For at least a decade, London has rivalled New York as the world's contemporary art capital. Yet who can name even half a dozen Englishmen building contemporary collections? In terms of fame, Iraqi-born Charles Saatchi leads the pack, but his stock changes so often that it lacks the flavour of an individual collection, built up steadily over the years. In terms of creating a lasting monument, Wilfrid Cass, founder of the Sussex sculpture park, is a key figure, and for sheer whirl and activity so is young Danish art advisor Nicolai Frahm. But for a living, evolving, personally driven collection, that of Manchester-based Frank Cohen - the only member of this quartet born in England - is the one to watch. He has been dubbed the "Saatchi of theNorth", but efforts to show his art have been fraught. A small first exhibition in London in 2004 was critically mauled ("moneybags art collector . . . bloody awful pile of 10th-rate tat"), and recent attempts to build a museum in Manchester have stalled.

When French collector François Pinault fell out with Paris over plans for his museum, he set himself up in Venice's Palazzo Grassi instead. But Cohen's Initial Access, a 10,000-sq-ft warehouse gallery on the outskirts of Wolverhampton, is local, populist, 21st-century post-industrial rather than 18th-century palazzo. Here contemporary art is in dialogue with everyday life, not the refinements of history. For Cohen's first offering in January, symbolically a design show - he made his fortune with a DIY chain - the Ikea-like milieu was appropriate. It is Time Differences, a significant exhibition of painting and sculpture from China and America opening next week, that puts Cohen's taste and guts on the line.