The bones are here. A mirrored closet reflecting a massive painting. A pleated window shade peeking out from behind a frame. Reminders that, before this place was a museum, it was a regular—albeit expansive—house tucked away in the North County neighborhood of Rancho Santa Fe.
Real estate moguls Matthew and Iris Strauss purchased the 6,000-square-foot dwelling, situated directly next door to their own art-filled private residence, in 1999. “We more or less took it down to the base, with an eye toward turning it into an art gallery,” Iris says. Ever since, it’s held the Strauss Family Foundation, a contemporary art collection that steadily expanded with the Strausses’ trips to Miami’s Art Basel, the Venice Biennale, and other renowned art fairs. Today, the collection is valued at approximately $20 million, according to the family.
Fiona Rae’s Cute Motion! So Lovely! (2005).
But, soon, all that art will move to a new home: In October 2023, the Strauss family donated the entire collection to UC San Diego. They also gave the foundation house, which will be sold to create an endowment fund for the art’s maintenance. UCSD, in turn, is building a museum as part of the incoming Triton Center, a new central campus hub that will also include an alumni building. Named The Strauss, the arts space is slated to open in fall 2026.
It’s a natural progression of the Strausses’ longtime vision. “Mom and Dad always felt it was very important that the art be seen by the public,” says the couple’s son, Steven Strauss.
The foundation offered 12 to 15 pre-booked tours a year. Matthew, who passed away in August 2024 at the age of 91, particularly enjoyed welcoming student visitors and often led tours himself. “He loved it when they would come in with their phones and then, after a few minutes, they would put their phone away, and they’d start looking at the art and they’d start asking questions,” Steven remembers.
The family has also been deeply involved with UCSD for years. After their two daughters passed away from cancer, Matthew and Iris became leaders at UC San Diego Health, donating significant funds to research a cancer vaccine and establishing the Iris and Matthew Strauss Center for Early Detection of Ovarian Cancer. Steven and his wife funded the new Steven Strauss and Lise Wilson Cardiomyopathy Center in 2021. However, they dreamed of doing more for the campus’s arts scene, as well.
“[Matthew] used to say, ‘Every great institution has a museum,’” Iris recalls. “‘You look at Yale, you look at Harvard, you look at Stanford—they all have an art museum. We should have one here [at UCSD], too.’”
The museum’s presence on campus will offer students increased opportunities to do what Matthew didn’t: get into art in their youth.
“My husband never really knew anything about art, and he was never that interested. He was too busy being a businessman,” Iris says of the early days of their marriage. “I was an art major in school, so I knew something. Once we got the house [in the 1980s], we started looking at the walls. We said, ‘We need art. It’s empty.’”
They began by hiring an art consultant, but within two months, Matthew’s curiosity had grown. The couple elected to handle acquisition themselves. “We decided we wanted art of our time,” Iris adds. They began attending art fairs and then became involved with the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla.
“Once we joined the museum, we really got going,” Iris says. “The director at that time was Hugh Davies, and he had arranged a trip for collectors to go to Documenta in Germany, which was and is one of the greatest art shows ever. We signed up—our kids were grown and married, our grandchildren in college, so we went and we made friends there.” Among them were Irwin Jacobs and his late wife Joan, who became Iris’ best friend. “We really saw art,” Iris continues. “Oh, boy, we saw great art, and that really was it.”
Matthew Strauss with his almanac
By 2009, ArtNews Magazine named the couple among the world’s top 200 collectors. Matthew eventually wrote a 600-page almanac documenting more than 860 major artists of the last 800 years. But he maintained an interest in up-and-coming, boundary-pushing creatives, as well.
“He wouldn’t just look for the most pleasing pieces, but pieces that he thought were unique, the best work of the artist, maybe challenging,” Steven says. When the Strausses began separating the foundation collection from their personal one, those edgier, younger works became the focus of the former.
The Strauss Museum
New acquisitions, commissions, and exhibitions at The Strauss museum will share that polestar. “It’s really where contemporary art will meet technology,” says Jess Berlanga Taylor, director and curator of UCSD’s Stuart Collection. She’s leading the creation of The Strauss. “We’re also asking ourselves what the future of art is through our programs. We’ll be presenting immersive environments. We’ll be working with augmented realities and VR and AI and everything that digital artists are doing nowadays.”
She wants the museum to be a “portal”—to a place both familiar and transformative. “Most museums are still based on the 18th-century tradition in which art is in one place, and life happens elsewhere. That is something that doesn’t work for our societies nowadays. So we’re really looking at creating a space where it’s truly social, and you’re surrounded by art,” Taylor says. “We’re hoping that, because of one of our exhibitions, you suddenly feel connected to something much bigger than yourself.”
For her part, Iris’ dream is to drive a new generation of art lovers. “I hope that [visiting The Strauss] enhances their way of thinking, or perhaps even their life, because art just does that for you,” she says. “It would be very empty to live without it.”
The foundation house—mostly devoid of furniture but nearly bursting at the seams with color and history—is proof.
