Money Meets Art: the Rise of the Private Galleries by Edwin Heathcote Published: March 24 2011 16:09 | Last Updated: March 24 2011 16:09
Financial SPECIAL REPORTS Close Money meets art: the rise of the private galleries By Edwin Heathcote Published: March 24 2011 16:09 | Last updated: March 24 2011 16:09 On display: visitors are reflected in Jeff Koons’ ‘Cracked Egg’ at the opening in 2008 of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Wunderkammer, the fabled “cabinet of curiosities”, has, over the past half a millennium, gone from a private amusement for the wealthy to the hub around which every post-industrial, secular city now seems to revolve. Huge, expensive museums, from London’s Tate Modern to Bilbao’s Guggenheim, are trumpeted as vehicles for regeneration, as contemporary cathedrals where modern art has replaced the objects of pilgrimage. But, after two centuries of seemingly unstoppable expansion, the publicly funded mega-museum has begun to fade. The era of huge new structures to display both art and architecture is coming to an end. It might be down to oversupply, a squeeze on public funds or ennui, but there is another reason, too. The roots of the museum have been rediscovered in the eponymous, privately funded collection, the plaything of the wealthy. A tranche of new galleries is opening across the world, each displaying the insatiable appetite of the wealthy for art. The vast prices commanded by the best pieces from the most desirable modern artists have left public museums behind. Both the big-ticket names – Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Wassily Kandinsky, even the prolific Pablo Picasso – and the highly prized (and priced) darlings of the contemporary scene, from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Damien Hirst, Richard Prince to Jeff Koons, are now accessible only to oligarchs.
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