By Robin Pogrebin for The New York Times

Ms. Watts has covered the wall space of the TriBeCa home — much of it with work from fund-raising auctions for the New York Academy of Art, where she is a board member. Ms. Watts said she looks forward to those galas as opportunities to discover new artists and raise money for scholarships.

At those auctions — where she has been known to get into bidding wars — Ms. Watts has acquired work by Will Cotton, Donald Sultan, Hugo Guinness and Liz Markus, among others.