Leonard Riggio, the businessman behind Barnes & Noble who made major forays into the art world, purchasing key works of minimalist art and donating millions of dollars to the Dia Art Foundation, has died at the age of 83. According to a statement from his family, he had been battling Alzheimer’s disease.

Riggio was one of the rare group of collectors who could claim to have pioneered an entire industry and transformed at least one high-profile museum.

Although his art collection was less well known worldwide than his management of the Barnes & Noble bookstore chain, it was highly valued and closely watched – he and his wife Louise were in ARTnewsIt has made the list of the world’s 200 greatest collectors every year since 1999. And without the couple, the Dia Art Foundation, a New York-based organization credited with developing a canon of minimalist art, would not have been able to embark on a series of projects that have allowed it to expand enormously over the past two decades.

Dia honored Riggio on Tuesday by posting a quote from him on its social networks: “Then as now, Dia remains faithful to a single idea: every artist should imagine, to the greatest extent possible, the architecture, the environment and the context in which his works are viewed.”

The quote was paired with an image of Richard Serra’s “Torqued Ellipses,” a group of monumental steel sculptures that visitors to Dia:Beacon can walk into. They are among the biggest attractions at Dia:Beacon, the organization’s museum in upstate New York, and were made available to the foundation through a $30 million donation from Riggio that supported the acquisition of artwork.

Riggio, who was Dia’s biggest supporter for many years, served as the foundation’s chairman from 1998 to 2006 and helped lead it when Dia:Beacon opened in a former Nabisco factory. When he left amid a chaotic period for the foundation, he described his position as a sort of “full-time job.” He seemed barely aware that he was still chairman of Barnes & Noble, so important was his devotion to the arts foundation.

Leonard Riggio was born in New York in 1941. He spent most of his childhood in Brooklyn. After graduating from high school, he attended night classes at New York University. But instead of spending too much time studying, he decided to pursue a career in the school’s bookstore and initially worked as a warehouse worker.

He eventually dropped out of college and founded the Student Book Exchange in 1965, positioning it as a competitor to the NYU bookstore. Riggio’s store was characterized by its youthful spirit: he allowed students to print anti-war leaflets there. Gradually, his store gained followers and he expanded to several locations.

Then, in 1971, he bought Barnes & Noble’s only store in Manhattan and turned it into a veritable empire. Riggio remained at the helm of Barnes & Noble until 2019, when hedge fund Elliott Advisors acquired the company for $638 million.

At the same time, Riggio was building a significant art collection with his wife Louise, whom he married in the 1980s. After initially buying posters and prints, the couple began collecting more intensively in 1994, the year they acquired a painting by Alberto Giacometti. They soon expanded their interest to include other modernists, from Pablo Picasso to Piet Mondrian.

Everything changed in 1997, when Riggio visited Dias’s Chelsea space and was surprised by the Serra works on display. The couple installed Serra’s Sidewinder (1999), a 300-ton steel sculpture on her lawn. The work is so large that it was once visible on Google Earth.

In addition to magnificent sculptures by Isamu Noguchi, Willem de Kooning, Niki de Saint Phalle and Mark di Suvero, their collection also included high-quality works by Arte Povera artists, from Mario Merz to Pier Paolo Calzolari.

Many of these works of art were highly conceptual; few of them could be hung in the living room and admired by guests. But Riggio seemed willing to take a risk with this art.

“I prefer to buy art by feeling rather than seeing, and these artists have a certain effect on me,” said Riggio ARTnews in 2016. “They have a lot to do with other artists just because we are the same collectors. If it turns out that they knew each other, it was more by chance. We are not trying to invent a story, the story is the art itself.”