As early as the late 1960s, while paving his academic path as a professor of economics at Columbia University in New York, Michael Adler began collecting Israeli art. The initial motive was to collect Israeli art, which expresses the spirit of the country with its unique landscapes, while emphasizing the mental landscapes he sought to take with him to the United States. A turning point in his approach to Israeli art occurred in his encounter with the gallerist Bertha Urdang, thanks to whom he first became acquainted with post-minimalist and conceptual Israeli artists. In their work reverberated logical thinking and philosophical issues, which have always occupied Adler as a professor of economics. The ideological closeness and great interest he found in these works led to a fruitful dialogue, which has been going on for over thirty years between Adler and the artists. This discourse enabled Adler to preserve and even strengthen his connection not only to art, but also, in a sense, to Israel.