Elegant galleries dot Naples' Fifth Avenue South and Third Street South, displaying and selling some of the best-known artists in the world. Andy Warhols, Robert Rauschenbergs and Pablo Picassos sometimes seem almost as prevalent as fine restaurants and boutiques. Palatial estates and sleek penthouses in Bonita Springs, Naples and Sanibel and Captiva islands house Renoirs, Monets and other art worth millions of dollars.

Yet you won't find great art only in the Gulfshore's wealthiest homes and fine galleries. Some of the most interesting and eclectic collections are owned by Southwest Florida's curators. They make a living, after all, by mounting high-quality exhibitions that appeal to broad audiences. The art they pick for themselves shows just as much innovation, research and creativity.

Although they have the aesthetic and knowledge, curators aren't likely to have the financial assets of most private collectors, galleries and museums. Still, they manage to acquire art that sometimes is on a par with that of wealthier collectors. Here are three Gulfshore curators who have purchased high-caliber pieces that enrich their lives in ways that money can't always buy.

A FEEL FOR FLORIDA

Even Barbara Hill's laundry room reveals her life's passion. The small space is packed with art. Mostly works on paper, framed in metal or wood, the pieces line the room like one-of-a-kind wallpaper. They make for an eclectic mix of images that Hill, executive director of the von Liebig Art Center in Naples, looks at when she tosses her whites in the washer.

Among the works is a folk art-inspired piece, Scarecrow, by Jack Beverland. The scarecrow's head is a pumpkin. "It keeps the evil spirits away," Hill says with a smile, adding that she displays it more prominently during Halloween.

Hill converted her laundry room into a makeshift gallery because her downtown Naples condominium can hold only so much art. "It hampers my ability to purchase new work," Hill rue-fully admits. When space becomes too tight, she gives pieces to her children and mother. That's the price this former pottery and ceramics student pays for loving and living with art.

Hill developed her eye for art more than three decades ago, when she studied pottery and ceramics in Miami. As an art student and the mother of three children, Hill didn't have a generous acquisitions budget, but she did have connections with the city's rising artists. "I star-ted collecting primarily because I was an artist and I knew a lot of artists," Hill says. Because she was interested in ceramics, she followed the careers of artists who specialized in that area, sometimes trading her pieces for theirs. Hill still has those works, many of them architectural ceramics, as well as functional pieces she made into mugs, bowls and dinner plates during her student days. Whether she's mixing a salad or sipping coffee, she uses those items every day. They transport her back to the times when she created them-and her sense-memory response surfaces again when she gazes upon a work in her collection created by a friend. "I get a lot of pleasure using something that's unique," she says. "These have memory."

In 1976, when Hill was living on Sanibel, her collection took a turn. Artist Robert Rauschenberg's studio was an island away on Captiva, but an original Rauschenberg was light years beyond Hill's budget. But the Captiva artist's signed posters weren't.

As Hill built her collection, she also ex-panded her education. She enrolled in Edison Community College, seeking an associate's degree, and later received undergraduate and graduate degrees in fine art from the University of South Florida. She went on to teach at Edison, and the Fort Myers campus was a good place for her to see works by faculty and fellow students. A professor, Jeff Whipple, helped broaden her interests, and an untitled original painting of his-of a woman tripping on a rope-became one of the first originals Hill purchased. "I had graduated from the poster phase into the original- and limited-edition print phase," she says.

Travels also brought more depth to her collection. Visits to London's Tate Gallery and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M, with her former husband, John, and a later trip by herself to New York City's Museum of Modern Art cemented her affinity for contemporary art. Back home, however, Hill's collection kept its decidedly Florida-esque flavor-one that's influenced exhibitions she's curated for commercial galleries, museums and public art projects in Tampa, at Sarasota's Ringling Museum of Art and now at The von Liebig. The Naples center, for instance, has showcased Whipple's dreamily surreal paintings of flying hot dogs, coffee cups and people.

Hill's collection now stands at about 80 pieces, most of them created by Florida artists or artists with ties to the state-including Whipple, Rauschenberg, contemporary artist and Florida resident James Rosenquist, and Christo, with whom she worked on the "surrounded islands" project in Miami's Biscayne Bay. The collection also includes Andy Warhol's limited-edition print of Turtle Diary, from his Endangered Species series, which showcases a Florida loggerhead.

She's left almost no room at home untouched. "It's virtually everywhere," says Hill. "The only place I don't put artwork is in the bathroom."

Art of the Possible

Ron Bishop laughs when he's asked about his collection. He insists he really doesn't have one. As the director of the Gallery of Fine Art at Edison Community College in Fort Myers, his income doesn't allow for pricey purchases.

His collection, he says, is humble-some 30 to 40 paintings, drawings, small sculptures and other pieces.

The smaller collection has suited him well, he says, because his career has taken him from one city to another. "Not everything will fit in the back of a '63 Barracuda," says Bishop, who began collecting when he was a student in Nebraska. With little free cash, he started his collection by trading with instructors. Not all are willing to do that, he adds, because many are well-established artists.

Peter Hill, head of the painting program at the University of Nebraska, was one who did. An abstract painting by Hill hangs in Bishop's office. Not only is Bishop still enthusiastic about the work ("There aren't places in that painting where you don't get it, where the parts don't add up to the whole"), but he says the painting, like others in his collection, reminds him of his friendship with its creator.

Bishop, whose colorful abstracts have an other-world quality, also traded with classmates whose work he liked. "I place a high value on my work and my time," says Bishop, who's hung some of his abstracts in his office, "so I just don't trade it for pieces I don't like."

Though small, Bishop's collection has great personal importance for him. Etchings by Virginia artist and friend Karen Stinnett remind him of her. A painting by Tom Mills, an old friend from graduate school, examines different aspect of spatial links. "I see a relationship in all sides," Bishop says, looking at the painting. "That's my spiritual side, and that's what I'm interested in in artwork for myself."

Artful Lodgings

They're in her living room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms. She and her husband eat, sleep on, sit on and live with them.

Collecting and curating go hand in hand for Kate Kramer. Her job-Kramer is gallery director and an assistant professor at Florida Gulf Coast University-and personal life-she's married to furniture artist Christopher Poehlmann-cross both arenas. The couple's house in south Fort Myers is filled with pieces Poehlmann has made and furnishings they've picked up at yard sales over the years.

When Kramer mounts a show at the gallery, she's collecting works, in a way. She's looking for a theme or some other angle that requires a sample of artists' best efforts. "I guess curating really is some sort of an opportunity to do collections on a small scale," she says.

A collector of sorts, Kramer's mother, Punky, amassed East Lake furniture, and had a passion for clocks. "I grew up in a house where chimes were going off all the time," Kramer recalls. Her mother, now 76, also loves fabrics and textiles.

While her mother developed Kramer's appreciation for art, furniture and fine crafts, her collecting habit started in college, when she started combing garage sales, going out early in the morning and searching for great buys. Not only has the habit stuck, she says; it's become an obsession.

Some bargain hunters may not have realized that the five-dollar chair they bought was more than just a good deal. Kramer knew better, thanks to her art studies. The chairs, plates and other items she found were true works of art, she says. The first addition to her yard-sale collection was McCoy stoneware. Her earliest piece from that American manufacturer of pitchers, place settings and the like dates back to the 19th century. "After that, I graduated to Fiestaware," she says, adding that some of the pieces she bought for a few dollars can now run up to $500.

Kramer and Poehlmann, who have scoured yard sales together for 14 years, consider their avocation an intellectual pursuit because they know how to examine a piece and determine whether it's a discount store knock-off or a truly collectible object that somehow wound up in someone's den. Then comes the pure-adrenaline rush of unearthing a tremendous bargain.

That happened to Poehlmann when he paid $1.50 for a circa-1940s Warren McArthur chair worth between $1,500 and $2,000. Also trading their talents-Poehlmann swaps his works, Kramer her career advice and counsel-the couple has built an enclave of fine design that's become a part of their daily lives. They eat at and entertain around a 1950s Eero Saarinen tulip- and pedestal-based dining table. They sit on a 1950s Dan Johnson cast-aluminum chair. They read by George Nelson's 1950s bubble lamps.

There's only one drawback to their lives with art.

"The downside to collecting furniture is storage," Kramer says with a laugh.