Is Silicon Valley Too Smart to Buy Art? Maybe Not

Re/Code was at Pace Gallery’s party for its pop-up location in Silicon Valley where Anne Wojcicki, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen and Lucy Page hosted Laurene Powell Jobs and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to play ping pong with the Calder Foundation’s Sandy Rower. Re/Code had a long chat with Marc Glimcher who rightly praised San Francisco’s history of producing very sophisticated collectors:

Glimcher said that Arrillaga-Andreessen was one of his most significant clients — she helped arrange the show; the dealership’s lot belonged to her father, John Arrillaga, the largest landowner in Silicon Valley.

“This is the wealthiest community in America, and they’re smart and creative. And they don’t yet collect art. They’re the only community in the world like that,” Glimcher said. […] “And if [the tech elite] start here, then they’ll do it in New York and Austin and Kuala Lumpur. That’s how it works. That’s how it happened in the hedge-fund world. Twenty years ago, [art dealer] Larry Gagosian put a big black X on the foreheads of every big fund manager, and went one by one.” […]

“The hedge-fund guys are stupid enough — and by that I mean dumb and arrogant — not to know they were being ripped off in the beginning. They just knew they wanted to start buying art. Everyone here is too smart for that.”

Elusive Silicon Valley Buyers Come Out for an Arty Party (Re/code)