Who’s de Kooning Is That?

Keren Blankfeld has a story in Forbes on Norman and Irma Braman who, she says, have $900 million of their $1.6m net worth tied up in art. Towards the end, she takes a brief tour of the de Kooning exhibition with the collectors:

A couple of the Bramans’ prized possessions—Willem de Kooning’s “Bolton Landing” and “Woman”—are on loan for a De Kooning retrospective. “Beautiful,” Norman murmurs, as he strolls the exhibit. Norman bought “Woman” for Irma for her birthday in 1997, the year De Kooning died. She pauses before “Bolton Landing” and remembers the call they got from an auction house telling them they’d won the painting. Because they’d bid so high, she didn’t know then whether to be ecstatic or nervous. She’s glad now, she says. “If you buy the best of an artist it doesn’t matter how much you pay for it,” Norman observes. “The market will catch up.”