President-elect Donald Trump has said he will nominate financier John Phelan, a top art collector and a major museum patron, to run the U.S. Navy upon his return to the White House for his second term in office.

“It is my great honor to announce John Phelan as our next United States Secretary of the Navy! John will be a tremendous force for our Naval servicemembers and a steadfast leader in advancing my America First vision,” Trump said in a statement on his Truth Social platform on November 26. “He will put the business of the U.S. Navy above all else.”

Phelan heads the Palm Beach-based private investment firm Rugger Management. He has not served in the Navy or any other branch of the military.

He does, however, have an extensive art collection. Phelan and his wife Amy, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, started collecting art more than two decades ago and they were included on a list of the world’s top 200 art collectors published by Artnews earlier this year.

The Phelans are on the North American acquisitions council of the Tate museums and the contemporary art council of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. John also serves on the board of the Aspen Art Museum, where admission has been free for visitors since 2009 thanks to an endowment from him and his wife. From 2006 to 2019, the Phelans also hosted an annual wine tasting event called WineCrush to raise funds for the institution as part of its summer ArtCrush gala.

From left to right: John Phelan, artist Marilyn Minter, and the former Aspen Art Museum director Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson attend artCRUSH 2010. Photo: Clint Spaulding/ Patrick McMullan via Getty Images.

Fundraising is clearly a talent for Phelan, who reportedly raised $12 million for Trump’s campaign when he hosted a dinner at his $38 million Aspen home in August, where a portion of the living room floor is a mirrored surface by the artist Walead Beshty. “It is amazing to see people’s reactions at parties when they realize what you can see in the floor—naughty and nice!” Amy Phelan told The Art Newspaper in 2021.

Guests at this party were asked to donate anywhere from $25,000 to $500,000 per couple to the campaign for Trump, a convicted sex offender. According to a Guardian report, the now president-elect delivered a xenophobic speech at the event. Phelan also donated $834,600 to Trump’s joint fundraising committee in April, FEC filings show.

In their Park Avenue apartment in New York, the Phelans have photos by Helmut Newton, a video piece with 50 years of Playboy centerfolds, and a painting based on Amy Phelan’s own cheerleading trading card among their Picassos and Chagalls, as well as several works by Marilyn Minter also inspired by Amy Phelan.

The Phelan’s Aspen Residence on August 4, 2010 in Aspen, Co. Photo: Clint Spaulding/ Patrick McMullan via Getty Images.

“I think of them as having brave taste,” said former Sotheby’s executive Amy Cappellazzo in 2008. Their holdings also include works by Willem de Kooning, Jeff Koons, Andreas Gursky, Lisa Yuskavage, Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, and Jenny Holzer.

Phelan, if confirmed as the 79th Navy secretary by the U.S. Senate, would oversee more than 900,000 people and an annual budget of more than $210 billion. He would replace Carlos Del Toro, who had served in the Navy for over 20 years.

In his announcement, Trump touted Phelan’s success as a private investment manager and his MBA from the Harvard Business School, though he did not mention his lack of military service or experience. By law, the head of the Navy is required to be a civilian with at least five years removed from active military service.