ROBERT H. CHANEY (1958–2008)

Robert H. Chaney, a Houston businessman and art collector whose extensive holdings of contemporary Asian and British art were showcased at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, died Wednesday, reports the Houston Chronicle. “Red Hot: Asian Art Today from the Chaney Family Collection,” seen at the museum last year, was a display of trends in contemporary Asian art, with more than one hundred works, all created in the ten-year span before the exhibit. “End Game: British Contemporary Art from the Chaney Family Collection” followed this year, offering an overview of young British artists who transformed London’s avant-garde art scene from the 1990s to the present. “Robert Chaney always challenged us to regard the world afresh,” MFAH director Peter Marzio said in a statement. By trade an oilman and venture capitalist, Chaney began his serious collecting in the early 1990s. The process was a family affair, each object acquired only after consideration by Chaney, his wife, Jereann, and their daughter, Holland. Earlier this year, Art News included him in its list of the world’s two hundred top art collectors.