Mikhail Baryshnikov

It was in 1981 that ballet legend, 'Misha' Baryshnikov bought his beautiful nest endorsed by a close friend. The 19th century home was renovated and named as Red Barn and in 10 years, it had been expanded to twice its original size. In 2010, Misha put up the house for sale in the market through Ellis Sotheby's International Realty for $4 million. With the three children leaving home for studies and career, the nest seems to have been fully emptied now.

Location: The large and lovely house is located at Artists' Enclave in Snedden's Landing, Rockland County in New York.

Accommodation: The house has living space that expands to a whopping 5,800 square feet. This area has been well distributed into 5.5 bathrooms and 6 spacious bedrooms. It would have definitely served as a luxurious living pad for the dancer and his family.

Features: The best thing about this beautiful home is its proximity to the city and its proximity to the Hudson river as well. It offers sweeping views of the magnificent river and sitting out in the open is a great pleasure. Though the house was originally single storeyed, the dancer has added bedrooms and bathrooms on the upper floor as well. The kitchen is ultra modern and very large. In fact, one could use it as a dining room for a party too. There is a special garden room with large glass windows and it replaces the traditional garden. The whole house has a modern electrical and heating system. The Baryshnikovs are now giving up the home for a smaller pad in New York City.

Neighborhood: The Rockland County is studded with celebrities in spite of its loss of Misha. Alec Baldwin, Al Pacino, Madonna, Didi Conn, Barry Bostwick and Bill Murray are some of the names that have graced Rockland County.

It was in 1975 that Misha (Mikhail Baryshnikov) bought his first two artworks - a 1917 Jean Cocteau drawing and Christian Berard’s design for the ballet, Mozartiana. There has been no looking back after that as the world's foremost ballet dancer went about silently accumulating an interesting and impressive art collection of over 100 pieces. In four decades, the private collection grew with theatrical, humorous, non-conformist and contemporary art samples. Most of the paintings were picked and chosen by Misha himself and many of them are from the early 20th century. Realizing his interest in art, a few of his friends and well-wishers also gifted him pieces.

So expansive and intriguing is his collection that an exhibition was made of it at the famous ABA Gallery in New York. About a 100 pieces were exhibited though at one point in time his collection ranged between 400-500. He never set sights on the expensive ones by Cocteau or Bakst but picked small pieces like the sketch of Benois for a couple of hundred dollars. Its worth today is nearly 20 times. In fact, in 2011, View of St.Petersburg created by Petr Vereshchagin which belonged to the dancer was sold by Sotheby's for $746,500 in New York. However, the pieces in the exhibition were not for sale and Misha intends to hand them over to his foundation. The whole exhibition entitled, The Art I've Lived With is due for travel to Moscow to be displayed in 2013 at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.

The wonderful collection was made not through study and scholarship exhibited at auctions but through a tasteful and discerning eye as the dancer admits.