On a recent spring afternoon, Clarissa Alcock Bronfman was standing in the bathroom on the second floor of her Upper East Side townhouse, pointing to a flashcard-size drawing hanging on the wall. Her husband, Edgar Bronfman Jr., C.E.O. of Warner Music, had won it from Barry Diller in a bet 25 years before. Clarissa couldn’t recall the terms of the bet, but the prize was a sketch by Diego Rivera.

The little Rivera, which shows women lining up to dance, was Edgar’s first purchase of Latin American art. It was also a harbinger of the couple’s now-extensive collection, which includes masterpieces by such 20th-century artists as Roberto Matta, Jesus Rafael Soto, Joaquin Torres-Garcia, and, of course, Rivera. Edgar Bronfman’s wife, Clarissa Alcock, whom he married in 1994, is Latin American as well, and it was she who took the trend to new heights. “Since he met me, they’ve become bigger,” Clarissa, an energetic, Venezuelan-born blond in her late thirties, says of the size of the canvases. “I always say I’m part of his collection.”

Since winning Rivera’s sketch for Dance in Tehuantepec, the Bronfmans have become some of the most active buyers in the Latin American art market. They display much of their collection in their Manhattan home. The townhouse’s minimal décor, large entryways, and high ceilings provide a sleek backdrop, thanks to Clarissa, the home’s design maestro. Standing next to the grand piano in the living room, Clarissa, in white slacks and a coral blouse, gestures expansively at the room. “When we built this house, Edgar asked, ‘Where are the moldings? Where is the chair rail?’ The architect told him, ‘[Clarissa] said no,’” she says, laughing. Was there anything Edgar picked out himself? “He’s more into Giacometti and French furniture, like Ruhlmann, Dupré-Lafon,” she says, indicating the coffee table in front of her, its surface nearly covered by a long pre-Columbian grain tray.

When it comes to artworks, it is also Clarissa who makes the calls—sometimes literally. The first piece the couple bought was a small Joaquin Torres-Garcia painting that Clarissa found in 1993, when she was a business student at New York University. She started paying piecemeal for the work while she and Edgar were dating, and he finalized the purchase once they became engaged. She soon repaid him: As a wedding gift, she gave him a Peruvian emperor’s cape, made entirely of yellow feathers, that dates from the period A.D. 400 to 600. It now hangs above their bed.

While Clarissa’s interest in Latin American and pre-Columbian art stems mainly from her Venezuelan heritage, the Bronfmans have seized upon what they see as a strong investment opportunity. Prices for Latin American art are relatively low right now, but within a few years, the couple predicts, these works will become harder to acquire. Already the Mexican government has placed restrictions on exporting various artists’ work in order to protect the country’s heritage and keep cultural artifacts in their country of origin.
 
The Bronfmans’ first major acquisition after their marriage was Science, Conscience et Patience du Vitreur (1944), a 6-by-15-foot Matta canvas, grey with turquoise shapes and splashes of orange. When Clarissa first saw it at a New York gallery, she immediately called her husband and insisted he come see it. “You must be kidding,” he said, when he found out its size and price. Clarissa implored him, “Just come see it, I promise you’ll like it.” She declines to say what they paid for it, but Matta’s larger works generally sell in the high five to low six figures. Now, she says—laughing, as she so often does—“He just says, “No, I’m not going to come see it.”

Covering one whole side of the living room, the Matta acts as abstract wallpaper. On another wall hang shelves filled with pre-Columbian artifacts, and on yet another is a bright blue Lucio Fontana painting and a Gego sculpture called Tronco. By the doorway is Wifredo Lam’s Ogue Orisa, a piece Clarissa bought for $1.3 million, according to ArtNet, in a fiery phone-bidding war in 1997.

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That wasn’t the only time Clarissa has bought artwork over the phone. In 1995, on a flight to China, the Bronfmans were keenly aware of a Sotheby’s sale of IBM’s corporate collection taking place back in New York. Mid-flight, they grabbed the phone attached to the seat in front of them. “We couldn’t hear anything!” Clarissa reminisces. From the air, they bought Diego Rivera’s Dance in Tehuantepec for a reported $3.1 million, which now occupies a prominent position in their main hall. Later, they discovered it to be the very work for which Rivera had done the sketch that Edgar won from Barry Diller.

Across the hall is a monumental Jesus Rafael Soto work that Clarissa bought while lunching with friends at Geisha, a sleek socialite haven off Madison Avenue. “I was on the phone, whispering to the girl who bids for us, and she said, ‘Do you want it?’ And I said, ‘Yes!’” The next day, when she told a friend in the arts about her new Soto, he replied that it wasn’t selling until that night. As it turned out, Clarissa had bought the wrong Soto, one five times as big. “It wouldn’t fit in any of our houses and just barely fits here,” she recalls, giggling over the mix-up.
 
That was nothing compared to the time she tried to sneak home a gigantic painting of the Virgin of Guadeloupe. “I went to the sale, and [Edgar] asked me, ‘Did you buy anything?’ and I said no. I have so many saints and virgins that, when I went to see it at auction, I didn’t think he would notice.” But when the huge crate arrived at their house, she had to open it in front of him. She remembers his reaction well. “He said, ‘It’s bigger than me! I’ve allowed you small ones, but I can’t allow you this. I’m Jewish!” As in any good marriage, they compromised: Clarissa sent the painting to her mother and in return got to keep the valuable frame.  

Clarissa, now interested in contemporary Latin American art, has just installed an abstract painting by Venezuelan artist Arturo Herrera in the front hall. A board member at the Museum of Modern Art, she is also looking into video art and Chinese contemporary photography, but Latin American art remains her primary passion. “I can’t go back to Venezuela and feel fine” under Hugo Chavez, she laments. “More and more, I want to collect Latin American art, because I don’t have my country. So I surround myself with what is me.”