William Poundstone has a wonderful post taking off from the appearance of a de Kooning—Pink Angels—in MoMA’s retrospective from the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation. The rest is Poundstone’s version of Weisman as the Eli Broad of his time. (Click through to read the whole post.):
The Weisman collection of 2000 modern and contemporary pieces by Kandinsky, Picasso, Brancusi, Dalí, Miró, Ernst, Magritte, Giacometti, Dubuffet, Still, Motherwell, Bacon, Stella, Warhol, Lichtenstein, and the whole L.A. Cool School is installed in Weisman’s former Holmby Hills home. (Pink Angels is normally just to the right of the fireplace.) The home is open to the public for free, though only by appointment. Never heard of it? The Weisman Art Foundation doesn’t advertise, aside from a website and a Facebook page. Even the home’s street address is on a need-to-know basis.
Who is Frederick Weisman? A generation ago, he was Eli Broad—the most famous and ego-driven collector of contemporary art in L.A. He was himself related to two great collectors, Marcia Simon Weisman (his first wife) and Norton Simon (his brother-in-law). Weisman worked for his brother-in-law’s ketchup company, then struck out on his own with a chain of Toyota dealerships.
The Best de Kooning in LA (and Why You’ve Never Seen It) (Artinfo.com)
