Tag: Art Collectors

How the Donum Estate Cultivated a World-Class Sculpture Garden

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At Donum Estate, art, wine, and land are conceived as a single living system shaped by stewardship, regeneration, and long-term vision. Photo Robert Berg | Courtesy Donum Estate

As California’s viticulture has matured—understood not merely as agricultural production but as a cultural, scientific and ecological practice—a generation of wineries in Sonoma and Napa began to reimagine the estate itself as a space where wine, hospitality and contemporary art could coexist, grounded in terroir-driven storytelling and aesthetic ambition. The Donum Estate was among the first to pioneer this convergence in a deeply intentional way, forging a sensory connection between land, wine and art.

The estate’s name—Donum, from the Latin for “gift”—reflects its ethos. Everything produced here is considered a gift of this extraordinarily fertile land that must be stewarded and protected. Its history traces back to Anne Moller-Racke, a German-born viticulturalist who came to California in 1981 and later led Buena Vista Winery, planting the estate’s original vines. When the family sold Buena Vista in 2001, they kept the Carneros vineyards and renamed the property the Donum Estate. In 2011, Danish entrepreneur Allan Warburg and his wife, Chinese-born art collector Mei Warburg, acquired the property and began transforming it into a site where contemporary sculpture and ecological stewardship would become inseparable from the wine experience.

While the estate’s viticulture has since earned acclaim—producing single-vineyard Pinot Noir and Chardonnay on over 200 hectares of regenerative organic land—what sets Donum apart is its world-class, open-air collection of monumental art. With more than 60 sculptures sited across its hills, it is now one of the largest accessible museum-grade private collections of outdoor sculpture in the world. These works are not static decor, but active participants in a living ecosystem, drawing on the land’s energy and shaping the visitor’s relationship to scale, time and movement.

That ethos of harmony extends beyond the vineyards. A regenerative organic-certified lavender field, olive grove, plum orchard and culinary garden compose a living laboratory of sensory and ecological exchange. Yet the art remains the emotional and spatial center of it all—quietly guiding the experience. What began as a vineyard has evolved into a rare cultural landscape, where sculpture and soil shape one another in real time. Donum is less a winery with art than an open-air museum embedded in the land, where every element—natural and made—serves the same purpose: to cultivate a deeper attunement to beauty.

A polyurethane fountain by Lynda Benglis. Photo Robert Berg | Courtesy Donum Estate

“It’s about the energy that emerges from the interplay between art and the land,” said Angelica de Vere Mabray, CEO of the Donum Estate, when Observer visited during FOG Design + Art. (Located just over an hour from San Francisco, the estate should be an essential stop for any art enthusiast visiting Fog City.) This year, for the first time, Donum officially partnered with the fair and SFAW, underscoring its commitment to supporting art and culture across the Bay Area.

De Vere Mabray welcomed us to the art-filled Donum Home, the estate’s hospitality center, which was redesigned and renovated by award-winning Danish architect David Thulstrup. Its light-filled interiors blend Scandinavian sensibilities with Eastern harmony, all rooted in California’s materials and natural beauty.

Greeting visitors at the entrance is a towering Yayoi Kusama Pumpkin. Inside, major works from the collection appear throughout the space: an expansive tapestry by El Anatsui flanks the wine display, while overhead, a floating “cloud ceiling” by Tomás Saraceno hovers beside Jeppe Hein’s colorfully playful balloons. A large canvas by Liu Xiaodong anchors a grouping of works by prominent Chinese artists from the post-Tiananmen generation, including Yue Minjun and Zhang Huan. In another room, a glass cylinder encases Ai Weiwei’s hand-painted Sunflower Seeds—originally created for his iconic Turbine Hall commission, in which he filled the space with more than 100 million individual porcelain seeds to draw attention to the artisanal labor behind mass production and the mythology of conformity in China.

Zhang Wang’s Artificial Rock. Chip Allen 2016

Beyond expansive glass doors, the estate’s lush greenery foregrounds California’s mountains and San Francisco Bay, in a landscape punctuated by monumental artworks. On the terrace, a pink-tinted polyurethane fountain by Lynda Benglis flows with shifting currents, its organic form constantly in motion. Farther down the path, a head by Jaume Plensa towers, while a more recent work by William Kentridge appears downhill in dialogue with Zhang Wang’s Artificial Rock No. 28.

Dated 2001, Zhang’s sculpture was the first installed at the Donum Estate. The artist used stainless steel to create a handmade, three-dimensional rubbing of natural Jiashan stone, embodying a tension between organic formations and human-made imitations. “That connection is really intentional. The ideas of healthy soils, regenerative agriculture, responsible stewardship and farming are core to our belief system. They’re deeply integrated into how we think about the art, the wine and everything else at Donum. All of it reinforces that bond between the land and the experience,” emphasized de Vere Mabray.

Allan and Mei Warburg now live full-time in Hong Kong, while maintaining homes in Beijing, Shanghai and San Francisco. Allan Warburg, born in Denmark, frequently traveled to Asia with his parents and studied Chinese in college before enrolling at Yunnan University. He began his career in the trading industry, ultimately settling in China, where he met Mei. The two shared a passion for both art and wine and began collecting early—particularly works by the emerging Chinese artists of the time. “When they purchased Donum, they brought that first work by Zhang Wang with them, without any concrete plan to build what would eventually become one of the world’s most significant contemporary sculpture collections,” de Vere Mabray said. “Everything else unfolded organically from there.”

The estate was originally founded in 2001 as a winery, with no plans for hosting visitors. It wasn’t until nearly a decade later, as artworks began to arrive, that the property began evolving in a new direction. The Warburgs started collecting large-scale sculpture in 2015, and soon after, they began intentionally dedicating works to the estate, collecting not just for themselves but for the land and its future. Still, it was only in 2019, with the arrival of de Vere Mabray as CEO, that art became strategically embedded in Donum’s identity. “We start thinking much more intentionally about programming and how people experience Donum not just through wine, but through the intersection of art, land and place,” de Vere Mabray explained. “At that point, the collection comprised around 40 works; today it has grown significantly, and continues to shape how the estate is experienced.”

Louise Bourgeois, Crouching Spider, 2003. Photo Robert Berg | Courtesy Donum Estate

Today, it’s home to nearly 60 artworks, with new additions installed at an irregular pace, depending on the artists’ schedules and production timelines. Nearly half the pieces are site-specific commissions by artists who’ve spent time on the property, engaging with its environment and responding to the land. The curatorial direction is guided not by an external consultant or brand identity, but by the Warburgs’ taste, affections and personal relationships with the artists.

Although they’ve kept a low profile and chosen not to brand the collection under their name, the Warburgs still make all key decisions. “In most cases, they’ve built real friendships with the artists, who are involved in choosing the precise location of each work,” de Vere Mabray said.

She gestures to a sculpture by William Kentridge as a clear example. “He came to Donum a few years ago with his wife while he was at Berkeley for a symposium. He walked the property, spent time here and chose this specific location for the work,” de Vere Mabray recounted. “That’s generally how it happens. When they acquire something, there’s a real conversation with the artist about where it belongs and where the energy is right.”

Before venturing deeper into the green hills of the estate, we stop at a pavilion dedicated to Louise Bourgeois’s iconic Crouching Spider. This particular work is one of the few the artist created using metal construction materials she gathered in New York before fusing and welding them by hand. Due to its sensitivity, the sculpture requires an indoor, climate-controlled environment for proper preservation. In the same room, her The Mirror presents a distorted reflective surface, seemingly devoured by the vital interplay of predator and prey, winner and victim—the very dynamics that shape every ecosystem.

In the Sensory Garden, Yang Bao’s site-specific installation reimagines land damaged by disease as a living soundscape shaped by wind, humidity and movement. Photo Robert Berg | Courtesy Donum Estate

Just outside, Mikado Tree by Pascale Marthine Tayou rises from the landscape. Another signature site on the property is the Vertical Panorama Pavilion, conceived by Olafur Eliasson’s studio in collaboration with architect Sebastian Behmann. An immersive architectural and emotional experience, the rainbow-hued structure functions as a multisensory instrument—inviting visitors to reconnect with nature and recalibrate to its rhythms. Its conical canopy acts as a kind of calendar, centered on a north-facing oculus and glazed with 832 laminated glass panels in varying hues. Each panel corresponds to data gathered at the estate by Eliasson’s design studio, representing annual averages of solar radiation, wind intensity, temperature and humidity.

“His studio flew from Berlin to install it. A concrete pad was poured here; the work was fabricated and assembled in Berlin, then brought to Donum and reconstructed on site,” de Vere Mabray shared. “Olafur was standing right here with Sebastian Berman, and he pointed out that when you stand here, you’re shoulder-width apart, fully grounded—literally planted in the earth. You have a 360-degree view, and while you’re standing here, you can smell the soil, hear the grasses moving, and hear the birds. It’s deeply immersive and completely rooted in this place.”

Doug Aitken’s Sonic Mountain (Sonoma) transforms the Carneros breeze into a resonant instrument. Photo Robert Berg | Courtesy Donum Estate

Indeed, much of the art is organically and symbiotically rooted within the land. A particularly moving example is the estate’s Sensory Garden, which has been completely reimagined through Yang Bao’s immersive multisensory installation HYPERSPACE. Designed to blend seamlessly with the natural environment, the work responds to and converses with its surroundings: encircling a central pyramid, nine sculptural elements generate a spatial soundscape—a site-specific composition by Bao that shifts with wind, temperature and humidity.

Donum grows three lavender varietals, and each summer, an entire hillside blooms into an ocean of purple. Originally, the estate’s lavender was planted on the very site where Bao’s installation now stands. But repeated failures led the Donum team to consult botanists who diagnosed Phytophthora—a soil-borne pathogen that attacks lavender roots coping with poor drainage. Instead of fighting the land, the team relocated the lavender to higher ground, where it now thrives. The cleared site became the foundation Bao—who is both a chemist and a composer—used to reimagine the terrain, helping it heal through art.

There’s a spiritual dimension running through many of the artists’ installations at Donum, according to de Vere Mabray. One such work is Doug AItken’s Sonic Mountain (Sonoma), located in the Eucalyptus Grove. Measuring 45 feet in diameter and composed of 365 chimes—one for each day of the year—the sculpture is a living instrument activated by the Carneros breeze, one of Donum’s most persistent natural forces. While Aitken has engaged environmental themes in recent projects—most notably in his 2025 exhibition at Regen Projects—this installation marks a subtle and unexpected shift. Rather than addressing ecological urgency through overt imagery or a conceptual framework rooted in institutional critique, the artist operates here in a more spiritual register, privileging sensation and attunement.

Anselm Kiefer, Mohn und Gedächtnis, 2017. Photo Robert Berg | Courtesy Donum Estate

The land speaks to the art just as the art speaks to the land—there’s a clear dialogue between the two. “It’s incredibly powerful, De Vere Mabray said. “That’s really what we hope people take away: an understanding of that possible exchange of energy between art and landscape.” Seen in person, sculptures feel embedded in their environment, not simply installed on it. Rather than functioning as a curated series of standalone works, the collection operates as part of a larger, site-specific system in which form, material and placement respond directly to the terrain.

This sense of integration runs throughout the estate. Sculptures are situated with intention—some echoing the contours of the land, others drawing attention to its shifts in light, texture or scale. The same attention applied to cultivating Pinot Noir and Chardonnay is visible in how artworks are commissioned and positioned. The result is not just aesthetic harmony, but a layered visitor experience that bridges visual art, agriculture and landscape. Here, art doesn’t compete with the landscape, and the landscape doesn’t merely serve as a backdrop. Each reinforces the other, creating a rhythm of encounter that feels designed to sharpen awareness—not just of the estate, but of the viewer’s own place within it.

Ai Weiwei, Circle of Animals Zodiac Heads, 2011. Photo Bob Berg | Courtesy Donum Estate

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Elisa Carollo

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February 8, 2026
Four Trends in Art Buying That Dominated 2025

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David Hockney, The Poet, from The Blue Guitar, 1976-77. Courtesy of Adam Baumgold Gallery

Auction results are usually the only public data available for reading the art market, even though they reflect only the secondary sphere. Art fair sales reports can hint at how the primary market is behaving and what collectors are circling, but even those numbers are unstable, shaped by discounts, negotiations and the many variables that can shift between an invoice being issued and a wire arriving. Artsy, widely regarded as the largest online marketplace for art, recently released its first Buyer Trends Report based on the searches and primary-market transactions on its platform, offering a clearer picture of what collectors were buying in 2025.

“This report reinforces the patterns we identified in Artsy’s Art Market Trends 2025: collectors are becoming more selective, and that discipline is directing demand toward the primary market—especially mid-tier and emerging artists,” Artsy CEO Jeffrey Yin told Observer, noting that works priced under $10,000 are benefiting as buyers look for strong entry points that do not rely on speculation. “Even as the top end recalibrates, the fundamentals remain healthy. People are acquiring art they genuinely want to live with, at price points that feel responsible in today’s market.”

Trend 1: Smaller paintings at smaller prices

Small paintings have dominated recent gallery shows and fairs, particularly on the emerging side. Pocket-sized works encourage a more intimate and emotional relationship with the subject, but they are also easier to live with—lighter to ship, simpler to frame and far less punishing when it comes to storage or relocation. In cities like New York and London, where aggressive real estate markets make long-term leases a luxury, collectors are increasingly opting for art that can move with them.

Artsy’s users in 2025 were actively seeking art on a micro scale, with searches for “micro,” “mini” and “small” rising 40 percent, 47 percent and 49 percent. Forty percent of all purchases on the platform were for small works, and acquisitions tagged as “miniature and small-scale paintings” increased 66 percent year over year.

Installation view: Olivia Jia’s “Mirror stage” at Margot Samel in the spring of 2025. © Matthew Sherman 2025

These numbers may be predictable for an online marketplace, where buyers tend to trust digital transactions for lower price tiers rather than multimillion-dollar blue-chip masterpieces that require in-person due diligence. Still, the pattern aligns with the 2025 Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report, which noted that while the highest-end segment contracted sharply (sales above $10 million fell steeply in both number and total value), works priced below $50,000 accounted for roughly 85 percent of dealer transactions in 2024. Smaller galleries—those with under $250,000 in annual turnover—reported a 17 percent increase in sales. The report also confirmed steady growth in the sub-$5,000 range, mirroring Artprice’s recent data showing a rise in transactions under $10,000. Hiscox’s 2024 Online Art Trade Report found that 60 percent of online buyers purchased works under $5,000, with the fastest-growing bracket under $1,000. At the fair level—from NADA Miami and Untitled Art, which just closed, to Independent New York and Future Fair—small-format works were often among the first to sell out, frequently within VIP day, as both younger and seasoned collectors favored accessible entry points that fit urban apartments.

The design world is echoing the same preference. Artsy identified the rise of “gallery wall” and salon-style décor as a key trend, with interiors favoring densely hung arrangements of small pieces over single statement works. Publications from Elle Decor to The New York Times have likewise pointed to small-format art as the next major wave in collecting—easier to buy, easier to place and uncannily suited to the economic and spatial realities of 2025.

As collectors lean toward more affordable, manageable formats, editions and drawings are also gaining popularity, particularly for those who want to access established and blue-chip names otherwise out of reach. Artsy’s report dedicates a spotlight to David Hockney, who, after a few landmark years of museum shows, saw a spike in demand not only for paintings but also for prints available at more accessible price points. Searches for his name were up 46 percent on Artsy in 2025, making him the third most searched artist on the platform, with strong demand for his more “popular-priced” etchings.

Trend 2: Blue’s growing appeal

In a time of uncertainty and global turmoil, collectors have been turning toward the calming psychological pull of blue. Searches for “blue” on Artsy were up 20 percent year over year, with a particular preference for cobalt, a deep, vivid shade. Searches for “cobalt” rose 131 percent year over year, while purchases tagged “bright and vivid colors” increased 22 percent.

Yves Klein, California (IKB 71), 1961. Sold for €18.4 million ($21.4 million). Christie’s

As water becomes more precious and record-hot summers force us to reckon with its growing scarcity, blue has gained traction for its association with water. Works depicting swimming pools, waves and open seas have seen growing interest, with searches for “ocean,” “sea” and “water” rising by 33 percent, 28 percent and 24 percent, respectively. This trend has been visible at fairs over the past few years and in the auction market—most notably with Yves Klein’s California (IKB 71) (1961), a monumental museum-grade masterpiece that sold for €18.37 million ($21.34 million) at Christie’s Paris in October.

But the blue trend extends well beyond the art world. Pantone’s Spring 2025 palette featured multiple saturated blues, with Strong Blue among its most circulated seasonal shades. Vogue declared cobalt the “new it-color,” as designers Tommy Hilfiger and Loewe leaned into deep blues in their spring/summer 2025 runway shows. Miu Miu, Balenciaga and Ferragamo pushed electric and ultramarine blues in recent campaigns, while beauty and consumer culture followed suit: Glossier and Rare Beauty launched cobalt liners, Dyson released cobalt-violet appliances that became TikTok fixtures and Apple’s deep-blue iPhone finish emerged as the most ordered shade of its cycle.

Trend 3: A return to nature

This widespread desire to disconnect and return to the essence has also fueled a renewed longing for nature—something many rediscovered during the pandemic. This “bucolic escapism,” a contemporary take on the idyll, has taken hold in gallery shows and fair presentations through dreamy landscapes, rolling hillsides, lush gardens and flower compositions, as well as scenes of horses.

Art history offers precedent: renewed fascination with pastoral imagery tends to surface during moments of political fatigue or cultural volatility. In Ancient Rome, pastoral ideals emerged amid expansion, civil war and social anxiety, as poets and painters projected fantasies of rustic simplicity—Virgil’s Arcadia being the archetype. After the turmoil of the Napoleonic era, European painters embraced a neoclassical pastoral vocabulary as an antidote to upheaval and imperial overreach. The pastoral has long served as a stabilizing fiction—a world governed by harmony rather than conflict, by timeless nature rather than chaotic politics. Today’s appetite for harmonious landscapes, garden scenes and atmospheric horizons reflects similar pressures: climate dread, digital overload and geopolitical tension.

Caleb Hahne Quintana, A Flicker in the Ancient Rhythm (detail), 2025. Flashe and drybrush on linen, 74 x 54 in. Courtesy the artist and Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York. Photo by Shark Senesac

On Artsy, purchases of works tagged “landscapes and waterscapes” were up 35 percent year over year, “flora” up 44 percent and “earth tones” up 29 percent. Searches for related topics also accelerated: “picnic” rose 208 percent, “outdoors” 80 percent, “nature” 30 percent and “landscapes” 19 percent.

Once again, the trend extends beyond the art world, with organic, nature-inspired shapes, earth tones and natural light dominating collectible design and interiors—fueling continued momentum for the Lalannes—and echoing lifestyle culture more broadly. Biophilic design, from indoor gardens to moss-green upholstery and stone surfaces, has become a recurring feature in architecture and retail, while fashion and wellness brands lean into materials and palettes that promise grounding and retreat in an increasingly unstable, urbanized world. Pinterest’s 2025 summer trend report highlighted a sharp rise in nature-oriented searches tied to the “digital detox” narrative. Airbnb reported a 100 percent increase in searches for countryside stays and a 50 percent rise for national park stays, with Gen Z driving a 26 percent surge in fall travel searches—Vermont ranked as a top foliage destination. TripAdvisor and other booking data indicate that smaller, nature-adjacent cities are outperforming major metropolitan destinations, and the U.S. National Park System logged roughly 332 million visits in 2024, confirming that nature-based travel and outdoor engagement have become defining trends of 2025.

Trend 4: The return of domestic tableus

With the pandemic, for better or worse, people rediscovered the pleasures of staying home, reviving interest in domestic rituals such as cooking and shared meals. Unsurprisingly, the final key trend Artsy identified is the rising popularity of still lifes that depict this comforting domesticity, along with scenes of people eating together. Purchases of works tagged “food” were up 61 percent year over year, while searches for “dinner” and “food” each rose 44 percent, “dining” 38 percent, “meal” 28 percent and “table” 18 percent.

Wayne Thiebaud, Candy Counter, 1969. 120.7 x 91.8 cm., from a private collection. © Wayne Thiebaud VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025

Once again, the trend extends across lifestyle and communication. Etsy reported that searches for “dining ware” and “supper club,” driven by table-setting categories, surged by 1,000 percent. Social platforms are flooded with cooking tutorials, dinner-party events and images of dining—often at home. On TikTok, “dinner parties” content views were up 70 percent year over year and #CookingTok remained one of the most active tags, while on Instagram, posts tagged #tablescape increased over 35 percent. On YouTube, cooking videos saw a 25 percent increase in watch time, and Eventbrite reported a 45 percent rise in cooking-class bookings in 2024-2025. As eating out becomes more expensive and people feel more disconnected and alienated, the rediscovery of cooking and sharing food reflects a contemporary nostalgia as much as a desire to reconnect with the essence—what truly nourishes body and soul.

Now, if we think of art as both symptom and palliative, these buying patterns begin to read as something larger than market behavior. They reveal a broader societal undercurrent—a map of what people are seeking, avoiding or trying to soothe. In this sense, what collectors gravitate toward becomes a quiet proxy for the contemporary condition, a way of understanding not only what is selling but what people feel they need.

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Elisa Carollo

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December 26, 2025
Why Some Collectors Sell Their Artworks Through Trusts

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A charitable remainder unitrust provides art collectors looking to sell with a stream of income and a smaller tax burden than they would face if they sold a work outright. Observer Labs

For all the good that a fine art piece may do for our spirits and souls, it remains a tangible object that costs money to buy and produces no income while it is owned. Artworks can be sold, but the former owner must then pay hefty capital gains taxes—28 percent to the IRS, plus 12 percent capital gains tax for New York State residents, plus a 3.8 percent federal surcharge for high-income individuals and couples, less the state income tax deduction on a taxpayer’s federal return, for a net combined tax rate of roughly 41 percent. One way a growing number of art and collectibles owners have found to earn income from their art while deferring capital gains taxes is through charitable remainder unitrusts.

Called, somewhat inelegantly, a CRUT, a charitable remainder unitrust allows collectors to transfer tangible objects such as art to a trust and authorize a trustee to sell the artwork when the market appears to be at a high point. The proceeds of the sale are tax-deferred, and the money can be reinvested to grow over time within the trust. If Collector X owns a $1 million painting and sells it outright, that person will pay the 41 percent tax and be left with $590,000. If, however, Collector X places the painting in a CRUT and then sells it, that person will have the full $1 million working for him and will pay capital gains on a deferred basis.

Once a sale occurs, a portion of the proceeds—ranging from five to 50 percent but typically 5-8 percent—will be distributed annually to the beneficiaries, usually the donor and their spouse. Although some CRUTs are designed to last a specified number of years, most charitable remainder unitrusts end at the death of the last individual beneficiary, and the remaining funds become gifts to designated charities.

“This is a tax deferral strategy,” Lawton Leung, a trust and estates partner in the law firm Withers, told Observer. The charitable trust is considered a tax-exempt entity. “Let’s say you’re funding that CRUT with artwork, whatever type of appreciated property, the trust can sell it without a tax hit. The tax would apply when there’s a distribution of the annuity or the unitrust payment. So then the donor or the grantor of the trust will have to pay taxes on that sliver—what he or she gets from the trust every year. The payments from the trust may be made quarterly, annually, biannually or monthly. It depends on the type of frequency you want, but at least once a year.”

The trust functions much like a 401(k) or IRA, as the assets can be reinvested and grow on a tax-deferred basis. “We particularly like to use charitable remainder trusts when there’s an opportunity to defer a large capital gain,” Leung said.

He noted that CRUTs offer collectors a way to take advantage of today’s art prices in a tax-efficient manner, generate income for retirement and satisfy philanthropic objectives. “The charity has to receive at least a 10 percent actuarial value at the time of setting up the trust. The amount that goes to charity at the end of the term could vary. There is some unpredictability to what the charity actually gets, but at least at the start of the trust, it’s intended that the charity would receive at least 10 percent of what was put in.”

Collectors can reduce their capital gains and estate taxes, but it isn’t entirely win-win. Once they place works of art in a CRUT, they cannot keep them in their homes or offices—the rules governing remainder trusts are similar to those for individuals setting up private foundations—so most keep the art elsewhere. That may be at a bank, a law firm or an art gallery willing to hold it; many collectors choose fine art storage facilities. Once an artwork has been donated to the charitable remainder trust, it stays there; the collector cannot change his mind and take it back.

Charitable remainder trusts are typically not created in isolation but rather as part of a broader estate planning strategy for individuals with a range of valuable assets. Still, Leung said, the typical cost of setting up a CRUT is $10,000. The first step is for the donor to transfer art or other personal assets irrevocably to the trustee, usually a lawyer or banker. An IRS actuarial table calculates, based on the age of the beneficiaries, the percentage payout rate and an interest rate, both the amount the beneficiaries are expected to receive over the lifetime of the CRUT and the amount that will go to one or more designated charities. The donor then deducts the calculated percentage gift to the charities at the time the trust is created, based on the original cost of the objects rather than their current fair market value. That deduction may be spread out over five years. For example, if the IRS actuarial table indicates that 70 percent of the trust’s assets will go to the beneficiaries and the remaining 30 percent to a charity, the donor would be entitled to deduct 30 percent of the cost of the assets. A painting purchased for $100,000 and transferred to a CRUT would entitle the donor to a $30,000 deduction.

Every year after the trustee sells the art, the individual beneficiaries will typically receive a fixed percentage of the annual value of the trust assets. If a painting in a CRUT generates $1,000,000 in net proceeds and the payout percentage is set at five percent, the beneficiary will receive $50,000 in the first year of the trust. These distributions, known as unitrust payments, are taxable to the beneficiary in the year they are made, based on the beneficiary’s overall income and the manner in which trust income has been invested. Meanwhile, assets remaining in the CRUT continue to earn income and realize capital gains without immediate tax cost to the trust or the beneficiary. As a result, five percent annual unitrust payments may grow over time as trust assets appreciate on a tax-deferred basis. The collector receives an upfront tax deduction and pays taxes as they receive annuity payments.

There is more than one type of charitable remainder trust. A charitable remainder annuity trust provides the collector with a predetermined payment each year, while a unitrust may pay out varying amounts annually depending on the trust’s performance.

Frequently, those considering a CRUT are planning for retirement, a period in life when they want to maximize income and minimize costs. Long-time art collectors may hold highly appreciated assets that carry high costs for storage, security and insurance and would generate large capital gains taxes if sold. People in that situation often want to simplify their lives by shedding some of their art assets, but they prefer not to incur a large tax bill in the process. A charitable remainder unitrust provides them with a stream of income and a smaller tax burden than they would face if they sold the assets outright, preserving more of their money for one or more charities of their choice.

While trust assets must go to charity, there is no requirement that the charity be designated when the trust is created. People change their minds about which charities they want to support, and that’s fine. The trustee may also name the charity.

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Daniel Grant

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November 27, 2025
The Top Collections (and Their Top Lots) Headlining the $1.6 Billion November Sales

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The collection of Robert F. Weis and Patricia G. Ross Weis has an estimate in excess of $180 million. Christie’s

The November marquee sales in New York are among the most anticipated events on the global art calendar and the final litmus test of the market’s health after the London and Paris fairs and auctions. Leading the $1.6 billion New York auction week this November is a concentration of high-end, big-name collections, as single-owner sales have become an increasingly important tool for auction houses to secure major consignments and build momentum around a notable name and provenance. “A well-known individual definitely drives interest,” Elizabeth Siegel, vice president and head of private and iconic collections at Christie’s, told Observer.

Over the past decade these types of sales have accounted for 15.6 percent of total value, according to ArtTactic, reaching a peak of 31.3 percent in 2022 with the Paul G. Allen Collection. In the first 10 months of 2025 they continued to outperform with white gloves and records, reaching 18.5 percent of global auction value. In the final week of November in New York alone, single-owner sales are estimated at $706.8 million of total auction value. “A single-owner sale totally elevates prices. It gives them a real boost,” Lisa Dennison, chairman of Sotheby’s Americas, confirmed.

As New York’s fall auctions approach, here is a breakdown of the most anticipated collections set to appear as single-owner sales or within the marquee offerings, along with the top lots that have made headlines in the months leading up to this pivotal week for the art market.

The Leonard A. Lauder Collection at Sotheby’s

Gustav Klimt, Porträt der Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer), 1914-16. Estimate in excess of $150 million. Courtesy of Sotheby’s

The $400 million Leonard A. Lauder: Collector sale on November 18 is one of the most anticipated auctions of the season, with Sotheby’s presenting a 24-lot evening sale at its new Breuer Building headquarters. Following Lauder’s passing last June, both Christie’s and Sotheby’s reportedly competed to secure what is considered one of the year’s most important consignments. Sotheby’s ultimately won the mandate, securing 55 masterworks from one of America’s great collectors and philanthropists, longtime Whitney patron Leonard A. Lauder, which will be split between the dedicated evening sale and a day session the following morning.

The undisputed star of the sale is Gustav Klimt’s Porträt der Elisabeth Lederer, estimated in excess of $150 million and poised to surpass the artist’s current auction record of $108.8 million (£85.3 million), also set at Sotheby’s with Dame mit Fächer (Lady with Fan) in London in 2023. Executed between 1914 and 1916, the portrait is among Klimt’s most refined full-length depictions, portraying the young Elisabeth Lederer, daughter of two of his greatest patrons. It epitomizes Vienna’s Golden Age, a moment when youth, beauty, color and ornamental splendor merged into a vision of pure elegance, while also revealing the influence of fin-de-siècle exoticism. The composition’s flattened perspective and sinuous lines echo Japonaiserie and Chinoiserie, visible in the Asian-inspired motifs floating around Lederer’s Poiret-style gown, a nod to Klimt’s fascination with Chinese and Japanese art and textiles. Confiscated by the Zentralstelle für Denkmalschutz in 1939 and restituted to the Lederer heirs in 1946, the painting was later acquired from the family by Serge Sabarsky, an early advocate of German and Austrian modernism in the United States, before entering Lauder’s collection in the mid-1980s.

Other exceptional Klimts in the sale are Blumenwiese (Blooming Meadow) (1908), an exquisite example of the artist’s floral-period landscapes with an estimate in excess of $80 million, and Waldhag bei Unterach am Attersee (Forest Slope in Unterach on the Attersee) (1916), a depiction of an undisturbed lakeside idyll that reveals Klimt’s growing affinity with Van Gogh’s expressive brushwork, estimated in excess of $70 million. The number and high-quality works by artists from the Vienna Secession in the collection can be attributed to Leonard A. Lauder’s connection with his brother Ronald S. Lauder, one of the most notable collectors of the movement and co-founder and president of the Neue Galerie in New York. Both were sons of Estée and Joseph Lauder, founders of The Estée Lauder Companies.

Additional highlights include an emotionally charged, psychologically complex Edvard Munch, Sankthansnatt (Johannisnacht) (Midsummer Night) (1901-03), estimated at $20 million, six bronzes by Henri Matisse expected to realize a combined $30 million and an immaculate graphite grid by Agnes Martin, The Garden, exemplifying her mastery of geometric precision and meditative restraint.

The Collection of Robert F. and Patricia G. Ross Weis at Christie’s

Rothko’s No. 31 (Yellow Stripe), 1958. Estimate on request, in the region of $50 million.

Over more than 50 years, Patricia G. Ross Weis and Robert F. Weis assembled a collection that reflected not only the evolution of 20th-century art between Paris and New York but also the life journey they shared. The 18-lot single-owner Collection of Robert F. and Patricia G. Ross Weis sale on November 17 is expected to generate between $92.35 million and $136.7 million, accounting for more than half of the collection’s total estimated value of $180 million, which includes another 80 works that will be distributed across additional auctions and categories.

The top lot is a vibrant yellow-and-orange Mark Rothko painted in 1958, the same year the artist completed his monumental murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan’s Seagram Building. Acquired by the couple from PaceWildenstein in 1995, the work boasts an extensive exhibition history, including its inclusion in the important AbEx show the Beyeler Foundation staged in 1989. Estimated at around $50 million and backed by a third-party guarantee, the canvas stands as one of Rothko’s most powerful expressions of American abstraction, its layered chromatic fields pulsing with contained, tormented energy and sublime atmospheric depth.

Another star lot in the collection is Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red and Blue (estimate: $20-30 million), signed and dated “PM 39-41.” This rare-to-auction painting belongs to the artist’s transatlantic period, as Mondrian began it in Europe and completed it in New York between 1939 and 1941. Its distinguished exhibition history includes “Mondrian: Nature to Abstraction” at the Tate in 1997. The work exemplifies Mondrian’s rigorous balance of line, color and luminous white ground, an essential yet conceptually intricate dialogue at the heart of his practice.

Other anticipated works include an early Fauvist landscape by Georges Braque, Henri Matisse’s lyrical Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre) from his Nice period (estimate: $15-25 million), and Pablo Picasso’s La Lecture (Marie-Thérèse), a portrait of his muse estimated in the region of $40 million. Another exemplary work, one that justifies the sale title “A Tale Between Two Cities,” is the bold gestural abyssal composition Pierre Soulages painted in Peinture 161 x 200 cm, 14 novembre 1958, offered at $5-7 million, which resonates with the essential black marks on a white ground in Franz Kline’s Placidia from 1961 (estimate: $10-15 million).

Robert F. Weis made his fortune as chairman of Weis Markets Inc., a family-run food company founded in 1912 in rural Pennsylvania, where the couple lived. A lifelong learner and avid reader, he developed a deep appreciation for art. Patricia Weis, born in New York City, shared his passion for art, architecture and design, an interest first sparked by an uncle in the fashion industry. She began collecting after meeting Lucie Rie and Hans Coper on a trip to London. Together, the pair became prominent philanthropists supporting educational, cultural, civic and medical institutions: Patricia served on the boards of Bard College and Franklin & Marshall College, while Robert was a Sterling Fellow at Yale University and sat on its Committee on Buildings and Grounds. They also championed Jewish causes and supported the Lown Cardiovascular Research Foundation, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the Metropolitan Opera.

The Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection at Sotheby’s

A $40 million Vincent van Gogh, Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes), leads this Sotheby’s sale. Photo: Michael Tropea | Courtesy of Sotheby’s

The other major consignment Sotheby’s has secured for November is the Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection, which is expected to generate a total in excess of $120 million. Known for founding the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1979—often called the “Nobel of architecture”—the Chicago-based couple extended their devotion to creative excellence beyond the built environment, assembling a collection that reflects the breadth and rigor of their cultural philanthropy.

Headlining the November 20 Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection sale, which immediately precedes Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction at 7:30 p.m., is Vincent van Gogh’s Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes) (1887), a radiant still life from the artist’s Paris period in which a stack of yellow-bound books becomes a portrait of his voracious intellect. Estimated at $40 million, the painting was acquired by the Pritzkers in 1994 through Richard L. Feigen & Co. and boasts an extensive literature and exhibition history spanning major institutions across Europe and the United States, including the show “Van Gogh à Paris” at the Musée d’Orsay (1988), “Vincent van Gogh Paintings” at the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam (1990), and “Vincent van Gogh and the Modern Movement, 1890-1914” at Museum Folkwang, Essen, and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (1990-91). The work last appeared publicly in “Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South” at the Art Institute of Chicago (2001-02), “The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters” at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2010), and “Van Gogh’s Bedrooms” at the Art Institute of Chicago (2016). The preparatory painting for this canvas is held in the Van Gogh Museum’s permanent collection.

Comparing the present work to Piles of French Novels in the Van Gogh Museum, scholars have described it as particularly revealing of the artist’s stylistic transition. If the earlier study, flatter in tone and more monochromatic, reflects his fascination with Japanese prints through its block-like composition and restrained palette, the painting in the Pritzker Collection reintroduces depth and vitality through rhythmic dashes and loose strokes of the Neo-Impressionist style Van Gogh adopted in his final Paris months.

Among the other highlights of the sale are Henri Matisse’s sensuous triptych Léda et le cygne (1944-46), estimated at $7-10 million, and Paul Gauguin’s La Maison de Pen du, gardeuse de vache (1889), painted during his Pont-Aven period and carrying a $6-8 million estimate. Additional highlights include Max Beckmann’s Der Wels (Catfish) ($5-7 million), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Hallesches Tor, Berlin (1913, $3-5 million), a large-scale outdoor sculpture by Joan Miró ($4-6 million), and a lyrical Camille Pissarro landscape from his second Pontoise period ($1.2-1.8 million).

The breadth of the Pritzker holdings will extend beyond the November sale, with further lots offered next month in Sotheby’s Books and Manuscripts, Sculpture and Works of Art, Chinese Works of Art, and Design auctions. Together, the ensemble is expected to bring tens of millions of dollars across multiple sales.

The Elaine Wynn Collection at Christie’s

Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #40 (1971). Estimate: $15-25 million. Christie’s

Christie’s also secured the remarkable collection of Elaine Wynn, the late philanthropist and “Queen of Las Vegas,” who passed away this April. Celebrated for her discerning eye and the remarkable assemblage she built both alongside and independently of her former husband, casino magnate Steve Wynn, her estate is estimated at over $75 million. Nine of the top works will be featured in the 20th Century Evening Sale on November 17, two in the 21st Century Evening Sale on November 19, with the remainder to follow in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale.

The highlights from her collection span centuries and movements yet share the same standard of excellence that defined Wynn’s collecting ethos. On the Modern side, the top lot is Richard Diebenkorn’s transcendent Ocean Park #40, which will be offered in the 20th Century Evening Sale with an estimate of $15-25 million. The work returns to the rostrum just as Gagosian announces its representation of the Diebenkorn estate and inaugurates a dedicated exhibition at its Upper East Side gallery. Wynn acquired the painting at Sotheby’s in 2021, when it achieved a then-record $27.3 million. Diebenkorn’s auction record now stands at $46.4 million, set by his 1965 Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad at Christie’s New York in November 2023, placing the current estimate well within range yet poised to surpass it amid renewed market attention following Gagosian’s endorsement. Before its last sale, Ocean Park #40 was featured in the traveling museum exhibition dedicated to the series at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Orange County Museum of Art (2011-2012), as well as Acquavella Galleries’ 2018 show pairing Diebenkorn’s California scenes with those of Wayne Thiebaud.

Other top lots include J.M.W. Turner’s poetic Ehrenbreitstein (estimate: $12-18 million) and a refined Parisian scene by Georges Seurat. On the postwar side, headline works are Lucian Freud’s late self-portrait (estimate: $15-25 million) and Joan Mitchell’s sunflower-hued explosion of color and gesture (estimate: $12-18 million).

The Edlis|Neeson Collection at Christie’s

More than 40 groundbreaking works of art and design from Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson’s Chicago residence will go on the block. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, ARS 2025; © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025; © Estate of Tom Wesselmann/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025; © Jeff Koons; © Richard Prince; © Ron Mueck; Diego Giacometti © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo: © Michael Tropea

Also presented as part of Christie’s 44-lot 21st Century Evening Sale on November 19, the Edlis|Neeson Collection is described by the auction house as a rare example of a carefully curated ensemble of postwar icons that together trace the evolution of modern and contemporary art. Austrian-born American collector and philanthropist Stefan Edlis and his life partner Gael Neeson began assembling their collection in the 1970s, gradually filling their landmark apartment on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile with works that James Rondeau, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, once called “one of the most important collections of modern and contemporary art in existence.” In 2015, the couple donated 44 works to the Art Institute, a gift the museum described as transformative. Born in Vienna in 1925, Stefan Edlis fled Nazi-occupied Austria for the U.S. in 1941 and later founded Apollo Plastics Corporation. In 1974, he met Gael Neeson, and together they began a lifelong pursuit of art collecting, mentored by Chicago collector Gerald Elliot. Their first major acquisition, Piet Mondrian’s Large Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow (1977), marked the beginning of a collection that evolved toward Pop, Conceptual and contemporary art, featuring icons like Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince, as well as a later generation similarly engaged with Pop and mass culture, including Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Ugo Rondinone.

One of the top lots is Ed Ruscha’s How Do You Do?, coming to auction amid strong market momentum for the artist following MoMA’s major retrospective last year. Part of Ruscha’s coveted mountain series, this laconic phrase floats diagonally rather than horizontally, suspended over a meticulously rendered alpine landscape, each ridge and summit bathed in deep blue light. Acquired directly from Gagosian in 2004 and shown that same year in the Aspen Art Museum’s Ed Ruscha: Mountain Paintings, the work makes its auction debut with an estimate of $5-7 million, secured by a third-party guarantee.

Another highlight is Andy Warhol’s The Last Supper (Yellow) (1986), acquired from Gagosian in 2002 and now estimated at $6-8 million, also backed by a guarantee from Christie’s. The auction house describes it as the culmination of Warhol’s career, a meditation on the dualities of mass media and mortality. Created just a month before his death and first exhibited in Milan’s Palazzo delle Stelline, directly across from Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, the series was Warhol’s way of “making Leonardo exciting again.” The work reflects his lifelong fascination with the iconography of images, their power, repetition and eventual loss of aura through mass reproduction. As more than 3,000 visitors attended the Milan show, The Last Supper came to embody Warhol’s own final self-reflection, a farewell from the artist who became as famous and as mythic as the masters he reinterpreted.

Also featured in the sale are Warhol’s Skull (estimate: $800,000-1.2 million), which will open the Evening Sale, and his Oxidation Painting (Diptych) (1978), acquired from Skarstedt Gallery in 2017 (estimate: $900,000-1.2 million, guaranteed). Other highlights include a Diego Giacometti bronze table (estimate: $3-5 million), Richard Prince’s Double Nurse (estimate: $3-5 million), and Jeff Koons’s Gazing Ball (Courbet Sleep) (estimate: $600,000-800,000), acquired from Gagosian in 2015. The sale also includes works by Cindy Sherman, George Condo, Claes Oldenburg and Tom Wesselmann, alongside two Giacometti library tables.

Perhaps the most provocative work from the collection, although not for sale, is Maurizio Cattelan’s Him (2001), which will be viewable by request during the November pre-sale exhibition, a haunting reminder of the collection’s daring and thought-provoking spirit.

The Max N. Berry Collections at Christie’s

Alberto Giacometti, Buste d’homme (Diego), conceived in 1959/cast in 1960-1961. Bronze with brown patina, height: 15.3/4 in. (40 cm.), estimate $5-8 million. Courtesy of Christie’s

Debuting in the 20th Century Evening Sale this November, the collection of connoisseur Max Berry brings to auction one of the season’s most wide-ranging and valuable encyclopedic consignments. Spanning more than 30 categories, the collection, which is expected to generate tens of millions of dollars across several years of sales, reflects Berry’s lifetime of passionate and discerning collecting, driven more by curiosity than by market fashion.

Among the top lots hitting the rostrum during the November marquee evening sale is Calder’s Acrobats (1929), a seminal wire sculpture estimated at $5-7 million. Composed of two delicately balanced figures mounted on a wooden base, the piece dates to the artist’s pivotal Paris years when he began transforming his toy-maker’s ingenuity into formal sculptural language. Acrobats is directly linked to Calder’s famed Cirque Calder (1926-31), the hand-built miniature circus that anticipated his lifelong fascination with movement and performance. Its appearance at auction coincides with the Whitney Museum’s centennial tribute “High Wire: Calder’s Circus at 100.”

Also included in the sale is Berry’s Alexander Calder Untitled (1938), a rare yellow hanging mobile estimated at $1.5-2 million. Evoking the artist’s childlike sense of wonder, the sculpture’s continuous motion, no matter how still the air, epitomizes Calder’s mastery of balance, rhythm and levity. Completing the lineup of modern masters from the collection are Giacometti’s Buste d’homme (Diego), a bronze portrait of the artist’s brother, cast and signed 2/6 with an estimate of $5-8 million, and his still life Nature morte (1938), estimated at $1.5-2 million, a testament to the artist’s existential and essential synthesis of form and psychological depth.

Additional works from Berry’s collection, including Judaica, American art and Chinese art, will be offered in stages through 2027, underscoring both the scope and scholarly depth of a lifetime spent collecting with intellect, passion and humanity. As Berry told Observer in a recent interview, his ultimate wish is that the works are enjoyed, whether by private collectors or in institutions. “It will be wonderful if a museum acquires some of them and makes them public, where they can sit alongside other objects of a similar nature to tell the story of their artistry and their times.”

The Schlumberger Collection at Sotheby’s

Claude Monet, Vue de Rouen depuis la côte Sainte-Catherine, 1892. Sotheby’s

Similarly eclectic is the Schlumberger Collection, which Sotheby’s secured for this season. It debuted in Paris during their Surrealism and Its Legacy auction, with additional lots now scheduled to appear in New York during the Modern Evening Auction on November 20 and Modern Day Auction on November 21. Further works will be in the Important Design, Fine Jewelry and Fine Books & Manuscripts sales held between November and December 2025. This singular ensemble, bridging centuries of art and design and reflecting the legacy of one of Europe’s great industrial and cultural dynasties, was founded by brothers Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger, whose pioneering work in geophysics revolutionized the energy industry. The family also became renowned for its refined patronage of the arts. That legacy continued through Marcel’s daughter, Anne Schlumberger, whose discerning eye was shaped by her lifelong engagement with Surrealism, architecture and design.

Among the works coming from the collection is Claude Monet’s Vue de Rouen, a luminous and atmospheric canvas painted at the dawn of his famed cathedral series and set to be one of the top lots in Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction. Fresh to the block with an estimate of $3,000,000-4,000,000, this iconic Monet embodies a pure luminous atmosphere as the artist focuses on the transitory phenomenology of light and color, reaching a level of abstraction close to raw sensorial perception before any codification or formalization. The other highlight of the collection is François-Xavier Lalanne’s Hippopotame Bar (1976), a pièce unique and the first and only example the artist created in copper, serving as the prototype for his later bronze editions.

Property from the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art at Christie’s

Claude Monet, Nymphéas. Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 x 29 in. (92 x 73.6 cm.). Christie’s

Christie’s added another major institutional consignment to its marquee sales with the Property from the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art collection. The museum, long celebrated for its distinguished holdings of Western art, is deaccessioning eight masterpieces by some of the most significant names in Impressionism and Modernism. Presented as a dedicated group in the 20th Century Evening Sale on November 17, with further works to follow in the Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale and the Post-War & Contemporary Art Day Sale, the offering marks a pivotal moment in the museum’s history.

For more than three decades, the works resided in Kawamura’s purpose-built museum near Tokyo, where they brought international visitors face-to-face with the great masters of modern art. Following its closure in March 2025, the institution announced plans to divest around 280 works through auctions and private sales, aiming to raise at least ¥10 billion (approximately $68 million).

Leading Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale from the museum’s collection is Claude Monet’s Nymphéas (1907), one of the artist’s most dazzling depictions of his Giverny waterlily pond, estimated at $40-60 million. Acquired in 1970 from the Estate of Albert J. Dreitzer through Sotheby’s, the painting has been a cornerstone of Kawamura’s galleries ever since, its vertical composition capturing the pond’s luminous surface in an almost abstract symphony of reflection and light.

Other highlights include Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Jeune femme arrangeant des fleurs (estimate: $8-12 million), Marc Chagall’s Le Rêve de Paris (estimate: $4-6 million) and Henri Matisse’s Femme au chapeau bleu (estimate: $3-5 million), which will also be offered in the 20th Century Evening Sale.

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Elisa Carollo

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November 15, 2025
Meet the Collector: Raphaël Isvy Wants to Rewrite the Rules of Buying and Selling Art

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Items from Isvy’s collection in his apartment in Paris’s 16th Arrondissement. Courtesy Raphaël Isvy

A new generation of collectors is determined to take control and rewrite the rules of an art system they don’t identify with, finding its hierarchies outdated and its codes sluggish compared to the speed at which they now share information, discover artists and shape their own passions. During a frenetic Paris Art Week, Parisian collector Raphaël Isvy opened his collection to Observer, reflecting candidly on what no longer works in the traditional art world and how things could evolve—much as other markets already have.

Isvy picks us up from the opening of Paris Internationale on his motorcycle—the only sensible way to cut through the week’s gridlocked traffic—and takes us to his apartment in the elegant 16th arrondissement, directly across the river from the Tour d’Eiffel, where his two young daughters greet us at the door. Between the roar of the ride and the quiet of home, he begins not with art but with life: how becoming a father reshaped everything—his outlook, his sense of time and his focus on what truly holds value behind the mirror.

Born in 1989 and raised in Paris, Raphaël Isvy studied mathematics and statistics, worked in finance and asset management and later consulted for major tech firms. He followed the path laid out by family and convention before discovering art—a revelation that slowly but completely redirected his life toward his passion. He began collecting around 2016 and didn’t know much about art, beyond living in a city surrounded by it. “I didn’t grow up in an art-oriented family—everyone around me was a doctor, either a dentist or an eye doctor—I was the only one who ended up working in finance. I’d studied mathematics and statistics, but I had always been very curious by nature,” Isvy tells me. Curiosity is often enough to start someone down the collecting path, but he was also becoming bored with straight finance. “I loved the idea of owning something that others had tried—and failed—to get. I was drawn to the fact that art could be bought online, and I was good at that. I was fast, quicker than most people.”

That’s how Isvy ended up buying an Invader print. “When it arrived and I saw it at home, I completely changed my mind about selling it, even though I was getting crazy offers,” he says. It was an early Invader, but there was already a strong market for his work—though at vastly different price levels than today, when unique mosaics (his large “alias” works, one-offs or very limited editions) sell for hundreds of thousands of euros (one piece recently sold for about €480,000) and at auction for as much as US$1.2 million, while prints now trade in the thousands rather than the hundreds Isvy paid at the time.

Raphaël Isvy. From Instagram @raph_is, Courtesy Raphaël Isvy

What first hooked him was the thrill of opening the tube. “Putting on the white gloves, seeing the number, realizing that this specific number was mine and no one else’s and then framing it,” he recounts. “I even went down the rabbit hole of reading forums about how best to frame it flat. That’s when I realized I was in love with the whole process.”

Isvy freely admits he began collecting art with little knowledge of the Old Masters or anything related to deceased artists. “I’m lucky to live in a city where there’s everything, but I really didn’t know much at all,” he says. Instead, he represents the new generation of collectors identified in the latest Art Basel and UBS report—those who educate themselves and gather information primarily online through forums and social media.

“I taught myself—from Instagram, collectors’ accounts, Facebook groups, forums, whatever was available back then,” Isvy explains. “It all started with buying prints and hanging them on my walls, but when people came over and started talking about the pieces—debating them, arguing whether they were too simple, saying things like ‘my kid could do that’—I realized that was exactly what I loved about art: it sparked conversation.”

From there, Isvy began buying more prints and drawings, learning everything he could online and relying on the only tool he truly trusts—his eyes. “At some point I thought, okay, my wallet can do better than this,” he says as we sit in his living room, where the walls showcase the results of his less-than-decade-long collecting journey: above the fireplace hangs a work on paper by George Condo, paired with a sculpture by Sterling Ruby and a painting by Naotaka Hiro. On the floor, smaller works by once-emerging artists now internationally recognized, such as Sara Anstaiss and Brice Guilbert, sit alongside pieces by established figures like Peter Saul. Hanging in the entryway above a Pierre Paulin sofa is a blue neon by Tracey Emin that reads “Trust Yourself”—a phrase that neatly sums up Isvy’s path into art.

Greeting us at the entrance are a Tomoo Gokita painting and a hanging sculpture by Hugh Hayden, while elegantly nestled between books in the dining room’s library are smaller gems by rising painters who have quickly gained attention—from an early Eva Pahde (who just opened her debut solo at Thaddaeus Ropac in London) to Adam Alessi, Robert Zehnder, Elsa Rouy, Jean Nipon and Alex Foxton. Even the rooms of his two daughters hold small contemporary treasures, including a painting by Tomokazu Matsuyama and a drawing by Javier Calleja, while beside the couple’s bed stands an elegant surrealist figure—a woman with an octopus on her back by Emily Mae Smith.

Isvy exemplifies that ways younger collectors today are determined to claim agency and rewrite the rules of an art system they no longer identify with. Courtesy Raphaël Isvy

Before turning to art, Isvy had already collected sneakers and Pokémon cards, though never on a large scale. When he began collecting art, he approached it with a similarly modest budget. “I used to find artists selling directly from their studios, offering small drawings for $500 or $600,” he recalls. One of his first paintings was by mike lee, purchased from Arsham/Fieg Gallery (AFG)—a small gallery on the second floor of the Kith store at 337 Lafayette Street in New York. Opened in 2021 as a collaboration between Ronnie Fieg and artist Daniel Arsham, AFG was a natural extension of Fieg’s brand and its crossover between fashion, design and art—a combination that perfectly matched the taste of Isvy’s generation. “When it arrived—with the crate, the white gloves and the realization that it was a one-of-one—it completely shifted my perspective. I thought: Okay, I want to do this forever.”

Collecting in a community and growing with it

From that moment, Isvy began connecting with more people. “I think that’s what really defines me and the way I’ve been collecting. I’m someone who connects,” he says. “I talk to everyone the same way, I react to stories, ask questions and exchange views. Because in the art world, if you’re alone, you’re nothing. Without perspective, without taste, without access—even if you’re a billionaire—you’re still nothing without people.”

Convinced that community was essential to both access and understanding, he created a Facebook group devoted to prints and drawings. It became a space for collectors to share advice on buying, selling, framing and promoting new releases and studio drops. Over time, it evolved into a global network that brought people together both online and offline.

“People began organizing meetups in different cities and I remember traveling to Los Angeles to meet fifty collectors, then to New York to meet a hundred and later to Asia to meet hundreds more,” Isvy recalls. His story underscores a growing need for connection and dialogue among young collectors—a desire for shared discovery that drives collectible cultures popular with Gen Z and Millennials but is too often constrained by the rigid hierarchies of the traditional art world. The community he built around him includes collectors aged 18 to 35 who neither identify with nor seek to conform to those old rules. From there, the network grew organically—one introduction leading to another—spanning continents and forming a parallel ecosystem of its own.

Immersed in this community, Isvy began hearing about artists before they reached broader recognition. “When both Asian and American collectors were mentioning the same names, I knew it was a signal worth paying attention to,” he says. Those insights, combined with his instinct, led him to make early acquisitions that proved remarkably prescient: a large Robert Nava painting bought for $9,000 before gallery representation; an Anna Park piece purchased while she was still an undergraduate for $900; and an Anna Weyant work acquired at NADA in 2019 for $3,000. “People often say I got lucky—but it wasn’t luck. I did my homework. I have a process and I’m meticulous about it.”

Isvy’s story reveals the deep need for connection, community and shared discovery that drives a new generation of collectors. Courtesy Raphaël Isvy

When Isvy buys art, it’s never entirely spontaneous—he reads, researches and cross-checks everything. “We see about twenty new artists a day now and most are talented—but the real challenge is spotting the exceptional ones, the ones who will last,” he notes. As seasoned collectors know, that requires more than recognizing talent; it’s about identifying the right combination: an artist with originality, supported by the right gallery, at the right moment. “Those indicators are hard to find, but they form your own recipe—your personal algorithm. That’s what drives me. It’s not luck; it’s preparation meeting opportunity.”

Collecting with a purpose

For Isvy, his goal as a collector soon became clear: to own remarkable works. He first drew inspiration from older collectors—the kind he saw in books, magazines and on Instagram—showcasing homes filled with art. “When you start collecting, you get obsessed with the books, the magazines, the collectors you see online,” he says, explaining that what fascinated him was how art, furniture and architecture could merge to form a complete aesthetic statement. “It’s not about showing off; it’s about assembling design furniture, an apartment and artworks in a way that feels balanced. It’s actually really hard.” But that, he says, is what defines true taste. “You can be a billionaire and still ruin everything with bad lighting or the wrong couch. That’s why I wanted white walls, simplicity, space for the works to breathe.”

Although his collection now includes more than a hundred works (some co-owned with friends) the display in his apartment feels cohesive, with the art integrated naturally into the space, in dialogue with both furniture and architecture. To achieve this, Isvy collaborated with architect Sophie Dries, a close friend, who designed the interiors around the collection rather than the other way around, ensuring it remained a home first—a place where his daughters could live and move freely. The result preserves the apartment’s historic Haussmannian details while infusing it with the lightness and understated elegance of contemporary design.

Over time, Isvy also began selling some works—but always within his community and with full transparency. “The one rule I’ve stuck to is reaching out to the gallery first. Most of the time, when they couldn’t help me resell, I would wait or find a responsible way to do it,” he explains, showing he understands the rules of the game. He recalls one case involving a painting by Anna Weyant that he bought at NADA in 2019 for $3,500. Two years later, as her market soared, he received offers as high as $400,000 from collectors in Korea. Out of loyalty to the artist and her gallerist, he refused to sell privately. “It was still my early years collecting and I was terrified of being canceled,” he recounts. He asked 56 Henry, where he had purchased the piece, to handle the resale, but they couldn’t, as Weyant had since joined Gagosian. He then consigned it to the mega-gallery, which held it for six months without success. “Later I learned they’d doubled the price—asking nearly $400,000 without even showing it properly. Of course it didn’t sell. They never even brought me an offer. They didn’t care; they had other inventory to push.” He eventually took it to auction because the offer was life-changing. Still, this decision caused backlash with the artist, despite the fact that he had followed every protocol.

Isvy is openly critical of how written and unwritten rules often constrain the healthy circulation of art and value in the market. “The art world is an economic cycle like any other asset class. If you want it to stay healthy, you can’t break the links. Every time I sold an artwork, it was to buy another one to keep the cycle moving,” he explains. “When collectors reinject liquidity into the market, it benefits everyone. Instead of shaming people for selling, galleries should teach them how to do it properly, how to reinvest in a way that sustains the ecosystem.”

The aesthetics of living and collecting converge; here, home becomes both gallery and manifesto of a taste grounded in balance and restraint. Courtesy Raphaël Isvy

Isvy believes when a collector consigns a work back to a gallery—choosing to avoid auction and protect the artist’s market—the gallery should reciprocate that gesture. Offering trade-in credit or discounts toward another piece, for instance, would help sustain mutual trust. “That’s how you build trust and keep the wheel turning,” he says.

For him, the cause of today’s stagnation is clear. Between 2019 and 2022, everyone was buying, often under restrictive three-year no-resale agreements, and collectors were afraid to act. No one wanted to break those rules, even as the market overheated. “The fear came not from greed, but from the culture of silence that galleries built around selling,” he notes. Now that those agreements have expired, the market is flooded with works—and many aren’t good. “Galleries were taking everything out of studios instead of curating and showing only what was great. During that period, there was no real filter—no accountability. There was too much abundance,” he says. Even when artists asked galleries not to show weaker works or to limit annual price increases to no more than 10 percent, few listened. “Everyone got greedy. Collectors, galleries, artists—we all played a part in pushing things too far. That’s why the market looks the way it does now.”

When asked if this disillusionment has dulled his enthusiasm, Isvy admits that some of the magic has faded. “When you see how things really work behind the scenes, it’s not as enchanting as you once thought. It’s not disgusting, but it changes your perspective.”

Still, surrounded by art in every corner of his home, he insists the passion remains. He’s simply more deliberate now—more thoughtful and selective. “I still love the emotion of collecting, that instinctive excitement,” he says. “But now I feel like my role is to help others see what needs to change—to make the system better. I have hope because there’s a new generation that wants to do things differently. When the old dinosaurs are gone, we’ll finally have a chance to rebuild.”

Isvy’s role in rewriting the rules

Raphaël Isvy represents a new generation of collectors determined to claim agency by reshaping the system from within. Like many millennials, he sees his role in the art world as deliberately fluid—collector, curator, advisor and connector all at once. “I do deals, I buy, I sell, I help people collect, I introduce them to artists,” he explains. For him, those boundaries are artificial. “In the past, collectors were patrons; today, we can be activators,” he says, recalling how last year he curated a large cultural exhibition in the South of France, set in a vineyard, which received an enthusiastic response. He insists he doesn’t fit neatly into any single label. “I don’t have a defined role. I just love art and people.” Yet, he admits, the traditional art world resists those who refuse to stay in one box. “The truth is, the more dynamic you are, the more everyone benefits; more activity means more liquidity, more buyers, more fairs, more growth.”

For Isvy, even the distortions that have plagued the market reveal that the system’s old rules no longer fit its global scale and speed. With production volumes far exceeding what the traditional model can absorb, he argues, the only way forward is to broaden the collector base and rethink how art circulates.

He finds hope in younger galleries already experimenting with new models. “Many organize events that have an actual purpose—not just hanging a Rothko and waiting for the wire to come through. There’s a sense of responsibility and intent that wasn’t there before.”

If given the chance to introduce concrete reforms, Isvy says he would start with enforceable rules—beginning with banning auction houses from selling works less than three years old. “This rule alone would already make a huge difference,” he argues. “It would bring more stability, discourage speculation and give artists time to grow before being thrown into the market machine.”

In his view, part of the market’s instability stems from its lack of structure and accountability. Auction houses should face stricter limits—fewer sales per year, fewer lots per sale—to prevent oversaturation. Similarly, mega-galleries should adopt principles borrowed from finance, employing in-house risk managers responsible for ensuring artists are paid consistently and reserves are properly maintained. “Setting aside around 30 percent of income for operational stability, salaries and artist payments would bring the professionalism this sector urgently needs,” he explains. These are not radical reforms, he adds, but necessary corrections.

Liquidity, transparency and dialogue are emerging as the values that sustain—not threaten—the collecting ecosystem’s future. Courtesy Raphaël Isvy

At the same time, transparency remains the art market’s greatest weakness. Coming from a background in risk management, Isvy has seen firsthand how chaos unfolds when an unregulated system operates without rules. He recalls helping a friend sell a large painting that set a world record at Christie’s last October. “Everyone was celebrating, talking about millions of euros. What people don’t know is that the work wasn’t paid for in the end. There’s a huge lack of transparency in this market. No one realizes how many auction sales actually fall through, or how many so-called records are never settled,” he says.

While auction data are theoretically the only public numbers the market can rely on, prices are often published without verification and used as benchmarks even when deals collapse. “That work eventually sold for a third of the supposed record price—but in the meantime, that inflated figure distorted the entire market,” Isvy notes. To him, as a former finance professional, the outcome is predictable. “Without a serious purge and some structural reforms, I don’t see how the market can restart.”

He often describes the art market as “an ocean dominated by predators.” “Dealers are the sharks; collectors are the fish,” he says. “It’s almost impossible to navigate without getting eaten along the way. You get layers of intermediaries adding price on top of price and I’ll sometimes get three different offers for the same work, each one higher because it’s passed through multiple hands. It’s absurd. I’ve even had people steal images from my Instagram to pretend they’re selling my pieces.”

Yet he doesn’t exempt anyone from blame. “We can’t really complain about the market’s current state—we all knew what was happening. But what’s different now is that younger collectors aren’t coming in blind. They research, they cross-check and they know the system before they buy. The old guard was drawn by instinct; they lived in a smaller art world, with a handful of galleries and fairs. For us, information is everywhere—and that changes everything.”

A more fluid idea of contemporary culture

For Isvy, the solution begins with greater liquidity and openness. The art market, he argues, must operate as fluidly as other collectible markets, because the old formula of engineered scarcity and opaque pricing—supercharged during the pandemic—has eroded trust.

He compares the art world to the Pokémon card market, where transparency and liquidity keep everything in motion. “In that world, inventory changes hands every day. Payments can be made through crypto, PayPal, cash or trades—it’s fluid. People post story sales on Instagram, with clear prices and everything sells in minutes,” he explains. “Imagine trying that with art—everyone would freak out, say you’re breaking the rules. But it would work.”

For Isvy, this kind of openness could reinvigorate the entire ecosystem. “If someone sells a $3,000 work, that person will probably reinvest that money in another artist. The wheel keeps turning. Liquidity creates opportunity—for collectors, for dealers and for artists who can produce new work. That’s how you sustain an ecosystem, not by freezing it.”

When Isvy brings up this comparison, he leads us to what he calls his “little secret”—a private room that reveals another side of his personality. “The world knows me as a collector, but there’s another part of me. I’m a gamer, a geek. I collect Pokémon cards, NFTs and sneakers. I play PlayStation 5 every night. I love Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Final Fantasy. I couldn’t imagine my home without that side of who I am.”

When he moved in, he told his designer he needed an office for remote work but also a personal space. Since her aesthetic was more classic, his architect introduced him to a younger, eccentric designer known for creating gaming and YouTuber rooms. “He had orange diamonds on his teeth,” Isvy laughs. “I told him my story and we figured out how to make a small space work as both an office and a world of my own.” Together, they designed the room from scratch. “He called it The Glitch—like a bug in a video game—because it doesn’t fit with the rest of the apartment.”

The art market’s rigidity contrasts with the fluid economies that younger collectors are familiar with from gaming paraphernalia, sneakers and cryptocurrency. Courtesy Raphaël Isvy

Inside, the space feels like a cross between a gaming den and a cabinet of curiosities. There’s a retro bench upholstered in tapestry, a BS Invader console, manga shelves, Pokémon cards, Rubik’s cubes and a miniature painting by Robert Nava—his favorite artist. The walls are covered in wallpaper that mimics the black-and-white static of an old television screen, paired with ceramic terrazzo tiles forming a custom mosaic floor. “It’s vintage, weird and perfect,” Isvy says.

This hidden office and private room capture the spirit of an entire generation of collectors like Isvy—for whom contemporary art, Pokémon cards, anime and manga, video games and collectible figurines coexist within the same cultural imagination. It’s the universe that shaped their childhood and, ultimately, their identity. For this generation, these objects are not mere toys or décor but artifacts that equally express contemporary culture and their idea of collecting and supporting it.

For Isvy, the space is more than an ode to nostalgia—it’s a statement. “The contemporary art world still struggles to accept that someone can collect a Condo and also Pokémon cards,” he says. “But that’s going to change. Our generation grew up with gaming and pop culture; it’s part of us. You can’t tell people to shut off that side of themselves. That’s how the next generation of collectors will come in—through openness, not hierarchy.” Gesturing toward the Nava painting behind him, he adds, “If I cared only about money, I would have sold it—I’ve had offers. But I paid $9,000 for it and to me, it’s priceless. He’s one of the most important artists of our generation. This room reminds me why I started collecting in the first place.”

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Elisa Carollo

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November 12, 2025
Meet the Collectors: Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu Share the Passion and Vision Behind Magazzino Italian Art

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“Arte Povera” at Magazzino Italian Art in Cold Spring, New York. Photo by Marco Anelli/Tommaso Sacconi

Nancy Olnick might never have dedicated herself to Italian art without meeting Giorgio Spanu and Spanu might never have entered the world of art collecting—or reconnected with his homeland—if it weren’t for Olnick. Had the two not come together around this shared passion for art and culture, Magazzino Italian Art would likely not exist. Since its founding in 2017, the institution has become the leading U.S. platform for Italian art and a catalyst for its study and appreciation worldwide.

To learn more about their collecting journey and the institution’s history, we met the two collectors and patrons on a late-autumn day in Cold Spring, where Magazzino rises from the luxuriant Hudson Valley landscape. The clear, geometric volumes of Miguel Quismondo’s redesigned warehouse and the Robert Olnick Pavilion, created by Quismondo with Alberto Campo Baeza, stand in striking contrast to the surrounding greenery.

Since they met 32 years ago, Olnick and Spanu have shared a passionate journey in collecting—one that has accompanied their relationship and ultimately led to the creation of Magazzino. Olnick describes this journey as “very organic for their life.”

(l. to r.) Magazzino Italian Art director Adam Sheffer; Rosalia Pasqualina di Marineo of Fondazione Piero Manzoni; Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu, cofounders of Magazzino; and Nicola Lucchi, the museum’s director of research and education. Alexa Hoyer

From the start, collecting for Olnick and Spanu was about more than simply buying and possessing. It has been a process—one that began with learning and naturally evolved into sharing their passion with others. “For us, it is much less about possessing than it is about engaging and educating—that’s what motivates us,” Olnick tells Observer.

From day one, Olnick and Spanu set a rule never to purchase anything before educating themselves. “We learn, we collect and we’ve been gathering books and research materials for as long as we’ve been collecting art,” Olnick explains. “That’s what made it interesting: it wasn’t just about acquiring, it was about learning. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

The expansion of Magazzino Italian Art with the new Robert Olnick Pavilion was driven largely by a desire to move beyond merely displaying part of their collection—focused primarily on Arte Povera—in the existing 11,000-square-foot L-shaped warehouse. Their goal was to integrate exhibitions with educational and public programming, just as they had always envisioned for the museum and to advance their mission of fostering appreciation for Italian art and culture while making a tangible impact on the local community.

As Spanu explains while guiding us through the new building, before they even began designing it, they made one thing clear to the architect: two dedicated spaces, one for research and one for education, had to be part of the project.

Magazzino now houses a Research Center with a library of more than 5,000 volumes on Italian art and culture. This hub serves scholars, students and curators studying Italian art in an international context and is complemented by a fellowship and research program dedicated to postwar and contemporary Italian art—particularly Arte Povera, a movement still largely underappreciated internationally despite the relevance of its ideas and practices today, as evidenced by last year’s exhibition at Pinault Collection’s Bourse de Commerce.

Magazzino Italian Art completed its Robert Olnick Pavilion expansion in 2023. Photo by William Mulvihill

The local response has been enthusiastic, particularly among schools that lack such opportunities across the river and in nearby communities. What Magazzino offers is entirely free, driven by Olnick and Spanu’s commitment to expanding cultural access and creating opportunities for the community—especially for underserved schools in the surrounding area.

“We have the town of Philipstown and some of the surrounding communities coming here to learn how to do art-centered object teaching,” explains Spanu, gesturing toward works in the classroom. “Those programs have been oversubscribed with waitlists, so we now have two of those coming up, so that our program can become part of the curriculum on a regular basis.”

This focus on education and research has profoundly reshaped not only the museum’s mission and local impact but also its internal structure. Previously, Magazzino had a single director overseeing programming and operations for the warehouse, with only limited external initiatives beyond the Arte Povera collection on view. Last September, however, Magazzino announced a new leadership team to guide its growth, naming Adam Sheffer as director, Paola Mura as artistic director, Monica Eisner as chief operating officer and Nicola Lucchi as director of education at the Germano Celant Research Center.

The creation of the education center also made room for a new lower-floor design gallery. “From the beginning, I wanted to expand our mission to include Italian design,” Spanu explains, introducing us to the work of Japanese-born, Venice-based glass artist Yoichi Ohira, currently on view in the space. Long overlooked but collected for years by the couple, Ohira developed a distinctive aesthetic that merges Japanese ceramic traditions with Venetian Murano glass mastery.

The couple has followed Ohira’s work since 1996 and he was among the first artists they collected as part of their extensive Murano glass holdings, which began around 1992. Over the years, they have assembled one of the most comprehensive collections of works by Murano-based artists and designers, focusing on contemporary reinterpretations of glass rather than traditional Murano production.

“Yoichi Ohira: Japan in Murano” at Magazzino Italian Art. © Marco Anelli/Tommaso Sacconi

The couple began seriously collecting Murano glass after visiting a major exhibition dedicated to it in Venice during one of their trips to Italy. Olnick had just started to take an interest, occasionally browsing postwar Murano glass in New York—particularly pieces from the 1950s that had made their way to the U.S. after the war. Then a serendipitous moment changed the course of their collecting: on a flight to Milan in 1992, they spotted a small notice in an in-flight magazine about a show in Venice at Fondazione Cini Stampalia. They decided to make a detour, and the experience opened their eyes to the artistic depth and diversity of Murano glass.

They began collecting in earnest between 1993 and 1994, when they gained access to an important trove that would become the heart of their collection. “I was pregnant. I still remember—it was February 1994, and we suddenly had access to an existing collection of glass that had been put together by an American,” Olnick recalls. Through a chance phone call with a friend, she learned that a warehouse in the Hamptons held an entire collection of Murano glass that had just become available. She and Spanu, guided by friends from the Barovier family, visited and found themselves “like kids in a candy store,” discovering what turned out to be the collection of Muriel Karasick. With her New York gallery, Karasick had introduced Murano glass to American collectors and artists alike. “Warhol used to go to her store. She was also a photographer and had started a great collection of Mapplethorpe. In fact, Mapplethorpe started collecting Murano glass thanks to Muriel, who showed it to him for the first time,” Olnick explains. Acquiring that group of works marked the true beginning of their deep engagement with glass.

In 2003, their glass collection was presented at the Museum of Arts and Design—then still the American Craft Museum—in New York. “The show happened just organically,” recounts Olnick. A friend from high school called her after decades, saying she had seen some glass they had loaned to Montreal and wanted to organize an exhibition of their collection. “We had never even thought of it as a collection—you know, it was just things we liked. We never had that mentality of being ‘collectors,’” Olnick admits. She recalls how, on opening night, she turned to Giorgio and asked, “Who do you think is going to come see this?” “It was packed,” she says. “It reminds me of when we first opened in Cold Spring. That first day, I thought, ‘Who is going to come all the way to Cold Spring to see Arte Povera?’ Well, at first it was slow, but now people from all over come to visit.”

Cinema in Piazza is Magazzino Italian Art’s annual film series, held in the museum’s “piazza.” hoto by Alexa Hoyer. Courtesy Magazzino Italian Art.

Most importantly, the show resulted in a catalog—now in its second edition—that remains one of the few publications to map and examine this vital side of Italian design, exploring its connections with international creators and the dialogue between tradition and contemporary innovation. “That book became the beginning—not only of collecting together, but of realizing that as much as we were showing this work to teach others, we were also teaching ourselves,” Olnick reflects. Publishing catalogs alongside each exhibition has since become a core part of Magazzino’s mission.

The story of how the couple assembled one of the most significant collections of Italian art unfolded in much the same organic way—not from a fixed plan, but from curiosity, chance encounters and a shared willingness to follow their passion wherever it led.

Before Olnick met Giorgio, she was collecting American Pop Art. “I was born and raised in New York, so Pop Art was my era, my environment,” she reflects. Yet as an avid reader and lifelong art lover, she was also, as she puts it, an Italophile. “That was always part of me—just as you asked how I started. But Italy pulled me in. I went as often as I could, immersing myself in the music, the food and the culture,” she explains.

Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu, cofounders of Magazzino Italian Art. Photo by Marco Anelli.

After marrying, the couple moved with their daughter to Rome for a few years, eager to learn more about Italian culture and its contemporary artists. Through friends, Spanu and Olnick met Sauro Bocchi, a gallerist deeply connected to Rome’s artistic circles, who introduced them to postwar Italian art and, in particular, Arte Povera. As the couple recalled in a post on Magazzino’s website announcing his passing, “Bocchi didn’t want to follow trends and gave an opportunity to many women artists such as Giosetta Fioroni, Cloti Ricciardi, Lisa Montessori and Maria Lai, which was not easy at the time.” When they asked him where to begin learning about Arte Povera, he advised, “Go to Torino, go to Castello di Rivoli and then come back and we’ll talk.”

As Olnick remembers, it was an Arte Povera exhibition curated by Rudi Fuchs, the celebrated curator from the Stedelijk. “We walked around like people walk around Magazzino now—completely taken aback. We went back to Rome and sat down with Sauro. He asked us what we liked and we said, ‘We liked everything.’”

Spanu admits that without Nancy, he might never have embraced Italian art. Having spent more than a decade in Paris working in communications and marketing, he was steeped in the art of the great Parisian avant-garde and pioneering postwar movements. “She’s the one who brought me back to Italy,” Spanu says. “I was very much a Francophile. My love was for Klee, Dubuffet, Picasso, Matisse. I really didn’t know much about contemporary Italian art—probably less than Nancy.”

Together, the couple began to study, visit galleries, ask questions and learn. Another of their earliest mentors was gallerist Mario Pieroni, who played a fundamental role in shaping their taste and collection. From him, they acquired their first six Arte Povera works—one each from the key members of the movement still alive at the time. They soon developed close relationships with several of the artists but have recently watched with sadness as many of them have passed away, often without receiving the international recognition they deserve. This has made their mission feel even more urgent, deepening their commitment to preserving and honoring these legacies.

Still, Spanu and Olnick remain intent on broadening their mission beyond a singular focus on Arte Povera, dedicating themselves to the reassessment and proper presentation of other figures in Italian postwar and contemporary art—as seen most recently in their thoughtful surveys of Maria Lai and Lucio Pozzi. At the same time, they are eager to revive their program for on-site commissions by younger Italian artists.

The couple admits they came late to acquiring works by other postwar Italian masters such as Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni, whose pieces they collected when possible, though they often couldn’t afford the most significant ones.

“Piero Manzoni: Total Space” presents a focused exploration of one of the most radical artists of the postwar avant-garde in Italy. Photo Credit: Alexa Hoyer

The couple was recently recognized for their dedication with a major gift of two significant works by Piero Manzoni, donated under a joint decision by the artist’s foundation and Hauser & Wirth. The works are two room-size immersive environments conceived but never realized by Manzoni in 1961, shortly before his death at age 29. Far ahead of his time, Manzoni envisioned immersive installations decades before the idea of “immersive art” entered mainstream discourse. These environments represent the culmination of his radical exploration of the “dematerialization of art,” paired with an emphasis on the viewer’s experience and co-creation, serving as a sharp critique of authorship and the commodification of art.

These visionary projects by Manzoni first moved from concept to reality for his 2019 museum-quality exhibition at Hauser & Wirth’s New York and Los Angeles galleries. Afterward, they went into storage—until now, when they found their ideal permanent home at Magazzino Italian Art. “She felt Magazzino was the perfect place to receive these works, to keep them alive and to ensure they could one day be shared again,” says Magazzino’s director, Adam Sheffer. “She did not expect us to move so quickly.” In fact, Magazzino responded that they intended to stage a show in September. The foundation initially assumed she meant 2026, but Sheffer clarified it would be September 2025—just six weeks away. Despite the ambitious timeline, there was a shared determination to make it happen.

Piero Manzoni’s Achrome, 1958 (left) and his Achrome, 1958-59 (right), on view in “Piero Manzoni: Total Space.” Photo Credit: Alexa Hoyer

To honor and celebrate this major donation, Magazzino Italian Art is presenting “Piero Manzoni: Total Space,” on view through March 23. The exhibition reintroduces these visionary installations to the public, alongside exceptional examples of his Achromes from the late 1950s on loan from American collections. As Manzoni conceived them, one room is filled with light, immersing the viewer in an experience of pure dematerialization, transience and disorientation; the other is completely dark, its walls covered in fur, heightening the viewer’s physical awareness and sensory engagement. To contemporary audiences, both installations seem to anticipate—decades ahead of their time—the complexities of our relationship with the virtual and the tangible.

At the center of the current show are two immersive environments conceived by Piero Manzoni in 1961: the Stanza fosforescente (Phosphorescent Room) and the Stanza pelosa (Hairy Room). hoto Credit: Alexa Hoyer

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Elisa Carollo

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November 8, 2025
London Sees Its Best Evening Auction Results in Years

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The October evening sales brought the London auction houses their highest totals in years. Courtesy of Sotheby’s

Sales aren’t just buoyant at Frieze this week—London’s auction houses also saw their strongest results in years, signaling renewed confidence at the top of the market. Kicking off the action, Christie’s 20th/21st Century London Evening Sale on October 15 achieved a robust £106,925,400 ($142,852,000), marking the auction house’s best Frieze Week evening sale in more than seven years. The total was up 30 percent from last year, with 92 percent sold by lot and 90 percent sold by value. Katharine Arnold and Keith Gill, vice-chairmen of 20th/21st century art, Christie’s Europe, reported entering the week with confidence and “carefully priced material,” noting a “spirited and well-attended” public viewing at King Street. “We are proud to have realized such a solid outcome during Frieze Week, a moment that highlights the energy and cultural vitality of London’s art scene,” they told press.

Leading the sale was Peter Doig’s monumental Ski Jacket (1994), which sold for £14,270,000 ($19,064,720) against a £6,000,000-8,000,000 estimate after more than 13 minutes of fierce bidding between six contenders. Carrying a third-party guarantee, the painting had been acquired in 1994 by Danish collector Ole Faarup, and 100 percent of the proceeds will now go to his foundation. This unusual arrangement also helped Christie’s secure two additional Doigs, despite the artist having become a rare presence at auction.

With an extensive exhibition history, Doig’s Country Rock (1998-1999) nearly hit seven figures in sterling—though it comfortably did so in dollars—achieving £9,210,000 ($12,304,560). A third, more abstract and heavily textured work, also acquired by Faarup in 1994, sold a few lots later just shy of its high estimate at £635,000. The strong results coincided with the opening of Doig’s new show at the Serpentine in London, further fueling demand.

Christie’s evening opened with a standout result for Domenico Gnoli, whose hyperrealistic painting fetched £977,000, doubling its low estimate. Immediately after, a more impressionistic landscape by René Magritte landed at £762,990—well above expectations—reinforcing both continued momentum for the artist and the broader strength of surrealism. Later in the sale, Magritte’s drawing La veillée (The Vigil) exceeded its £500,000 high estimate, selling for £812,800.

The 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale at Christie’s resulted in several new artist records. Photo: Guy Bell | Courtesy of Christie’s

Picasso, as usual, delivered dependable results, with several works selling above or within estimate, including the £2,002,000 oil and ink on panel Chevalier, pages et moine. The modern and impressionist offerings also performed within expectations, largely due to the quality of the material: a Marc Chagall painting fetched £2,246,000, while a lyrical bucolic scene by Nabis painter Maurice Denis sold for £1,697,000. Meanwhile, a horizontal abstract work by Hurvin Anderson exceeded expectations, fetching £3,222,000.

The sale also set several new world auction records, underscoring the ongoing momentum for women artists and long-overlooked names being rediscovered. Paula Rego’s Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s “Fantasia” (1995) soared to £3,466,000 ($4.63 million), setting a new landmark record for the artist. Suzanne Valadon’s Deux nus ou Le bain (1923) followed with a £1,016,000 ($1.36 million) record. Contemporary sculptor Annie Morris’s Bronze Stack 9, Copper Blue (2015) achieved £482,600 ($644,754), while Danish artist Esben Weile Kjær set his first auction record with Aske and Johan upside down kissing in Power Play at Kunstforeningen GL STRAND (2020), which sold for £25,400 ($33,934).

Among the few unsold works of the night were Yoshitomo Nara’s drawing Haze Days, which failed to find a buyer at its ambitious £6.5-8.5 million estimate, and a gray monochrome by Gerhard Richter—even with the artist opening a major survey at the Fondation Louis Vuitton during Paris Art Week. A black Blinky Palermo also went unsold, while a colorful but slightly less iconic Nicholas Party work, Tree Trunks, was withdrawn ahead of the sale.

Notably, Christie’s reported that 56 percent of buyers in the evening sale came from Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with only 28 percent from the Americas and 16 percent from the Asia-Pacific region. This confirms revived demand in the regional market, as also evidenced earlier in the day by the heavy attendance at Frieze.

A £17.6M Bacon headlined at Sotheby’s

Led by a £17.6 million Francis Bacon, Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Auction closed at $63.5 million. While the total was less than half of Christie’s the night before, the comparison needs context: this was Sotheby’s third major London evening sale since March—whereas it was Christie’s first of the season. Sotheby’s has already staged two major white-glove sales this year—the £101 million Karpidas collection auction in September and the £84 million Summer Evening Sale—meaning that with last night’s results, the house has now sold £233 million worth of modern and contemporary art in London since March. Moreover, the £63.5 million total marked the highest October evening sale result since 2023, up 25 percent from the previous year.

Since March, Sotheby’s has sold £240 million worth of Modern and Contemporary art in London. Courtesy Sotheby’s

“Frieze is always a special time for London, with so many collectors in town whose presence we always feel in our sales,” Ottilie Windsor, co-head of contemporary art, Sotheby’s London, told Observer. “It was great to have them with us tonight and to see so much live action in the room, helping sustain the strong momentum we’ve built over the past few seasons here.”

The Francis Bacon result came after 20 minutes of suspense and fierce bidding across multiple phone specialists and a bidder in the room, pushing the final price to nearly double its £6-9 million estimate. In U.S. dollars, the hammer plus fees rose to $17.6 million. For comparison, the last notable Bacon—Portrait of Man with Glasses II—sold at Christie’s in March for £6,635,000 ($8.4 million), and that work was almost a third smaller. Another, smaller Bacon, closer in scale to Christie’s example, sold here for £5,774,000 ($7.3 million). Bacon’s record still stands at $142.4 million, set at Christie’s New York in 2013 with his triptych Three Studies of Lucian Freud.

The sale opened strong, with solid results for several younger contemporary artists who have recently drawn both market and institutional attention. At lot one, a painting by Ser Serpas landed at £27,940 ($35,700)—just under estimate but still enough to set a new auction record for the artist. The California-born painter, who studied in Switzerland and gained early recognition there, was recently included in a MoMA PS1 exhibition and held a solo show at Kunsthalle Basel during the June fairs.

Two of the hottest rising names in recent auctions—driven largely by Asian demand and limited primary-market availability—followed. An abstract by Emma McIntyre, now a Zwirner favorite, sold for £50,800 ($65,000), and Yu Nishimura achieved the same price. Both works carried estimates of £40,000-60,000, reflecting the tight competition at this level.

In between, a 2009 painting by Hernan Bas acquired from Perrotin sold just above its low estimate, likely to its guarantor, at £254,000 ($323,000). Momentum continued for Lucy Bull, whose kaleidoscopic abstraction from 2021—originally acquired from Paris gallery High Art—more than doubled its top estimate of £500,000 ($635,000), landing at £1,260,000 ($1.6 million) after being chased by five bidders, most from Asia.

Overall, the auction confirmed the ongoing strength of the market for women artists, all of whom sold above estimate. Sotheby’s also posted strong results for Paula Rego: her pastel on paper Snow White Playing with her Father’s Trophies sold within estimate for £900,000 (about $1.15 million), while Jenny Saville’s charcoal study exceeded its high estimate, selling for £533,000 (around $675,000).

Among other notable six-figure results, a monumental El Anatsui sold just shy of its high estimate at £1,999,000 (about $2.53 million). Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (The Arm) from 1982—a pivotal year in the artist’s rise—landed squarely within estimate at £5,530,000 (approximately $7 million). Andy Warhol’s Four Pink Marilyn (Reversal) followed, selling within estimate for £4,326,000 (about $5.5 million).

The masters also held firm. Both of Auguste Rodin’s monumental sculptures from his seminal series The Burghers of Calais sold within estimate to a collector in the room: Jean de Fiennes, vêtu, Grand Modèle achieved £762,000 ($1 million), while Pierre de Wiessant, vita, Grand Modèle, vêtu sold for £889,000 ($1.2 million).

The market for Lucio Fontana also showed signs of recovery—at least for major works. His rare blue 14-slashed Concetto spaziale, Attese sold just above estimate at £2.8 million (about $3.7 million) following a fierce bidding war among four potential buyers. The deep blue of the canvas was inspired by Yves Klein’s IKB pigment—but Klein’s own Untitled Fire Colour Painting (FC 28), which appeared one lot earlier, surprisingly went unsold after failing to meet its £1.8-2 million estimate ($2.3-2.5 million), despite both an irrevocable bid and a guarantee.

Other unsold works of the night included paintings by Frank Auerbach and Daniel Richter. Still, Sotheby’s achieved a healthy 89 percent sell-through rate by lot.

On October 17, Sotheby’s also staged a single-owner sale of 17 iPad drawings by David Hockney from his celebrated series The Arrival of Spring. The results were remarkable: the group doubled its high estimate to reach £6.2 million ($8.3 million), achieving a white-glove sale and setting a new auction record for the artist. With this result, Sotheby’s London has now brought in £240 million (approximately $304 million) since March. Notably, American buyers accounted for 40 percent of the purchasers in the Hockney sale, underscoring the continued global demand for blue-chip British artists.

A £2,374,000 Basquiat tops Phillips’ London Evening Sale

On October 16 at 5 p.m., Phillips hosted its London Modern & Contemporary Evening Sale, achieving a total of £10,332,200 ($13,884,410) across 22 lots. The auction was more modest—and less successful—than the others, posting a 32 percent drop compared to last year after four lots failed to sell and four others were withdrawn before the start. The evening was led by a new auction record for Emma McIntyre: Seven types of ambiguity (2021) sold for £167,700 ($225,355) from a modest £50,000-70,000 estimate, edging past her previous record of $201,600 set in May 2025 at Phillips Hong Kong. The second-highest lot of the night was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (Pestus) (1982), which comfortably met its pre-sale estimate at £2,374,000 ($3,190,181).

An energetic moment from Phillips’s London Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale. Courtesy Phillips

Once again, contemporary women artists confirmed their momentum at Phillips, reaching a high point after Emma McIntyre’s record-setting result when Flora Yukhnovich’s My Body knows Un-Heard of Songs (2017) fetched £1,276,000 ($1,714,689) against a £900,000-1,500,000 estimate.

Opening the sale was a purple-and-pink abstraction by Martha Jungwirth—now a familiar presence across Thaddaeus Ropac’s fair booths—which exceeded expectations at £180,600. A few lots later, an early work by Sasha Gordon sold just shy of its high estimate at £116,100. Demand for Gordon has been reignited by her blockbuster solo debut at Zwirner in New York, which made her the youngest artist represented by the mega-gallery. Painted in 2019 during her studies, Drive Through marks a transitional moment in her shift toward the more discursive, cartoon-inflected style that catapulted her into the global spotlight.

Later in the sale, Noah Davis’s Mitrice Richardson (2012) found a buyer within estimate at £451,500 ($606,726), while Derek Fordjour’s Regatta Pattern Study (2020) fetched £528,900 ($710,736), surpassing its high estimate of £500,000. Other notable results included Sean Scully’s Wall of Light Summer Night 5.10 (2010), which achieved £967,500 ($1,300,127) against a £600,000-800,000 estimate, and Robert Rauschenberg’s Gospel Yodel (Salvage Series), which sold for £709,500 ($953,426), more than doubling its £350,000-550,000 estimate. A 2012 sculpture by Bernar Venet fetched £516,000 ($693,401) from a £250,000-350,000 estimate, reflecting the artist’s rising demand—particularly in Asia.

Not everything landed. A Warhol-inspired Banksy portrait of Kate Moss, estimated at £700,000-1,000,000, failed to find a buyer, while a cacophonic abstract work by Sigmar Polke from 1983-84 also went unsold, likely due to its overly ambitious £600,000-800,000 estimate relative to current market demand for the artist.

For Olivia Thornton, Phillips’s head of modern and contemporary art, Europe, the overall positive auction reflected “the vibrancy of contemporary collecting” and reaffirmed London’s enduring magnetism: “London remains the cultural crossroads of the global art market.”

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Elisa Carollo

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October 17, 2025
How Demet and Alphan Eşeli’s INSTANBUL’74 Reimagines Turkey’s Role in the Global Arts Scene

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In this context, the festival takes on an especially timely theme—not only relevant in Turkey but globally—by examining the increasingly blurred, liminal space between perception and truth. At its core lies a question as old as philosophy yet more urgent than ever: “What is real?” In a world increasingly mediated and digitalized, with performative social rituals and shifting modes of perception, the festival provides a platform for artists, philosophers, intellectuals and creatives to explore how reality is shaped, fractured and reimagined.

Reality, after all, has never been fixed—it is molded, manipulated and continually bent to the needs of those who construct it. Art becomes a tool for reshaping and reimagining reality, offering alternative visions, subverting dominant narratives and exposing the fragile seams of perception. In doing so, it underscores our vulnerability at sensorial, cognitive and emotional levels.

The 15th edition of the IST. Festival, titled “What is Really Real?”, will unfold through a series of thought-provoking panels, conversations and debates. Bridging disciplines and opening space for critical thinking, speculation and exchange, it invites artists, thinkers and audiences alike to interrogate the fault lines between the authentic and the artificial today. This year’s lineup features notable figures from across creative industries, including celebrated artist José Parlá, Judd Foundation artistic director Flavin Judd, collector Désiré Freule, actor Waris Ahluwalia, director Paweł Pawlikowski and Cultured editor Julia Halperin, among others.

IST. FESTIVAL is a multidisciplinary festival with panels and talks, screenings, workshops and exhibitions in a free-admission program covering art, design, architecture, film, fashion, photography, music and literature. Will Ragozzino/BFA.com

Over the past fifteen years, the IST. Festival has staged events across a wide range of venues—museums, cultural institutions, historic buildings—hosting gala dinners at sites like Topkapı Palace and panels at Istanbul Modern. Deeply embedded in the city’s cultural fabric, the festival has consistently received support from the government and the Ministry of Culture. For the first time, the festival is also partnering with Istanbul Globetrotter, which will launch a new city guide during the event, offering a curated perspective on Istanbul’s creative and cultural landscapes.

Alongside its nomadic programming, the organization maintains a permanent home at the restored ’74 Gallery in Arnavutköy, a Bosphorus-side neighborhood in the Beşiktaş district. Housed in a three- to four-story historical yalı (waterside mansion), the space hosts contemporary exhibitions while honoring the ties to tradition and history embedded in the building itself. Presenting a diverse range of exhibitions and interdisciplinary events, the gallery has become a creative hub and connector for both local and international artists. For this edition of the festival, however, the goal is to move beyond the gallery’s walls—activating the neighborhood and transforming the city into a living laboratory, where installations, performances and ephemeral interventions disrupt and reframe the rhythms of everyday life.

Ultimately, one of the festival’s core aims is to reclaim its role as an international platform—inviting people from abroad, connecting them with local creatives, and demonstrating just how vibrant and alive the cultural scene in Istanbul, and in Turkey more broadly, still is.

“WE BELONG” was the first exhibition at ISTANBUL’74’s new space in Clubhouse Bebek, with works by Bosco Sodi, Jorinde Voigt, Anselm Reyle and Ahmet Doğu İpek, among others. KAMiL ONEMCi

As the conversation turns to how the art and cultural ecosystem is evolving—not only in Turkey but globally—Demet Müftüoğlu Eşeli and Alphan Eşeli agree that we are witnessing a sweeping transformation across creative industries. Technological shifts, the pandemic and the rise of A.I. have accelerated changes already underway. “I’m a filmmaker, and if you just look at cinema, the landscape has completely changed,” Alphan Eşeli noted. “I believe we’re living through a historic moment of profound change—something as seismic as the Industrial Revolution, which didn’t just reshape production but altered how people thought and how they engaged with the world.”

Today, we stand on the cusp of a similarly radical transformation, this time driven by computers and digital technology. “I don’t think it’s possible to remain untouched by it—especially in the arts. The way we create, think and communicate is already changing,” he said. “In cinema alone, the rise of streaming platforms, social media and algorithm-driven content has been a total shift. And I see Turkish artists and creatives at the forefront—many actively explore and embrace new technologies in their work.”

Since 2024, ISTANBUL’74 has had a permanent space in a renovated five-story traditional wooden building in Arnavutköy. Courtesy ISTANBUL’74

After a surprising detour into the global rise of Turkish soap operas—currently and somewhat unexpectedly, outpacing even K-movies in popularity—Demet Müftüoğlu Eşeli and Alphan Eşeli return to a core point: Turkey has a huge youth population, and with it a growing wave of young artists who are deeply attuned to what’s new. “There’s definitely still an underground scene evolving, especially in a city like Istanbul,” they noted. The younger generation is also far more connected to global currents, largely thanks to social media. “That kind of access and awareness is moving so much faster than it did 20 years ago, back when the internet was still limited,” Demet added. “Now, communication between international communities happens almost instantly, and I think the arts are becoming increasingly interconnected because of it.”

Through ISTANBUL’74, the Eşelis are working to amplify and facilitate these exchanges, building bridges through new formats and channels—including Instagram, where they are notably active. Their extended ecosystem, ’74GROUP, produces culturally relevant stories across multiple divisions, spanning everything from the festival itself to ’74PODCAST, which hosts ongoing talks with creatives from around the world, and ’74ONLINE, a shop dedicated to curated collaborations with artists, galleries and designers. Also under its umbrella is ’74STUDIO, a creative agency that specializes in brand direction, strategy, design and communications across art, fashion, gastronomy and hospitality.

Located in ISTANBUL’74’s Arnavutköy space, Listening Room bridges generations of music, offering era-defining classics alongside pioneering compositions. ILAY.ARTWORKS

As if that weren’t enough, they also co-founded the arts and social club CLUBHOUSE BEBEK in Istanbul and launched a seasonal creative space in Bodrum: 74ESCAPE, a community-based platform that features a store championing craft and design alongside an online diary spotlighting travel and culture from around the world.

Even the permanent gallery, ISTANBUL’74, has evolved into a year-round site for activations and creative connections—not only through an artist residency program for international talents but also as a gathering place for Istanbul’s younger generation. “That’s really the spirit behind what we’re doing, with the art combining with book clubs and the record and vinyl listening room,” Demet concluded. “It’s about creating spaces where people can come together, share ideas and build something meaningful.”

The Istanbul International Arts and Culture Festival (IST. FESTIVAL) takes place October 10-12, 2025.

Jetty, a work by Steven Messam in “BETWEEN HUMANKIND AND NATURE” at ESCAPE’74, Brodrum. © Volkan Calisir

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Elisa Carollo

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September 17, 2025
The New Futures Production Fund Links the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation and NYC’s New Museum

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Elisa Carollo

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September 15, 2025
Meet the Collector: For John Wieland, Collecting Art Is About Feeling at Home

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John Wieland’s collection, which he assembled with his late wife Sue, emphasizes discovery, encouraging visitors to see art—and consider the concept of home—in new and unexpected ways. Photo: Deanna Sirlin

John Wieland and his late wife, Sue, didn’t plan to become art collectors. When the couple began acquiring artworks nearly fifty years ago, they didn’t even think of it as collecting—they were motivated by simple necessity. “We had a house, and we needed some art on the walls,” Wieland tells Observer. But what began casually grew into a collection of more than 400 works that today serves as a cultural magnet in the Southeast.

Wieland built his career as a housing developer, eventually founding a firm, John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods. He achieved great success, and that success continues to shape his approach to life today. Although the couple’s first purchases were functional—a way to fill empty walls—John and Sue soon felt the need for a guiding principle, something beyond immediate attraction. Given his career and their interest in the concept of domestic life, the choice seemed obvious: their collection would focus on art about house and home.

“Almost all of us are fortunate enough to live in a home,” Wieland explains, which makes the theme nearly universal in its appeal. In the early days of the couple’s collecting journey, their interpretation was literal. “If we saw a work of art, it would need to have a fairly good-sized house right in the middle to qualify.” Over time, though, the scope expanded, and they “broadened it out so that it can be representative of what happens at home or a portion of the house.” This evolution led to acquisitions like a mid-sized painting by Haley Barker of a Christmas tree. “You think about the holiday and faith, and of course, the Christmas tree is part of it.”

From there, they established one of the collection’s central tenets: discovery. According to Wieland, the collection is meant to be “a new way of looking at art for the people who visit”—an ethos that would come to shape the founding of The Warehouse, the contemporary art institution that now houses the Wielands’ collection. The 37,000-square-foot warehouse on Atlanta’s west side was renovated to accommodate the growing holdings and opened in 2010. Since then, The Warehouse has served not only as a practical solution but also as a charitable way to share art and, as Wieland says, “complement the museum experience.”

Guided by the motif of domestic life, the collection ranges from literal depictions of houses to symbolic reflections of what happens within them. Courtesy of Mike Jensen

The Warehouse has its own leadership: director Philip Verre and curator Jack Wieland, who manage and interpret the collection beyond its ties to the family. The Wieland collection continues to grow, and since its opening, Wieland says that visitors are consistently surprised by what they encounter within its walls—few expect such breadth from a collection dedicated to house and home. While each person takes away something different, one piece that stands out is Blue Hallway (2000) by James Casebere. The photograph shows an interior hallway nearly submerged in water, with only the tops of doors and walls visible above the dark liquid. From the right-hand side, a spotlight cuts into the gloom, illuminating the edge of a doorway. In the dimness, the beam feels as bright as the sun. The work captures the complexity of the collection’s themes: the centrality of home, the sense of the unexpected—where does the light originate?—and the promise of discovery—what lies beneath the water?

A visit to The Warehouse is eye-opening, and there’s much we can still learn from the Wielands and their vision. But above all, one truth remains: art feels most alive when seen within a home.

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Leia Genis

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September 10, 2025
Consignor Revealed: Rare Keith Haring Subway Drawings Come to Sotheby’s from Larry Warsh

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Keith Haring, Untitled (Breakdancers and Barking Dog), 1985. Courtesy of Sotheby’s

As the November marquee auction season approaches and the major auction houses start to build momentum by revealing their top lots, the search for who has consigned what and why begins. Provenance, as we know, can play a big part in establishing and validating an artwork’s value, whether by sparking renewed interest, providing reassurance to buyers or adding art historical context. Sotheby’s, for its part, just announced that a group of thirty-one rare Keith Haring subway drawings will star in the Contemporary Day Sale on November 21 with a combined estimate of between $6.3 and $9 million. This is a very exciting moment for Haring’s collectors as none of these works have ever been offered at auction before, and it’s very difficult to find the originals in such well-preserved condition.

Haring came from a family of modest means in Pennsylvania. His father was an amateur cartoonist who, from his early years, encouraged Keith to invent his own characters. Haring’s talent for drawing led to his receiving a scholarship to attend the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he studied semiotics, but it was his contact with the copious street art that was everywhere in 1980s New York that inspired him most.

Haring started drawing in the subway just as a hobby while en route to work: noticing that the MTA covered unpaid advertisements with black matte paper, he began scrawling his inventive visual language on them in white chalk. In short order, his unique and highly recognizable style attracted his first fans. Nonetheless, Haring continued his drawings in front of the crowds and the NYPD, who ticketed and even arrested him for vandalism over the next five years. Describing them in an essay published for Art in Transit: Subway Drawings, published in 1984, he said felt that his work was “more of a responsibility than a hobby,” a way to leave a critical trace as an individual presence in a cannibalizing metropolis dominated by corporate interests and unstoppable real estate speculation and gentrification. Even when Haring’s career skyrocketed and he established himself as a leading figure in the downtown art scene, he said the subway was still his “favorite place to draw.”

SEE ALSO: ‘Party of Life’ Is a Celebration of Warhol, Haring and 1980s New York City in Munich

During his subway project, he appropriated thousands of black panels for energetic mark-making to build an inventory of iconic images, such as his nuclear dogs, angels, flying saucers, babies, smiley faces, etc.—the motifs mostly engineered at his seminal creative haunt, Club 57. “I think the origin of the subway drawings was part of how they came about in a sense, where it was part of Keith’s DNA,” Gil Vazquez, executive director of the Keith Haring Foundation, said in a statement. “There’s a significant component of generosity. When I think of the subway drawings, I think of them as one of Keith’s first acts of activism.”

Given the nature of urban guerrilla art, most of the subway drawings have been lost or destroyed, making the ones coming to auction a true rarity for fans and institutions looking to add to their collections. Because of their importance and rarity, the works have also been included in prominent exhibitions, including the Brooklyn Museum’s 2012 critically acclaimed exhibition of Haring’s career titled “Keith Haring: 1978-1982,” which marked the last occasion the group exhibited together. Most of the works coming to auction have a long exhibition history, like Untitled (Still Alive in ’85), which is one of the final subway drawings and has been featured in many prominent exhibitions at MoMA, the Reading Public Museum in Pennsylvania, Musee d’Art moderne de la Ville in Paris, de Young Museum in San Francisco and the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung in Rotterdam.

Tseng Kwong Chi, Keith Haring, drawing in the subway, New York, 1984. Photo © Muna Tseng Dance Projects, Inc. Art © Keith Haring Foundation

Behind their extraordinary survival is a passionate art collector, Larry Warsh, who has taken on stewardship of these thirty-one works for nearly 40 years, building the most exceptional and extensive assemblage of Haring’s subway drawings in private hands. Observer spoke with Wash to understand how those gems came into his collection, the importance of preserving these drawings and, more generally, what’s in his art collection today.

“I’ve been collecting Keith Haring since the mid-’80s, and collecting all kinds of artwork all along, drawings, subway drawings, even a car, anything to do with Keith that was very compulsive at the time,” Warsh told Observer. Arguably, the collector was one of the first supporters of Keith Haring, despite the fact that he doesn’t see himself as a patron in traditional terms. “I was a patron for him in supporting his creative self, what he stood for and what he did. I was not a traditional patron; I just gave money or attended all the gallery functions. I was more pure in the sense of seeing his creativity and what he was doing then. It was a different time.”

Warsh is also an art historian, having published three books about Keith Haring. When asked how he spotted Haring’s talent so early and realized that his work would have historical relevance, he demures. “First of all, it was him, as a creative being and a person. Wherever he drew as artwork, his energy and translation of symbols and signs were unique, and most people would feel comfortable looking at his art. It was art for everyone. He made art for everybody, and he was a generous person and cared about people; he cared about causes; he cared about kids.”

Those subway drawings were part of his tridimensional works—Warsh is currently writing a book on this—and link him to the notion of the Duchampian ready-made, bringing it to a more democratic and public level by appropriating elements in urban spaces. “He was a student of the immediate art act in drawing and painting on objects like Duchamp, so these are considered like found objects.”

While he sometimes tried to get them directly from the subway, Warsh admitted that peeling them out proved difficult, so he just started to find and buy them compulsively. “I basically hunted them down and tried to accumulate them as a body of work,” he said. “It was not about commerciality. It’s about historical importance. My feeling was that these were historically important.” For the same reason, he also started buying Basquiat’s notebooks, being one of the first to acknowledge the historical importance of those texts. Today, he also has the most extensive collection of them. “It’s not the commercial goal that propelled me into collecting. It was the manic, compulsive accumulation personality that I had for many, many years.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Warsh started collecting very early in his life, having been introduced to art by an uncle who was a collector of German art. However, he really got into it when he moved to downtown New York City, immersing himself fully in the art scene and the collective energy that shaped an entire community, creating the fertile ground for this entire moment of art history to happen. “I was interested in the energy of the time,” Warsh explained. “My good friend Renee Ricard used to visit me at all night hours with all kinds of things. So I learned with my eyes, and I felt with my emotions, and I had to look into the future and feel what I was collecting in the present would have value. Not just commercial value, but historical value.”

Keith Haring, Untitled (Boombox Head); est. $400,000-600,000. Courtesy of Sotheby’s

When asked why he wanted to part with them, Warsh said that he wanted to let them circulate and be seen again by giving the opportunity of ownership to another collector or, even better, an institution that will show them. “I think I did my job to accumulate them as the body of works,” he said. “They were shown in museums; we did a book, with one version in Mandarin. I don’t want to own much art anymore in the same way I wanted to. I’m thrilled with what I did, but at this point, it’s time for institutions to have a chance to add these drawings to their collections because they are the most important works by this artist, I believe.”

To further promote the value of this group of works, Sotheby’s is hosting an immersive exhibition of the subway drawings that will help visitors envision these works where they were initially conceived by turning the galleries into a vintage subway station with turnstiles, benches and archival footage. Warsh is excited to see what the auction house and exhibition partner Samsung (SSNLF) are cooking up, as it aligns with his desire to share Haring’s art with as many people as possible, particularly in the city. “I think New Yorkers will want to come and see this because everybody has always heard about them or seen pictures, but very few have had the chance to see these drawings in person,” he said. “Seeing them in person, seeing how fragile they are and how sensitive they are, will leave everyone amazed.” Wash concluded that he hopes the exhibition will further enhance the value of Keith Haring’s work and revive interest in it by showing its relevance as an essential part of a pivotal moment in New York’s cultural history.

“Art in Transit: 31 Keith Haring Subway Drawings from the Collection of Larry Warsh” will go on view at Sotheby’s York Avenue galleries from November 8-20 before going on the block on November 21 in the Contemporary Day Sale.

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Elisa Carollo

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October 31, 2024
Artsy President Dustyn Kim On Evolving Alongside the Company

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Artsy president Dustyn Kim says art has always been part of her life. Courtesy of Artsy

In 2017, Observer posed this question: As the online art auction space shrinks, is Artsy the heir apparent? In the years since, the art world has had many ups and downs, but the online art brokerage created in 2009 by Carter Cleveland has forged ahead, building partnerships with major institutions and a monumental digital library of for-sale artworks while edging out early challengers like Paddle8 and Auctionata. “Many of our competitors in the early days wanted to disrupt the art industry, so they would either compete directly with galleries by bringing artists on to their online galleries or compete with auction houses by running their own auction sites,” Cleveland told Observer in 2019. “These companies were able to generate revenue a lot faster than us because they went straight to that transactional model. But ultimately, the amount of inventory they could get was very limited because the rest of the industry didn’t want to work with them.”

That, in a nutshell, is how Artsy, which launched as a platform for artwork discovery, eventually became the largest online art marketplace globally by offering auction houses and art galleries a way to pivot to online sales—something the art world could no longer avoid during the pandemic. Today, the company is both a place to buy art and an influential voice in the art world—its industry reports and buyer facing editorial content help shape narratives around what’s hot in art right now.

Overseeing it all is newly appointed Artsy president Dustyn Kim, the first woman ever in the role. She joined the company as chief revenue officer in 2017, and she’s been largely responsible for expanding Artsy’s gallery business and strengthening its secondary market offerings. “It’s amazing to look at Artsy’s progression these past seven years,” she told Observer when we asked Kim about her work at Artsy. From there, she opened up about the evolution of the company and its users, the mechanics of building relationships in the art world and her own art collection.

You’ve been with Artsy since 2017. What initially attracted you to the company? From what I understand, you weren’t always in the art world.

My professional background centered on data and technology companies prior to Artsy, but art has always been a part of my life. My mom is an artist. She had multiple jobs in the art world—from working at a print- and paper-making studio to teaching college courses on painting. She did this while trying to build her practice and art world recognition, and I saw firsthand how difficult this industry can be. When the Artsy opportunity came along, I knew immediately that this was a company and a mission—to expand the art market to support more artists—that I wanted to be a part of. It was one of those moments in life where everything just clicked. All of those years developing an expertise in business finally paired with an industry that I’m passionate about evolving and growing.

What has your progression at Artsy been like in terms of responsibility?

I started by leading our Galleries & Fairs business, helping to grow the number of galleries that partner with Artsy to roughly 3,200 from over 100 countries. After a few years, I assumed responsibility for our secondary market teams, expanding the number of auction houses and benefit partners on Artsy and building our Artsy Auctions and private sales business. Throughout that time, we also built a robust marketplace operations team to handle everything from cybersecurity to customer support. With my most recent promotion, I am now responsible for Artsy’s internal operations as well, including finance, legal and corporate development.

How has Artsy changed since you came on?

It’s amazing to look at Artsy’s progression these past seven years. When I joined Artsy, we were focused purely on aggregation: getting all of the world’s art and art collectors on Artsy and making the process of discovering art easier and more joyful. On the gallery partner side, that meant tackling challenges like the lack of information about artwork pricing and availability. On the collector side, that involved using our data and technology to match people with artists and artworks they may never have otherwise discovered. Next, we focused on making the process of actually buying and selling art easier and more joyful. We’ve spent years building out eCommerce and all of the infrastructure that supports it, from online payment methods to shipping integration to fraud prevention.

We are now in a position to help grow the art market by bringing this all together in what we like to call ‘the art advisor in your pocket.’ Very few people have access to art advisors, but Artsy has all of the data and functionality to fill that gap. We can guide users and help them refine their taste, develop relationships with sellers, acquire works, and manage their collections—all on Artsy.

And how have the collectors who use the platform evolved?

In Artsy’s earlier days, our user base was what I call our “power users.” This is generally a group of people already familiar with the art world. They appreciate Artsy’s ability to connect them to the world’s fairs, gallery exhibitions, and auctions and are engaged in researching and discovering both well-known blue-chip artists and up-and-coming emerging artists. This group includes both newer and more established collectors, but they generally come to Artsy with a sense of what they’re looking for and an understanding of the art world. Now, we have a much more diverse group of collectors. With over 3 million users on Artsy, we have a global audience that ranges from people looking to make their first art purchase to people who have collected for years.

Particularly for these new and aspiring collectors, we’re continuously introducing new ways to help individuals find the art they love. This includes initiatives like Foundations, our online art fair, live now, that features works from small and midsize galleries from around the world that are known for nurturing early-career artists. Works are mostly priced under $10,000, and we invite really fantastic galleries to take part and create lots of storytelling around the featured artists and works. Foundations is an ideal context to find your first (or next) art purchase and discover plenty of new artists and galleries.

A lot of your work involves relationship building—do you see that as a plus?

A fair amount of my job involves relationship building—both now and in my prior roles at Artsy. I’ve always felt that understanding your customer is a core component of any leader’s job, but for an industry as unique as ours it’s an absolute imperative. Artsy’s mission is to expand the art market. We can’t do that without a nuanced understanding and appreciation of exactly what is and isn’t working in both the physical and digital realms of art buying and selling.

Major art world moments, like fairs, are always a great opportunity to see the industry in action. I personally prefer smaller gatherings—lunches with gallery directors or a walk-through of a new exhibition—can solidify relationships while giving me a closer look at how people are using Artsy and what more they want to see from us. I recently had lunch at AP Space, for example, and was able to connect with a few artists, collectors, and gallery directors in a more casual setting. It’s moments like those where I feel like I’m ingrained in this community.

You’re an art collector yourself. What can you tell me about your collection?

With an artist mother, collecting has always been a part of my life. I remember going to a benefit auction with my mom much earlier in my career and using my savings to bid on a vibrant 9-by-9-inch work on paper by Carol Salmanson. I was drawn to the calligraphic flow of the work, overlaid with fine, bright brushstrokes. Over the years, I’ve continued to refine my taste and viewpoint on the type of collection I want to build. At this point, I’m focused primarily on acquiring works by women artists. I also lean more towards emerging artists, partly because they are more likely to be within my budget range but more so because I want to directly support artists who may not yet be in the spotlight.

My most recent purchase was a work by Gabrielė Aleksė, a Lithuanian artist I discovered through Artsy. I initially saw her paintings in one of our “Curators’ Picks: Emerging Artists” collections on Artsy and was immediately drawn to the serenity of her works. I started following her on Artsy and watched as new works became available, eventually finding a work that I couldn’t live without that is now proudly displayed in my home. That’s the beauty of Artsy: I never would have known of this artist living and working over 4,000 miles away from me had Artsy not helped me discover her and then guided me through the international purchase process.

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Christa Terry

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August 19, 2024
Contemporary Art Conservation Raises Thorny Issues Around Responsibility

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A restorer works in the restoration studio of the Doerner Institut. Photo by Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images

Art is long, and life is short, according to an old Roman saying, but sometimes art doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain: the canvas warps, the metal bends, and the paper turns brown. New artworks may look like old works too soon, leaving their buyers feeling as though they’ve been had. In fiction, we have the works of Vonnegut’s Rabo Karabekian, whose paintings made with Sateen Dura-Lux (which promised to “outlive the smile on the Mona Lisa”) self-destruct. In real life, similar tales abound. One collector brought back to New York City gallery owner Martina Hamilton a painting she had purchased there by the Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum that looked as though the “painting was falling off the canvas,” the gallerist told Observer.

Art doesn’t come with warranties, and state consumer protection statutes only cover utilitarian objects. Art is sold “as is” by galleries and artists. (Can you imagine Consumer Reports reviewing art?) Still, dealers hope to maintain the goodwill of their customers, and artists don’t want to develop a reputation for shoddy work. It is not fully clear, however, what responsibility artists bear their when it comes to conservation, especially after a piece has been sold one or more times. It is particularly the case for artists who purposefully use ephemeral materials in their art (bee pollen, banana peels, lard, elephant dung, leaves, mud, moss and newspaper clippings, to name just a few examples).

Nerdrum, who is known for formulating his own paints (and constructing his own frames), was contacted by Hamilton about the deteriorating painting, and he directed the dealer to offer the buyer her choice of other works by him at the gallery in the same price range. The collector, however, didn’t want any other Nerdrum painting in the gallery, so the artist rehired the same model he had used originally and painted the entire image anew. The entire incident took a year to resolve.

Nerdrum isn’t the only artist who will try to make amends for work he or she created that doesn’t hold up. Manhattan painter David Novros was asked in 2006 what to do about a 1965 acrylic lacquer painting in the Menil Collection in Houston that had extensive “cracks, canyons and fissures” all over the surface, and he decided “to remake the work with the same materials as before.” The work, 6:30, is now dated ‘1965/2006.’ It’s not the first time this kind of thing has happened to Novros. In 1990, the Museum of Modern Art came to him about a 1966 painting in its collection whose canvas had discolored and was affecting the handmade plywood stretcher, and his solution was to scrape off the old paint and put on new. The museum dates the work, titled VI.XXXII, as ‘1966 (repainted in 1990).’

If alive and physically able, should artists be counted on to repair damage—caused by their own workmanship, shoddy materials or a collector’s mishandling—or are art’s creation and conservation so disparate that no one should attempt both? Experimentation with materials is both an element of artistic freedom and a headache for future conservators. When Pablo Picasso glued a piece of newsprint onto a canvas, producing what was first called “synthetic cubism” and then just “collage,” a monumental event in modern art history took place. On the other hand, Margaret Ellis, professor of conservation at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts and director of conservation at the Thaw Conservation Center at the Morgan Library, told Observer that if “Picasso had called up a conservator and said, ‘What do you think of sticking some cut-out newsprint on?’ the conservator would have died.”

There are several reasons why contemporary art may not hold up, even in the short run. Experimenting with materials is one; another is the fact that the training of artists nowadays rarely includes educating them about the properties of the materials they use. Then, there is a lack of funds. At early points in their careers, the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siquieros and French cubist Fernand Leger both painted on burlap sacks, while Marc Chagall made designs on bed sheets and Franz Kline worked on cardboard. Beyond that is sometimes simply a lackadaisical approach to how things are made.

A more recent instance of redoing the past occurred in 2006 when Damien Hirst’s 1991 shark-in-a-tank work The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, which had been deteriorating badly because the artist originally hadn’t used a sufficient amount of formaldehyde, was replaced. Owned by hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen (he bought it in 2004 for $12 million) and currently on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the work “was restored following the advice of conservators. There is only the one work under that title,” according to a spokesperson for London’s White Cube, which represented the artist. In fact, Hirst cleaned out the tank, sawed in half another shark and made sure that this one was more properly pickled. This brings up an important point: maintaining the monetary and historical value of a work of art may requires a range of counter-measures, some of which are intentionally kept vague.

Damien Hirst with one of his formaldehyde sharks at White Cube in London in 2007. CHRIS YOUNG/AFP via Getty Images

Who’s in charge—the collector, the conservator or the artist?

When repairing ancient objects, Old Masters works or almost anything produced by a creator long dead, the watchword for conservators is generally don’t do anything that can’t be undone by another conservator in the future. For instance, inpainting—filling in areas on a canvas where the original oil paint has chipped off—is often done with a water-based medium that can be easily removed. With contemporary artworks, especially those by living artists, conservators may work in the same way, but they may try contacting the artist to learn what materials they used and if they want to be part of the restoration.

Tom Learner, a conservator at the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles, leans toward contacting the original artist. “I believe in using the artist as a conservator, and paying the artist as an expert,” he told Observer. “The artist has a better grasp on what should be done.” He added that collectors need to know that if they “are buying works that have untested materials, these kinds of problems are part of the deal.” Maybe. Understanding the artist’s intentions and processes, as well as eliciting the artist’s opinion about a conservator’s plans for repairing the artist’s work, is all well and good, but conservators may not choose to replicate a problem that caused the work to deteriorate in the first place.

Artworks with what conservators call “inherent vices”—defects that eventually make them fall apart—may just be too far gone for restoration. Greg Kucera, a gallery owner in Seattle, Washington, exhibited a sculptural work by Jeffry Mitchell in the 1980s: “a brilliant body of sculptural work made of thin latex, formed in muffin tins, bundt cake pans, gelatin molds and other kitchen and cookery forms.” According to Kucera, “they were incredibly smart looking, but also delicate. In the exhibition, he hung them on the wall with thumbtacks. By the end of the show, most of them had torn at their corners and the latex had started to disintegrate. He just didn’t know then the risks of working with latex and how to protect against its failings.” The gallery had sold every work in the show and had to renegotiate each of those sales to substitute non-latex works. “It was a painful process but we believed in the artist so we did what we had to do to rescue these sales.” Luckily, the buyers were forgiving.

But “conservators are not obligated to contact a living artist or that person’s estate,” Mary Gridley, a conservator and founder of Art Conservation Solutions in Long Island City, New York, told Observer. Since her clients are usually private and institutional collectors, she lets them make the call. However, she recommends that the artists be contacted, as it “is nearly always in the collector’s best interest to understand how an artist intends their work to look, how they feel about aging and changes in their work over time and their tolerance and approach to conservation and restoration.” An artist unhappy with the conservation of their work may create problems for a collector, as art collector Scott Mueller, the owner of Cady Noland’s 1990 Log Cabin Blank With Screw Eyes and Cafe Door, discovered when she disavowed the piece after it was “restored” with new wood without her permission or any notice of the change. That disavowal made Log Cabin largely unsellable. Conservation not only preserves a work of art but also its current and future value. Sique Spence, director of New York’s Nancy Hoffman Gallery, also recommended that living artists at least should “be consulted in how to proceed. I feel like studio repairs impact the value less than outside restoration.”

SEE ALSO: Art Collector Spotlight – Craig Robins On Collecting Baldessari

The law itself doesn’t give collectors clear direction. “One does not need to get an artist’s permission to restore or conserve their work,” Joshua J. Kaufman, a lawyer in Washington, D.C. who frequently is involved in art issues, told Observer. A poor job of restoration, or just one of which the artist disapproves, can back up the claim that the artwork’s owner has so damaged the piece that the creator’s esteem is adversely affected. “The collector runs the risk of damaging reputation,” since the 1990 federal statute, the Visual Artists Rights Act, “specifically gives that reputation right to the artist.”

Kaufman said that “it would be prudent” for dealers to tell prospective buyers of artworks that may have inherent vices, although Spence didn’t think “a discussion of future problems would be such a good selling point.” Lemon laws don’t exist in the art trade, so dealers make their own decisions.

Some artists are eager to be part of any restoration, others less so. Marc Mellon, a Redding, Connecticut-based sculptor of small and large-scale bronze works, told Observer that he is “periodically contacted by both homeowners and institutional clients with questions about care and restoration of my bronze sculptures,” and he is happy to offer some advice. However, he’d “much rather recommend a foundry or individual specializing in the restoration of bronze works, particularly if the sculpture would benefit from a more thorough cleaning and re-patination.”

An artist’s sense of obligation to his or her work may sometimes be time-limited, contractually at times—public art commissions usually contain a clause in the agreement stipulating the artist’s responsibility for “patent or latent defects in workmanship” for between one and three years—or based on evolutionary changes in the artist’s life and work. Artist Frank Stella once said that he may be willing to help repair one of his works if “it’s not more than two or three years old.” He uses different materials for specific works, and “after two or three years, I don’t have any of the materials left over. I don’t have the expertise to deal with it; if I were to attempt a repair, I’d make a mess of it.”

Back in the 1990s, Stella refused to take part in the restoration of a quarter-century-old sculptural painting that had been brought in for repairs to Brooklyn conservator Len Potoff, who contacted the artist as a matter of practice. “He said that he couldn’t do it,” the conservator told Observer. “He’s not where he was twenty-five years ago, and he couldn’t put himself in that zone. At the time, I was really pissed, but now I find that point of view commendable.”

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Daniel Grant

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July 31, 2024
Theaster Gates Will Help Guide an Expanding Forman Arts Initiative

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Artist Theaster Gates is partnering with Forman Arts Initiative. Holger Hollemann/picture alliance via Getty Image

Theaster Gates, the American artist known for his wide-ranging social practice, sculptures and installations, will use his expertise in community cultural programming to help guide a new project from the Philadelphia-based Forman Arts Initiative (FAI) in a new multi-year partnership. The organization, founded in 2021 by art collectors Michael Forman and Jennifer Rice, has acquired nearly an entire block in Philadelphia’s East Kensington neighborhood that FAI plans to transform into an arts center complete with a gallery and an emphasis on community activation.

Gates will work FAI’s director Adjoa Jones de Almeida, the Brooklyn Museum’s former deputy director of learning and social education, to shape the renovation and programming of the new campus. Located across three buildings and two lots, the 100,000-square-foot site will open gradually over the next two years. “This collaboration with Adjoa—who also comes from an art and community engagement background—gives us both an opportunity to build on the lessons we’ve learned from our previous respective experiences, and to develop a unique model for what a community-grounded, globally-relevant art space can look like,” said Gates in a statement.

An interior view of one of the FAI campus buildings. Photo: Isabel Kokko/Courtesy Forman Arts Initiative

Gates has pursued similar projects in the past. Through his Rebuild Foundation, the artist has spent years acquiring abandoned properties across Chicago and turning them into creative community centers for an initiative known as the Dorchester Projects, often using scrap materials to create new artwork that generates additional funds for the project. In 2021, the Rebuild Foundation partnered up with Prada to create the Dorchester Industries Experimental Lab, a Chicago-based three-year incubator emphasizing designers of color. There’s also Gates’ 2016 acquisition of the city’s shuttered St. Laurence Elementary School, which is set to transform into an arts incubator complete with studios, classrooms and labs.

SEE ALSO: Matisse, Maillol and One Ebullient Evening: Inside MoMA’s 2024 Party in the Garden

This won’t be the first time the artist has worked with FAI, which helped fund his 2022 installation Monument in Waiting at Drexel University and counts works by the artist among its collection. “Since meeting Theaster over seven years ago, Michael and I have been continually impressed by his expansive exploration of history, especially Black and Brown history, through social practice, performance, land art, and exquisitely crafted sculptures,” said Rice in a statement.

What is FAI’s place in Philadelphia’s art scene?

FAI’s current initiatives include its grantmaking program Art Works in partnership with the Philadelphia Foundation, which will distribute $3 million in funding over five years to community artists and organizations across Greater Philadelphia. As of last year, the organization partnered up with Mural Works to establish Public Works, a residency program that places artists with government agencies to develop artwork. FAI’s star consultants include board members like artist Rashid Johnson and expert advisors like Adam Pendleton and Jessica Morgan of Dia Art Foundation.

Adjoa Jones de Almeida, Michael Forman and Jennifer Rice at an event celebrating the new campus. Photo: Isabel Kokko/Courtesy Forman Arts Initiative

FAI’s new campus will include a gallery space to showcase the private art collection of Forman and Rice. Artists including Cecily Brown, Cindy Sherman, Sam Gilliam, Mark Bradford, Alma Thomas, Romare Bearden, Gordon Parks, Kerry James Marshall and Lorna Simpson are represented in the holdings, alongside Philadelphia-based artists like Roberto Lugo and Alex da Corte. Operating as a nontraditional gallery, the artworks will be utilized in rotating exhibitions, public programs and partnerships with schools and youth development organizations.

Outdoor spaces and community engagement rooms at FAI’s new site will open later this year, followed by a larger programmatic space and gallery in 2026. Renovations will begin this summer, with campus design aided by architectural firms DIGSAU and Ian Smith Design Group. Meanwhile, the organization will speak with residents, leaders and activists across West Kensington and Philadelphia for input on how to utilize additional spaces to best meet the needs of local communities.

“Since its founding, collaboration and dialogue with Philadelphia’s diverse communities have been central to how FAI supports the city’s cultural landscape, and those are the principles that will guide the vision for what this campus will become,” said Jones de Almeida in a statement. “We understand that through this dynamic collaboration with Theaster along with the rich network of artists and communities already engaged with FAI, we have the potential to create something really unique for Philadelphia.”

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Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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June 5, 2024
At Bonhams, 75 Works by Overlooked Artist Bertina Lopes Make Their Auction Debut

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The late Bertina Lopes’ studio in Rome. Courtesy Bonhams

Bertina Lopes, the late Mozambican-Italian artist known for both her large-scale abstract works and her political advocacy, was a pioneer in the merging of European and African art movements. Now seventy-five of Lopes’ paintings, drawings and sculptures will head to auction for the first time at Bonhams.

The works are expected to fetch between £300,000 ($382,000) and £500,000 ($636,000) total in an online sale running from June 4 to June 19. Sold on behalf of her estate, the artworks have remained untouched since her death in 2012 and come directly from Lopes’ Rome studio, which doubled as her apartment.

In keeping with Lopes’ oeuvre, many of the lots reflect the evolving political situation in the artist’s home country of Mozambique, which endured a war for independence and civil war during her lifetime. “Her work for a very long time has always been quite politically engaging,” Helene Love-Allotey, Bonham’s head of sale, told Observer.

Bertina Lopes, Il canto della natura (The song of nature), (2000). Courtesy Bonhams

Born under colonialism in Maputo to Portuguese-Mozambican parents, Lopes initially became acquainted with contemporary European movements like Modernism when she left to study in Lisbon. She would return to Mozambique in 1953 to work as an artist and professor, where she became ingrained in a circle of poets, writers and political activists and formed anti-fascist and anti-colonialist beliefs as the country’s political situation worsened.

These views would eventually force her to leave Mozambique for Portugal in the early 1960s. Two years later, Lopes fled to Rome after her political activism led to prosecution by the Portuguese International and State Defense Police. There she befriended diplomats, journalists, intellectuals and key players of Italy’s art scene like Marino Marini, Renato Guttuso, Carlo Levi and Antonio Scordia, hosting them at famed rooftop dinners at her apartment alongside her husband Francesco Confaloni. “Throughout her life, up until her death, she was constantly socializing with poets and actors and artists,” said Love-Allotey, who noted that visitors to Lopes’ studio often left personal notes on the walls.

Bertina Lopes in her studio in Maputo 1986. Courtesy Archivo Bertina Lopes/Bonhams

Bertina Lopes lived double lives as artist and activist

In addition to producing artwork that reflected current events in Mozambique, Lopes in Rome also served as the cultural attaché of Mozambique’s embassy. In part due to her connections with Mozambique presidents Joaquim Chissano and Armando Guebuza, she even played a role in peace accords that in 1992 put an end to 15 years of civil war in Mozambique, according to Bonhams.

Several pieces created by Lopes following this era will star in the upcoming Bonhams sale, including paintings like the 1996 Life is a volcanic eruption, 1995 Moments are the rings of time and 2000 The Song of nature; all of which are expected to realize between £15,000 ($19,000) to £20,000 ($25,000) each. Her auction record was established in 2022 when Bonhams sold Lopes’ 1976 work Ritratto for $26,500.

Throughout her lifetime, Lopes represented Mozambique in international exhibitions like the Venice Biennale, with her work currently displayed in its 2024 edition. Her art has been additionally showcased in major shows like a 1973 exhibition at Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Foundation and retrospectives at Rome’s Palazzo Venezia in 1986, Palazzo della Cancelleria Apostolica in 2002 and Saltoun Gallery in 2022.

Yet despite having been exhibited widely, Lopes was never commercially represented while alive. “I think she’s been overlooked,” said Love-Allotey. “Now, more people are gaining awareness and I really hope with this auction that more people discover her work.”

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Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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May 31, 2024
Collector Spotlight: Don and Mera Rubell On 60 Years of Marriage and Art

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Mera and Don Rubell at the Washington, D.C., campus of the Rubell Museum. Shuran Huang for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Don and Mera Rubell first met in the early 1960s in the library of Brooklyn College. The duo, now aged 83 and 80 respectively, sat at the same table for six months without saying a word to each other. “Then he says, would you marry me?” Mera tells Observer.

When they revisited the library 50 years later, they were astonished to discover that their initial meeting had taken place on the art floor. “We didn’t know at the time, because neither one of us had anything to do with art,” says Mera. She was a psych major at Brooklyn College, while Don was a mathematics graduate from Cornell.

Today, however, art is very much a part of their lives. The Rubells oversee one of the preeminent collections of contemporary art in the U.S., with 7,400 works by more than 1,000 artists, and they have a widely acknowledged and well-earned reputation as spotters of young talent. “We’ve only had one week where we haven’t owed the art world money,” Don tells Observer. What’s less well-known is just how much their relationship is at the heart of their collecting activities. Don and Mera will celebrate 60 years of marriage and 59 years of buying art this year, and they aren’t planning on slowing down anytime soon.

The Rubells’ humble beginnings

They fell into art collecting while living in Chelsea, where the couple walked around the studio-filled neighborhood in between breaks of studying and began building relationships with the artists working and living there. “At some point, they said, ‘Well why don’t you buy something?’” recalls Mera. But with Don attending medical school and Mera working as a teacher on a $100 weekly salary, they didn’t have an art collector’s budget. So they agreed to begin acquiring works in the $50 to $100 range by putting aside funds for modest payment plans.

After relocating to Miami from New York in the 1990s, the couple now sustain their passion for art through real estate. They run Rubell Hotels, which Mera describes as “a day job to pay for the collecting.” And as for the collecting? Masterpieces by the likes of Kehinde Wiley, Yayoi Kusama Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami can be seen at their Rubell Museum, a private art institution with locations in Miami and Washington, D.C.

The idea to open their collection to the public came from the Rubells’ son Jason, who alongside his artist sister, Jennifer, got the art bug from his parents. As a young teen, Jason acquired his first piece—a painting by the then-rising star George Condo—with a payment plan funded by a tennis racket-stringing business. He went on to study art history at Duke, where his senior project focused on how private collections become public museums. “That was the seed that got us involved,” says Mera. “He was so seduced by the idea of these private collectors becoming public institutions that he encouraged us to do the same.”

In 1993, they opened what was then known as the Rubell Family Collection in a two-story warehouse formerly used for storage by the Drug Enforcement Agency in Miami’s Wynwood area. The area’s transformation from a once-underdeveloped neighborhood into a leading arts district is often credited to the Rubells, who also played a role in convincing Art Basel leaders to bring the fair to Miami Beach. To keep up with their growing collection, Don and Mera moved the renamed Rubell Museum to an expanded space in the Allapattah district of Miami—another neighborhood that has seen a proliferation of arts spaces and increasing gentrification in recent years. In 2022, they opened a Washington, D.C., outpost in a former school once attended by Marvin Gaye.

The Rubell collection is built on consensus

The couple were early collectors of artists like Keith Haring. Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Despite having been in the art collecting game for more than half a century, the Rubells continue to focus on truly contemporary work. “A lot of collectors fixate on their generation and they stick with that generation,” says Mera. “All of a sudden, 50 years later, you wake up and say, ‘Oh my god, I’m only focused on artists that are dying or dead.’”

They primarily focus on work by young artists and those who haven’t yet received mainstream recognition—the same tactic they applied when becoming early collectors of now-famed artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Cindy Sherman. “The dream and the fantasy is really to find the new Basquiat. And there always is a new Basquiat,” says Mera. The couple pointed to the French-Senegalese Alexandre Diop and Havana-born Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, as well as several young Los Angeles-based artists, as emerging talents to keep an eye on. While the Rubells try not to sell their artwork, they occasionally deaccession pieces to fund the acquisition of new ones.

Don and Mera say they are offered the best works by artists and gallerists who know it will be shared with the public. “They don’t want you to hide it in your basement, they want to show other people,” says Don. The couple is known for their intensive approach to art acquisition, which involves studio visits, in-depth conversations with artists and a rule that Don, Mera and their son Jason must unanimously agree on every purchase. If even one family member vetoes, the acquisition is a no-go. The three bring different strengths to the table, according to Mera, who describes herself as “more impulsive,” while Don focuses on research and Jason brings an art history perspective.

“I would say 50 percent of the time, we agree immediately, and 50 percent of the time, it’s a bloody battle,” says Don. The trio has only broken protocol once, when Don viewed a work he considered “absolutely fantastic” but his wife and son weren’t quite as enthusiastic about. “I bought the work without consulting everybody, and then Mera and Jason made my life so miserable that it was the only time we canceled,” he recalls.

Consensus also shapes how the Rubells operate as a couple. “It’s frightening when someone is out of control passionate about something and has the checkbook to spend it,” says Mera, adding that their process is reflective of how they started their life together. “It could have been his money, my money or our money. And it became our money,” she says. “So if we’re going to collect art, that decision has to be in the ‘we,’ not with an ‘I.’”

Art as a multigenerational affair

The art collectors also seek input from their daughter Jennifer, who chooses not to participate in their collecting activities but still participates in acquisition conversations, and their five grandchildren. “We have the eyes of different generations looking at the work,” says Don. “Ultimately, the history of what this work will be depends on a lot of different eyes, thousands of eyes, looking at a piece of work over time. So this is a very unfair advantage over others.”

Kaari Upson, Rubells, (2014). Courtesy the Rubell Museum

When it comes to the future of the Rubell Museum, both Don and Mera concede that they “won’t live forever.” They’re hopeful that their children and grandchildren will continue as stewards of the collection. Although “we’d be very upset if it became a chore for the next generation, or the generation after that,” adds Don. “They have to have the joy that we have.”

But for now, the Rubells are happy to continue pursuing fresh talent and experimenting with new programs. A recent collaboration with theater company Miami New Drama, for example, saw playwrights stage shows inspired by and performed in front of artwork hanging in the Miami Rubell Museum. One of the dramatic works centered on the 2014 piece Rubells by the late Kaari Upson, who was commissioned to create a portrait of Don and Mera for their 50th anniversary. Instead of photographing the collectors for a traditional painting, she asked for the couple’s shared mattress and cast it in silicone. The Rubells describe the journey their anniversary portrait took from mattress to play as “a way to understand what art does to the brain and imagination.”

It can also be seen as mirroring their own journey in the art world, which has strengthened their marriage instead of strained it. “My story is not about a successful woman with a vision to make something happen,” says Mera. “My story is really about how to make something happen inside of a relationship. And then, by extension, inside of a family.”

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Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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March 29, 2024
The Union League Club of Chicago Is Selling Its Treasured Monet

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Claude Monet, Pommiers en Fleurs, 1872. Courtesy Union League Club of Chicago

The Union League Club of Chicago is selling a rare claude monet painting that has been in its collection for over a century. The social club, which previously explored the artwork’s sale during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, will use sale proceeds to fund a $10 million renovation.

“This is no easy decision for the Board and our club and we recognize that art is an iconic part of our identity,” said Cynthia Doloughty, the club’s president, in a statement. “So, too, are premiere facilities, second-to-none experiences and a solid financial foundation.”

The club traces its roots back to the Union Leagues of America. Formed in 1862 to support Abraham Lincoln and the Union, the association had branches across the U.S. In 1879, former members helped establish the Union League Club of Chicago (ULCC), which since 1926 has been located in a Beaux-Arts building in Chicago’s Loop neighborhood.

SEE ALSO: Inside London’s National Portrait Gallery Gala

For more than a century, Monet’s 1872 painting Pommiers en Fleurs has adorned the club’s second floor when it wasn’t loaned out to museums like the Chicago Art Institute. The work was acquired in 1895 by Judge John Barton Payne, chair of the club’s art committee, who subsequently sold it to ULCC for a mere $500.

The painting was valued significantly higher in 2020 when the club proposed selling the work for between $5 million and $15 million amid financial struggles stemming from the pandemic. During that time, it cut around 75 percent of its staff, in addition to decreasing salaries and raising more than $500,000 in member donations. However, the club eventually declined a $7.2 million offer for the painting from an Australian art dealer, who subsequently took ULCC to court. In 2021, a judge ruled that the club wasn’t bound to the deal.

Second time’s a charm?

Now, the 19th-century painting is back on the market. ULCC is also offering up the 1917 Land of Mañana by Walter Ufer, a German-born artist who was raised in Kentucky. Both works will be sold through the Winston Art Group, a New York-based art advisory and appraisal firm. The club didn’t specify the estimated price of either painting, but Frank DeVincentis, who is heading its renovation efforts, told The Chicago Tribune that the Monet’s value is in “much greater excess” of the $7.2 million figure offered in 2020.

Funds will support Project Burnham, a multi-year renovation initiative that will see the club’s facilities, rooms and other infrastructure upgraded. In addition to capital investments in event and dining spaces and athletics and spa services, proceeds from the paintings will also be used to pay off some of ULCC’s debt.

The social club is also considering funneling money into expanding its art holdings. “The Board, with the Art Committee, will consider reinvesting a portion of the sale proceeds to augment the art collection,” said Doloughty. Although the Monet has long been considered the “crown jewel” of the ULCC, the clubhouse still has a 700-piece art collection that has been referred to as “the other art institute in Chicago.”

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering the club’s close ties to several cultural institutions (it supported the establishment of the Art Institute, Field Museum and the Harold Washington Library). With paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and photographs, the club’s collection has everything from early American portraits to contemporary works. Highlights include Ed Paschke’s 199 Primondo and Roger Brown’s 1989 Chicago Taking a Breather. Around one-third of the club’s holdings were produced by female artists, including local artistic heavyweights like painter Gertrude Abercrombie.

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Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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March 22, 2024
On Arts Philanthropy: Why Everyone Wants to Be Komal Shah

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Komal Shah in front of a painting by Elizabeth Murray. Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

This February saw the death of Lord Jacob Rothschild, a philanthropist who did much for the arts in his lifetime and had recently spoken out about how disappointed he was to find that today’s wealthiest philanthropists are “not as interested in art as they once were.” His frustration is one shared by many organizations and artists alike who cannot understand why it is such an uphill struggle to convince, say, the Silicon Valley tech community, of the value the arts can have in a society.

One answer is to acknowledge, and perhaps even embrace, the fact that being involved with the arts can be a lot of fun, highly social and often, very glamorous. Lord Rothschild, for all the work he did for the arts, did not project fun and glamour. Hence the appeal of a new generation of philanthropic role models who are young, glamorous and even a little bit sexy. We’ve entered the era of philanthropists like Komal Shah, who are redefining what it means to support the arts.

For the past year, Komal Shah has been the collector du jour in art world circles. In 2023, the foundation she and her husband run launched a catalogue of their personal art collection titled “Making Their Mark: Art by Women in the Shah Garg Collection.” This was followed in November by an eponymous exhibition in New York, which is set to close at the end of March.

Shah has seemingly struck a chord in the art world. Not only do influential thinkers surround her—the catalogue was edited by curators Mark Godfrey (formerly of Tate Modern) and Katy Siegel (of SFMOMA), and Cecilia Alemani, Artistic Director of the 2022 Venice Biennale, curated the exhibition—but every media outlet from the New York Times to Harper’s Bazaar to the Financial Times has interviewed her and continues to court her to give keynote speeches. We are often asked by prospective clients who want to establish themselves as patrons of the arts, whether they, too, can be like Komal Shah. “What do I have to do? How much do I have to give? Who do I need to collaborate with?”

SEE ALSO: What’s Missing from the Art World? Giving Back

While it might seem superficial to some traditionalists that others would want to mirror Shah’s limelight, we believe there are two important lessons to be learned. First, whatever Shah is doing is encouraging others to take an interest in arts philanthropy, and that’s a good thing. Second, Shah’s rise did not just happen overnight.

It was over twelve years ago that Shah first became a trustee of the Asia Art Museum in San Francisco. Since then, she has gradually developed her giving and collecting, largely out of the public eye. In 2014, she joined the Director’s Circle at SFMoMA and helped fund acquisitions. After a few years, she became a trustee of SFMOMA and also the Tate Americas Foundation. She has provided exhibition support at the Hirshhorn Museum, backed Cecilia Alemani’s main exhibition at the 2022 Venice Biennale, and perhaps most interestingly, created the “Artists on the Future” annual conversation series at Stanford University featuring leading women in the arts like Lorna Simpson, Thelma Golden and Lynda Benglis. The point is that Shah had dedicating herself to the arts long before much of the world took notice—before magazines started asking for interviews, before the ‘Shah Garg Collection’ started to be mentioned on artist’s CVs and before she was included in ArtNews’ list of Top 200 Collectors.

Shah may have flown under the radar for so long because Silicon Valley, where she is based, has long been a blind spot for the art world. But beyond that, what the story shows is that it took over a decade of consistent engagement and dedication for others to see what she was doing and to want to emulate it.

There is a real need today for more positive role models for future philanthropists in the arts. Arguably, any nation that wants to give a real boost to its cultural landscape could do a lot worse than to assemble a council of experienced and dedicated philanthropists and development specialists to implement PR strategies to make arts philanthropy ‘cool’ again. Shah’s journey would be an ideal case study.

But although Lord Rothschild and Komal Shah seem about as far apart as two philanthropic icons can be, they both share important traits: passion, patience and persistence. You don’t simply wake up as Komal Shah; you grow, through years of commitment, into a role that shapes the future of the arts.

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Aurelie Cauchy and Leslie Ramos

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March 22, 2024
The Pinkowitz Gift Adds 300 Revolutionary Mexican Prints to the Met’s Collection

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Francisco Dosamantes, The cart of death, (1944). Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

While volunteering at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in 2009, JoAnn Pinkowitz was struck by the institution’s “Vida y Drama: Modern Mexican Prints,” an exhibition celebrating socially engaged printmakers like Diego Rivera, Leopoldo Méndez and Francisco Dosamantes.

These names would go on to dominate Pinkowitz’s art collection, which focused on revolutionary prints from both Mexican artists and Americans inspired by the nation’s culture. “It was JoAnn’s vision to build a world-class collection, and she went about it quite methodically,” her husband Richard told Observer. “Her mantra, to each dealer, curator and auction house, was: ‘Is it museum quality?’ She accepted no less.”

To carry out the wishes of JoAnn Pinkowitz, who died in 2022, the more than 300-piece collection will now find a new home at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met). “Combined with our outstanding existing collection, the Pinkowitz gift makes the Met one of the most important repositories of Mexican prints in the United States, one that is quickly becoming a resource much used by artists, students and scholars alike,” said Max Hollein, the museum’s director, in a statement.

Elizabeth Catlett, Sharecropper, (1952). Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

Addressing social issues with woodcuts and linocuts

The gift will fill gaps in the Mexican holdings of the Met’s drawing and prints department, which has more than 2,000 works spanning the 18th and 20th Centuries. Pinkowitz’s collection largely draws from members of the Taller de Gráfica Popular or Workshop of Popular Graphic Art, a Mexican prints collective founded in 1937 that focused on art for social causes.

Included in the donation is the 1948 Rio Escondido series by Mendéz, one of the collective’s founders. His linocuts were used as a backdrop for the opening and closing sequences of Emilio Fernández’s film of the same name. The Workshop wasn’t limited to Mexican artists but included Americans like Elizabeth Catlett, who moved to Mexico in the 1940s. Her 1952 Sharecropper, a testament to the lives of Black women in the South, is also part of Pinkowitz’s gift.

Alfredo Zalce, Acrobat, (1965). Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pinkowitz, who previously donated works to the Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard Art Museums, validated the quality of each piece with museum curators. “After the first five or ten years, JoAnn personally knew most of the curators in the print field and befriended them all,” said Richard. “Most of her calls to curators ended with, ‘Let’s have lunch soon.’ And she did.”

JoAnn Pinkowitz also became interested in Chinese Revolutionary prints after discovering the political and visionary similarities they had with Mexican artists, he said. Pinkowitz focused on works by artists involved in China’s Modern Woodcut Movement, which used inexpensive art materials to disseminate political messages during the 1930s and 1940s. A group of 31 woodcuts by the likes of printmakers Gu Yuan, Wo Zha, Yan Han and Chen Yanqiao will also be gifted to the Met.

“The Modern Woodcut Movement is an important but understudied chapter in the history of 20th-century Chinese art,” said Joseph Scheier-Dolberg, curator of Chinese paintings in the Met’s Asian art department, in a statement. “Thanks to the Pinkowitzs, these excellent and well-preserved examples help make the Met a necessary destination for any student of this significant movement.”

Selections from the Pinkowitz collection will go on display in early 2025 in the Met’s Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery.

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Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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March 14, 2024
Introducing the Man Behind KingsArts: Dr. Raymond Wong Launches New Contemporary Art Platform

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Dr. Wong has set out on a mission to bring Chinese history and culture to the forefront through contemporary artwork.

Press Release
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Jul 19, 2022

HONG KONG, July 19, 2022 (Newswire.com)
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In an effort to empower both contemporary artists and art collectors on a global scale, Dr. Raymond Wong has launched KingArts, a contemporary art trading platform. This initiative is one of many launched by Wong, who has been fundamental to the success of many educational programs promoting Chinese art, history, and culture in recent years.

A man of vision, Dr. Wong aims to bring Chinese history and culture to the forefront of the contemporary art world by showcasing unique pieces of work that have interesting stories and history behind them. The KingArts app offers strategic promotion through online and offline marketing advancement services targeting U.S. markets. Through the platform, users can gain access to both quality artwork and cultural education.

In 2015, Dr. Wong launched a student exchange program between two prestigious universities: Yale University in the United States and Hong Kong Chinese University in Hong Kong. Each year, 12 students from each university were given the opportunity to travel to their university’s international counterpart to learn about each country’s respective culture and history.

Dr. Wong’s decision to support such educational programs was rooted in his own passion for academia and learning. After graduating from Tsinghua University School of Fine Arts – Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management – Sotheby’s School of Art in 2018 with a master’s degree in Art Management, Wong went on to become the honorary Life Vice President for The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Foundation and member of the New Asia College at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Board of Trustees.

In his formative years, Dr. Wong worked closely with his father in the trade industry. It was during these early years that Dr. Wong began traveling around the world, building business relationships from a very young age. This line of work foreshadowed what would eventually become Wong’s professional specialty: human capital development.

Dr. Wong went on to become a successful district director at AIA Hong Kong, a multinational insurance and finance corporation that doubles as the largest publicly listed life insurance and securities group in the Asia-Pacific region. There, Wong developed niche programs designed to motivate staff members through the strategic development and nurturing of human relationships.

To learn more about the KingArts platform and for more information on Dr. Raymond Wong’s illustrious career, please visit http://kingsarts.com/#/.

About KingsArts

Our Mission is to promote the globalization of Chinese contemporary artwork and to support local artists and collectors. As the traditional art sale & marketing market continues to bottleneck, the marketing cost is extremely high, affecting the true value of artists/collectors. To defend the art worth of all involved parties, we introduce a “triangle engine” to offer strategic promotion through online and offline marketing advancements.

We build a transparent and innovative business model for all parties, including artists, art investors, and art collectors. We are setting up a new standard for the art market, breaking the iceberg to find the gem.

Contact Information

Lorraine Moore: Lorraine@KingsArts.com

Source: KingsArts

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July 19, 2022

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