Philanthropists and patrons of art luminaries inc luding Warhol, Calder, Picasso, Johns, Liechtenstein, and Miro, Miles and Shirley Fiterman amassed a collection whose roots ran deeper than a passion for the visual arts. Known as much for their collection as for the relationships they maintained with the artists they collected, the dealers with whom they worked, and the museum directors and curators they held in high esteem, the Fitermans knew the value of giving back.
At the outset of his career in 1946, Minneapolis native Fiterman developed a small, local garage and lumber company to provide individual homebuyers the opportunity to personally build their own homes. In time, Miles Homes became a nationwide precut housing business. In 1958, following the diagnosis of the couple’s three-year-old daughter, Fiterman created and funded the National Foundation for Research in Ulcerative Colitis. To stimulate national interest and create a more facile network for shared information, he financed the publication of worldwide abstracts on ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, distributing them to physicians free of charge. He continued to support medical research with grants to the American Gastroenterological Association and an endowment to the Mayo Clinic.
The Fitermans also founded the Associates of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
According to an obituary in Gastroenterology News, Fiterman “also understood that medicine is an art as well as a science, and along with Shirley, gave many works of art to medical institutions. They knew that few things are spiritually more relaxing than great art.”
