Art Collector and Publisher Benedikt Taschen Lists Mid-Century Modern Beverly Hills Home for $25 M.

ARTnews Top 200 collectors Benedikt and Lauren Taschen have spent the past eight years restoring the Adelman Residence, a 5,000-square-foot mid-century modern home designed by architects Thornton Abell and O’Neil Ford in 1956. The Taschens bought the home in 2018 (it was listed for $12,750,000), and, over the years, have refurbished the tennis court, original to the property from when it was part of Charlie Chaplin’s estate; the pool, the gardens, and the guest house; as well as all the interior architectural details like the cork floors, sliding Shoji screens, and a small wood-paneled elevator. It’s just been listed by Carolwood Estates for $25 million.

Barnard Taschen founded Taschen Books in 1980. It is now one of the best-known publishers of coffee table-style art and design books, with the tag line “books for optimists.” As a collector, Taschen owns works by many artists of his own generation, among them Tom of Finland, Albert Oehlen, Jeff Koons, and Martin Kippenberger. The house’s listing photos, however, show several large colorful paintings (one, of a woman’s head in profile, in the entryway, a triptych hung above the headboard in a bedroom, and another large-scale painting of a striding figure in the living room) by Grace Weaver, an American artist in her ‘30s.

Taschen told the New York Times that others who bid on the property in 2018 intended to tear it down and rebuild. “All they loved was the beautiful site to build another spec monster,” he recounted in an email. Taschen ended up purchasing the home, which is across the street from the colonial revival estate he has lived in since 2017, from a family member of its original owners, Lucy and Isadore B. Adelman. “We wanted to preserve a piece of history in ground zero of the golden age of Hollywood,” Taschen told the Times.

Below are photos of the Taschens’ meticulously restored Beverly Hills home.