Hendeles has managed to pique the interest of the art world by collecting and showing works by such luminaries as British photographer Eadweard Muybridge and American sculptor Louise Bourgeois. “These works are sought after by any great institution in the world,” says Marcel Brisebois, director of the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art. “She has a great eye. When she buys something, we look at her and say, ‘Oh, why is she doing so?’” Her bold aesthetic vision led ARTnews, a respected U.S. journal, to twice include her in its list of “the art world’s 50 most influential people” in 1993 and 1995—the only Canadian and one of just a handful of women. “Every museum curator who is not asleep knows about her,” says Robert Storr, a curator at New York City’s renowned Museum of Modern Art. Storr adds that for exhibitions of videos, films, photography and installations, “there is absolutely no better place in the world” than Hendeles’s foundation.
