BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO: The New York Times: LeWitt the Collector, Filling up a Warehouse: Thursday January 1, 2004

Sol LeWitt’s artworks are minimal and precise, but this art collection is vast and unruly.  He says he does not even know how many works he has, or what they are worth.
        
Mr. LeWitt, 75, started collecting stamps when he was 9 and later, as a soldier stationed in Japan during the Korean War, collected woodblock prints.  Since then he and his wife, Carol, have acquired nearly 9,000 works of art through purchases, in trades with other artists, or as gifts.  Most are kept in a warehouse in Chester, Conn., from which they are loaned to museums and galleries all over the world.  Works are now on loan to more than a dozen exhibitions in six countries.
        
“It never occurred tome to collect on this scale,” Mr. LeWitt said in the warehouse as he walked past rows of meal shelving cluttered with objects.  “But since we never get rid of anything, it just accumulated.”
Mr. LeWitt, a leader of the Conceptual Art movement, first traded artworks with other artists in the early 1960’s.  “They were mostly one-to-ones trades with whomever I knew,” he said, “and weren’t done for monetary value at all.  Besides, the works weren’t expensive back then.”
        
In this way he acquired works by Eva Hesse, On kawara, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Robert, Ryman and others.  Mr. LeWitt also began trading with art dealers.
        
“When I began showing in Germany, England, and Italy, some dealers were in bad financial shape.” He said.  “Instead of paying, they used to offer me the work of other artists in the gallery.  This way I got pieces by Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, Douglas Huelbler, John Baldessari, Hanne Darboven, Daniel Buren and many other artists not so well know now.