Meet the Art Advisor Shaping How Luxury Spaces Come Alive

For the world’s most discerning collectors and developers, Myrtha Herrera has become the name behind the art — and the experiences that surround it.

There is a certain kind of luxury that cannot be purchased off a wall. It cannot be catalogued, shipped, or installed in an afternoon. It is the kind that arrives when a collector sits down to a private dinner in their own home, across the table from Daniel Buren — one of the most celebrated conceptual artists of the twentieth century — and understands, perhaps for the first time, that their relationship with art has fundamentally changed.


This is the world Myrtha Herrera operates in. A graduate of Sotheby’s Institute of Art with a Master’s in Art Business, she has spent her career building something rare: an art advisory practice that moves fluidly between the grand ambitions of luxury real estate developers, the brand imperatives of five-star hospitality groups, and the deeply personal aspirations of the world’s most serious private collectors. As the founder of collēctum, she has quietly become one of the most sought-after art advisors working at the intersection of culture and luxury.

The Hospitality Standard


When Nobu Hotel Los Cabos sought to distinguish itself in one of the world’s most competitive luxury markets, they turned to collēctum to develop something far beyond a curated lobby wall. The result was a full artist-in-residence program, for which Herrera selected Evgen Čopi Gorišek — an artist whose practice brought a layered, site-responsive energy that became inseparable from the hotel’s identity. Guests didn’t simply encounter art during their stay. They witnessed it being made, by an artist chosen specifically for that place and that moment.

At AVA Resort, collēctum went on to curate and produce a gallery program of over 100 works by internationally acclaimed artists — a collection valued at over $500,000 that turned the property into a cultural destination in its own right.

Landmark Works, Lasting Identity

In luxury residential development, the stakes of an art decision are different — and in many ways, higher. A hotel collection can evolve. A landmark sculpture anchoring the entrance of a building becomes part of its permanent identity, its cultural fingerprint, visible to every resident, visitor, and passerby for decades to come.

When the developers of Cero5Cien — described as the most luxurious residential complex in its country — needed someone to define and place their signature monumental work, they appointed collēctum. For that commission, Herrera selected Alma Allen — who will represent the United States at the 2026 Venice Biennale, one of the most prestigious stages in contemporary art. The selection, made well before that announcement, reflects the kind of curatorial judgment that defines the difference between placing art and truly understanding it.
It reflects a broader shift now well underway among the most forward-thinking developers in the world. Art is no longer an afterthought addressed once the building is complete. It is a founding decision — one that shapes how a project is perceived, how it is valued, and how it endures.

The Private Client: Where It Gets Personal

It is in her work with private collectors that Herrera’s practice takes on its most intimate and most consequential dimension. For collēctum’s top-tier clients, the service extends far beyond acquisition advice. It encompasses the full arc of a collector’s life with art — from building a coherent, financially sound collection to creating the kinds of experiences around that collection that most people never imagined were possible.

That has meant organizing private dinners in collectors’ homes — from Manhattan to Mexico City — with artists of the stature of Daniel Buren, encounters that collapse the distance between patron and creator in ways that no gallery opening or auction preview ever could. These are not events staged for social media. They are carefully constructed experiences designed to deepen a collector’s relationship with the work on their walls and, in many cases, to forge lasting connections with artists that shape a collection for years to come.

It is a level of service that reflects Herrera’s core conviction: that collecting art, done properly, is not a transaction. It is a practice — one that demands knowledge, access, and a guide who understands both the market and the meaning behind it.

A Practice Built for the Full Spectrum
Her curatorial work has been presented at Sotheby’s Institute and The Blanc in New York City, as well as exhibitions in Mexico, London, and Paris. But credentials, in this world, only open doors.

From a monumental sculpture anchoring a landmark development — made by an artist now heading to Venice — to an artist residency redefining what a hotel can be, to a private dinner with one of the art world’s living legends unfolding in a collector’s own home: the through line is always the same. Herrera believes that the most meaningful thing art can do is change the way someone lives with it. And she is one of the few people genuinely equipped to make that happen.

Myrtha Herrera is the founder of collēctum, a New York–based art consultancy specializing in advisory services for collectors, architects, real estate developers, and hospitality groups.