Art Market Monitor

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Fondation Louis Vuitton’s Basquiat Show Puts Owners on Display

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One of the unexpected benefits of Bernard Arnault’s new Jean-Michel Basquiat show opening at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in October is the way the show is bringing together a group of far-flung works. Some 120 paintings will be in the show and a number of collectors like Yusaku Maezawa and Laurent Asscher have taken to Instagram to announce the works from their collections that will be making the journey. Curiously, as Carol Vogel reveals in her WSJ magazine preview of the show, Bernard Arnault is going to great lengths to keep his Basquiats anonymous:

Over the past 30 years he has amassed a world-class Basquiat collection. Asked just how big his holdings are, he would only admit that they total more than a dozen works and hang in all his homes, including his apartment in Paris, his house in the south of France and another place in the French countryside.

Arnault is lending a number of his paintings and drawings to the upcoming show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, although neither he nor anyone involved in the show’s creation will say which ones. Contemporary art experts familiar with Basquiat’s work believe that among the loans from Arnault’s personal collection is the 1982 painting Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict. He is said to be lending a number of drawings as well. Arnault was so committed to making this show different from any preceding Basquiat exhibition that he wrote personal notes to collectors asking for loans and allowed the curators free rein to select from his own holdings.

The WSJ story also reveals at least one other new owner of a Basquiat joining the company of Larry Gagosian and Peter Brant, who will host the show at the opening of his Brant Foundation’s New York outpost in the Spring of 2019. Brant is the biggest lender to the Basquiat show:

Fifteen works from his holdings will be in the show, making him its biggest lender. Others contributing works include the philanthropists Lenore and Herbert Schorr, who were some of Basquiat’s earliest collectors; the Los Angeles philanthropists Eli S. and Edythe L. Broad; the Mugrabi family, who are New York–based dealers; the fashion designer Valentino Garavani and his longtime partner, Giancarlo Giammetti; and the Marieluise Hessel Collection at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Many labels in the show will read “private collection,’’ but according to several contemporary art experts, two of these mystery lenders are the Greek shipping magnate Philip Niarchos and Lorenzo Fertitta, the Las Vegas casino owner.

A New Exhibition in Paris Explores Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Work (WSJ. Magazine)

Heirs Revolt Against Museum Storage

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Jori Finkel has an excellent story in the Los Angeles Times but the import is inverted by a little bit of cultural piety. Finkel sets up the story as terrible drain of world-class art from Los Angeles because greedy heirs of the Brody, Crichton, Hopper, Palevsky and Shapazian collections want money over making a civic contribution:

Deborah McLeod, who has worked with several of these collectors as director of Gagosian Beverly Hills, calls the exodus of artwork “a failure of our culture.”

“Unlike the East Coast, where a number of big families have the tradition of giving,” she says, “there just isn’t an ingrained philanthropic culture of supporting museums here in Los Angeles. You’ve heard people say we’re a one-philanthropist town, with Eli Broad, and that’s not so far off.”

L.A. gallery owner Louis Stern adds that museums can hardly compete with auctions now that art, especially contemporary art, routinely achieves such high prices. “Who’s going to donate an artwork when you are promised millions at market?

“The idea of selling at auction is incredibly seductive,” he adds. “The auction houses are extremely well organized, they make it their business to know all the trusts and estates lawyers. They’ve taken on this sort of quasi-official role in the art world — almost like a bank.”

Further down, an alternative theory of the crime emerges where the collectors themselves — and their heirs –rebel against the idea of their prized works ending up unseen in storage:

According to one collector’s heir, speaking on condition of anonymity out of concern for his family’s legacy, the dread of museum storage can even be incentive to sell at auction. “Many people don’t give to museums for fear that the work will end up in storage. So sending it out into the world, where it is purchased by people who want it, more or less ensures that it will be lived with.”

An Exodus of Art Work from LA (Los Angeles Times)

How Eli Broad Operates

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Jennifer Steinhauer tells this story about Eli Broad in her profile of the philanthropist’s charitable ways in the New York Times:

In 2003 Mr. Broad pledged $50 million for a much-needed new building to hold contemporary art. […] But just before the new wing opened in 2008, Mr. Broad said he would keep the 2,000-plus works in his collection and instead loan hundreds of them to the museum. Soon the new wing became home to various shows and other works of art, in addition to the Broad pieces, enraging Mr. Broad. As a result, several board members said, he did not pay the balance of his pledged gift of roughly $6 million.Continue Reading

The Courtship of Eli Broad

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The LA Times reports that another hat has been thrown into the Broad Museum competition ring:

Downtown L.A. is officially making a play, courtesy of the Grand Avenue Authority, which today authorized negotiations with Broad toward a possible deal that would wrest the museum from Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, which are also in the running, and maybe some other location yet to be publicly disclosed. […] The Grand Avenue project, of which Broad himself has been a leading advocate, is considered the centerpiece of downtown’s revitalization. Designed by Frank Gehry, it includes two towers, condos, hotel rooms and a shopping center. The project, which involves public land and a private developer, stalled last year after the developer was unable to secure a multibillion-dollar construction loan amid the global credit crunch. A Broad Museum launch there would be a coup that could help rebuild momentum for the plan.

Downtown LA Is Officially a Contender for Eli Broad’s Art Museum (Culture Monster)

Uber-Collectors v. the Museums: I Own It; You Show It

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You Can Have Your Art & Lend It Too

NPR has this story by Kate Taylor on the shift in the strategies collectors are using to maintain their collections after they’re gone. Citing the Fishers unusual relationship with SFMoMA and Eli Broad’s plans to take on the insurance, conservation and ownership responsibilities for his foundation’s art with a $200 million endowment, NPR’s story gets at the heart of the way museums are adapting to the the rise of large private art collections:

“You want to show your own art, so what do you do?” asked late Gap founder and art collector Don Fisher in a 2007 online interview with The San Francisco Chronicle. “You gotta sell it, or you give it away and people leave it in the basement. I don’t want our art in the basement.” […] Just two days before Fisher died, the museum announced that he and his wife, Doris, had agreed to lend their collection for 25 years. The museum is going to build a new wing, with the Fisher family making a donation toward both the construction and the museum’s endowment. SFMoMA director Neal Benezra acknowledges that the arrangement is unusual, since the museum won’t own the art outright. […] “We will manage it, we will oversee it, we will conserve it, exhibit it, educate the public about it — in just the same way that we do our collection,” Benezra says.Continue Reading

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