, he noticed a display of old medical instruments in a store window. The instruments lured him inside and, in the back room, he found a group of African masks and carved figures from New Guinea. He'd never seen anything like them. "It got me thinking about aesthetics, about things I'd never thought about before."
 

	The bold painting by Jeffrey Simmons dominates the entryway in Kim Richter's tiny apartment. Richter, who's on the board at the Bellevue Art Museum, didn't start collecting until the mid-1990s. The Simmons painting was only her second purchase.

Kim Richter

FOR KIM RICHTER, collecting art is as much about people as objects. "One of the things I really like about contemporary art is having a relationship with the artist," she says. That goes for curators, dealers, consultants and other collectors, too. "All these people are so bright and so passionate — it's great to be around them." Richter serves on the board at the Bellevue Art Museum, and for inspiration, she cites "people who really, really love art: like the Wrights, the Ebsworths, the Hedreens, Janet Ketchum."

At age 40, Richter is a relative newcomer to the art world. She made her first purchase in the mid-1990s: a Nicholas Africano drawing she found in a local gallery. Richter, a tax attorney, lives in a minuscule studio apartment along Lake Washington, so she mostly buys smaller works. Among them are photographs by Michael Kenna and Naoya Hatakeyama; paintings by Jeffrey Simmons, Kim Dingle and Gloria DeArcangelis; and sculpture by George Stoll and Bean Finnerin.

Richter does a lot of her shopping at art fairs, traveling with friends for the fun of it and the chance to encounter work by new artists. She sometimes relies on curators or consultants, but more and more, she trusts her own judgment. "It took a long time to get there, to have enough of a sense of myself to buy what I like, no matter what anyone else thinks," she says.

That means she even had to outgrow the advice of her mother, Evelyn Richter, a pioneering woman dermatologist in Seattle. "She doesn't like contemporary art at all," says Kim. "She thinks I've lost my mind!"

Wah Lui

A DREAMY, FADED backdrop paintings and a curvy Victorian sofa piled with bright-colored silks could be fixtures in any old-fashioned photography shop. But in Wah Lui's downtown Seattle studio, such dated props share space with an Epson 7600 digital printer, a rack of free weights and a big-screen video monitor.
 

Wah Lui not only takes pictures, he collects them. Lui, the son of portrait-studio founder Yuen Lui, holds a photograph he bought at an auction just because he liked it. The photo on his lap, by Alfred Wertheimer, is of Elvis Presley.

Lui is a photographer who collects photography. The son of Yuen Lui, who opened his eponymous Seattle photography studio in 1948, Wah moved here from China at 13 to join his father and learn the craft. Now he and his brother Del carry on the family business, operating studios at 14 locations in Seattle, Portland and Orange County, Calif.

Wah has accumulated some 800 original prints since he began collecting in 1975. At first he gravitated toward work by top-ranking artists such as Richard Avedon, Weegee, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Helmut Newton. He's chums with Seattle photographers Marsha and Michael Burns and owns their work as well. In recent years, though, Lui's ideas about collecting have changed. "I got bored with a lot of big-name photographers," he says. "I want to collect images rather than names."

That's because great names don't have an exclusive on great photographs. "Robert Frank said the best picture can be gotten by taking a camera, putting it on automatic, throwing it up in the air and catching it. What he means is that the nature of photography is instantaneous, accidental. I really believe that. Of course, the pros have a lot more happy accidents."

Lui may believe in happy accidents, but he certainly isn't the type who hangs around waiting for them. When he isn't making portraits (he recently finished shooting each of the musicians in the Seattle Symphony) or working out with his personal trainer, or buying and cataloging images, he's probably traveling with his wife, May, and 9-year-old daughter, Emily. At home in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, Lui is fond of listening to music and scanning auction catalogs and the latest New Yorker for intriguing photographs. Even standing in line at the grocery store Lui — compact and energetic at 65 — is listening to taped lectures from The Teaching Company to bone up on classical music or history. We Americans spend about a fifth of our time waiting, Lui maintains. He has no intention of letting that much time get away.
 

	In the living room of Bill and Ruth True's home, the twin monitors of a Gary Hill video installation protrude from a corner at eye level, adding two more virtual people to whatever company the room holds.

Bill and Ruth True

OPEN THE DOOR at Bill and Ruth True's Madison Park house and the first thing you see is a bright sunny sky, rippling water and people diving, one after another, into the sparkling blue. Look to the left and a human head bobs, submerged in water and making some alarming noises.

Think of it as virtual reality: Both scenes are video projections (the latter by New York artist Tony Oursler) and part of the Trues' extensive collection of contemporary art. Nearby there's a wall of color portraits of the Trues' five children — Erin and Claire Wright, Peter, Kimberly and Sophie True — shot by Seattle photographer Alice Wheeler. Barely over the threshold, we've already been dunked in the two themes of the Trues' collection: water and portraits.

It quickly becomes clear that the liveliness of the artwork suits the feel of the True household. The Trues collect work that demands attention and elbows into every cranny of the house, including the indoor swimming pool downstairs. Dominating the curving stairwell is a giant Frank Gehry paper construction that hangs from the ceiling. The big, blocky table and chairs in the dining room were commissioned from Seattle furniture designer Roy McMakin.

So, how do they decide what to buy?

"Sometimes we're not in 100 percent agreement," says Ruth, grinning at her husband.

"But usually we agree," Bill pipes in. "In a catalog there can be 100 pieces and we both just go: That one!"

Ruth had some early exposure to painting: Her late grandmother, Ruth Blethen Clayburgh, was known for her love of the arts. Bill, on the other hand, discovered art on his own. "My grandfather and father started Gull Oil in 1959," he says. "I always knew I'd do the family business." Nevertheless, Bill signed up for art history in college and "it just took." Now he's serves on the board at the Henry Art Gallery, and the True family helps keep many a local cultural institution afloat. Recently, they helped the Henry acquire a new permanent installation by James Turrell; it should be completed this spring.

Sheila Farr is the Seattle Times' art critic. Benjamin Benschneider is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff photographer.