James Tarmy reveals on Bloomberg that a new museum dedicated to Arte Povera is opening in Cold Spring, New York. The 400-work collection is owned by the Olnick Spanu family who plan a 20,000 sq ft. facility that will not be a foundation as many collectors create.
Citing the fact that the Cold Spring building isn’t close enough to completion, no one from the Olnick Spanu collection was willing to comment for this article. A representative, however, provided some insight into the collection. It includes works from stars like Alighiero Boetti, who was the subject of a solo show in 2012 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art; Jannis Kounellis, whose show last year at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise included 12 live horses; and Giuseppe Penone, whose large-scale works filled the formal gardens and interiors of the Palace of Versailles in 2013.
These artists, along with most of Arte Povera’s leading figures, have also been the subject of a recent price surge in the art market. Last year, Penone’s art hit a record at auction—$1.325 million at Phillips New York, according to Artnet. Kounellis’s art hit its peak in 2014, when a metal, vegetable fiber, and wool artwork sold for $2 million (above a high estimate of $988,000) at Christie’s in London. Boetti’s record was set the same year when his 1968 Colonna, a column made out of paper doilies, sold for just under $4 million at Christie’s London. In other words, this is a very valuable collection.
A Huge Art Museum Is Secretly About to Open in the Hudson Valley (Bloomberg)
