ALAN FAENA Alan Faena (Buenos Aires, November 20, 1963) is an Argentine hotelier and real estate developer. He has developed properties in Miami Beach, Florida and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Faena is the founder and President of the Faena Group. He is a member of the Tate International Committee and the New Museum Leaders Council. He previously founded Via Vai in 1985, a fashion label, and worked as a fashion designer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Faena
Argentina's most successful hotelier and real estate developer, Faena is an avid collector of Latin American art. In December of 2015, he aims to debut his new exhibition space, a Rem Koolhaas–designed structure called the Faena Forum, opening in Miami. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/top-200-art-collectors-2015-part-one-286048
Le Faena Miami Beach est une œuvre d’art à elle seule. L’hôtel le doit notamment à l’intervention de nombreux talents. Alan Faena n’a fait appel qu’aux meilleurs. L’artiste Argentin Juan Gatti, par exemple, a recouvert les murs du hall de fresques allégoriques. De là, on aperçoit déjà le squelette de mammouth doré signé Damien Hirst, qui trône dans le prolongement du restaurant Los Fuegos, à l’extérieur. Au delà, se profile la plage privée du cinq étoiles, le seul à offrir ainsi une vue plongeante sur la mer. Ce mammifère préhistorique de trois mètres de haut, tout le monde le connaît à Miami. Des milliers de piétons passent devant chaque jour. Il est protégé par une vitrine en verre a priori résistante à toute intempérie. D’autres grands noms de la scène artistique contemporaine contribuent à l’image du Faena, tels que Jeff Koons, Alberto Garutti, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, ou Manuel Amezton. http://peplum.blog.lemonde.fr/2017/03/30/fans-dart-au-sein-et-autour-du-faena/
In the last few years, the Miami arts landscape has both rapidly expanded and been roiled with upheavals as the region tries to shore up a permanent cultural beachhead in a place better known until recently for an annual art fair and an actual beach. The next entry onto the scene, the Faena Forum, will be unusual in its format, design and leadership, and it won’t resemble anything else nearby when it is completed in December in a formerly sleepy section of Miami Beach. Not a museum per se, the Faena Forum will sometimes display art. But its goal is to be a new kind of multidisciplinary center in a flexible building that can house dance, theater, political debates, lectures and a wide range of other cultural happenings, said its founder, the Argentine hotelier and real estate developer Alan Faena. Mr. Faena is best known for rehabilitating a district in his hometown, Buenos Aires, in a way that combined culture and capitalism. Similarly, the Faena district in Miami Beach will integrate the arts into a larger development, which includes a hotel and a condominium building. “Miami will never be the same after the Forum,” said Mr. Faena, dressed, as usual, in a crisp white suit and a Panama hat, as he surveyed construction progress there this winter. Not known for understatement or for a lack of ambition, Mr. Faena enlisted the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas and his Office for Metropolitan Architecture to design the 50,000-square-foot center, at 33rd Street and Collins Avenue; the anticipated cost is $150 million. Mr. Faena is developing the overall Faena district, which stretches over six blocks and is estimated to cost around $1 billion, with his longtime business partner, Len Blavatnik. The district’s beachside residential building was designed by the London firm Foster & Partners. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/arts/artsspecial/in-miami-beach-the-faena-forum-is-to-open-in-december.html
TIM & GINA FAIRFAX Members of the Fairfax family were prominent as Australian media proprietors, especially in the area of newspaper publishing through the company, John Fairfax and Sons, now known as Fairfax Media; although the Fairfax family no longer control the eponymous company. Some members have also been prominent in the arts and philanthropy in Australia. Six generations of the family are descended from an Anglo-Celtic emigrant to Australia: John Fairfax (1804–1877), English-born journalist and his wife Sarah, née Reading (1826–1905). Both were from the Barford area of Warwickshire and emigrated to the Colony of New South Wales in 1838. (...) Tim Fairfiax is a businessman, pastoralist and philanthropist. In addition to his business interests, his philanthropic interests include the Queensland University of Technology, the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, the Tim Fairfax Family Foundation, The Salvation Army, the National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery Foundation, the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal, Australian Philanthropic Services, Philanthropy Australia, the Royal National Association Queensland, the AMA Queensland Foundation, The University of Sunshine Coast Foundation and Volunteers for Isolated Students Education. Tim was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2004 for service to business and commerce, particularly through agricultural, transport and communications enterprises, and to the community, through education and arts organisations; and a Companion of the Order (AC) in 2014 for eminent service to business and to the community, as an advocate for philanthropy and as a major supporter of the visual arts, to the promotion of higher education opportunities, and to rural and regional development programs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairfax_family
Pastoralist and philanthropist Tim Fairfax bears one of the most famous names in Australia and is one of the country's most successful and generous businessmen. He is also one of the most unassuming. When the long-time arts supporter was named among the 10 most influential people in Australian culture last September, the panel commented: "Tim's least favourite thing in life is being noticed." But that's becoming increasingly hard for the 67-year-old who was also named a "Queensland Great" in June. Mr Fairfax and his wife Gina, 63, own 10 cattle properties producing grass-fed beef for the European market. Falling rural values were cancelled out by gains on other investments this year. He sold virtually all his shares in the Fairfax media group to his brother John in 2008, leaving him cashed up for other developments. Mr Fairfax's love of the bush began during childhood holidays and, after serving as an army officer in Vietnam, he worked as a jackaroo. The couple sold "Rawbelle", the 8228-hectare property near Monto they had owned for 40 years, in April for $4.5 million two months after paying $14.8 million for the "Glenbar" aggregation near Theodore. They topped The Sunday Mail's Big Givers List of Queensland philanthropists last year. The Tim Fairfax Family Foundation has gifted more than $16 million since 2008, with an emphasis on rural, remote and regional communities, and he also chairs the board of the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, named after his father, which has donated more than $100 million to date. Mr Fairfax, who is also a major supporter of The Ekka, was appointed Chancellor of the Queensland University of Technology last September. A keen collector, and donor, of art, his other roles include the National Gallery of Australia Council and Queensland Art Gallery Foundation. http://www.couriermail.com.au/business/rich-list/tim-and-gina-fairfax/news-story/b8d3da21c7904bf04fc2be7209c42800
HARALD FALCKENBERG Location: Hamburg, Germany Employment: Law practice and oil equipment Art Collection: Contemporary German and American art http://www.artfortune.com/collectors-9/
Die Sammlung Falckenberg ist eine von dem Juristen und Unternehmer Harald Falckenberg (* 1943) in Hamburg zusammengetragene Sammlung von Werken der Kunst der Moderne und der zeitgenössischen Kunst. Die Privatsammlung wird von der internationalen Fachzeitschrift Artnews zu den „200 Besten der Welt“ gezählt. Seit 2011 gehört sie zu den Deichtorhallen Hamburg. Die Sammlung umfasst 1.900 Arbeiten internationaler Avantgardekünstler, darunter Werkgruppen der Wiener Aktionisten und Martin Kippenberger, aber auch große Installationen von Jonathan Meese und Thomas Hirschhorn. Weitere Werke u. a. von Werner Büttner, William Copley, Albert und Markus Oehlen, Ralf Ziervogel, Daniel Richter, C.O. Paeffgen, Wolf Pehlke, Richard Prince, Tom Wesselmann, Hanne Darboven, Jonas Burgert. Falckenberg wurde für seine Sammlung im Jahr 2009 mit dem Art-Cologne-Preis ausgezeichnet. Seit 2001 befindet sich die Sammlung Falckenberg in einer ehemaligen Fabrikhalle der Phoenix-Werke an der Wilstorfer Straße 71, Tor 2, in Hamburg-Harburg. Die Sammlung ist der Öffentlichkeit nach Voranmeldung zugänglich. Die von Harald Falckenberg und der Phoenix AG gemeinsam gegründete Kulturstiftung Phoenix Art präsentieren dort die Sammlung und Wechselausstellungen mit internationalen Kunstsammlungen. Die Gesamtfläche betrug zunächst 4.000 m² (2.300 m² für Wechselausstellungen, 1.700 m² für das Schaudepot). Seit 2008 stehen etwa 6200 m² auf 5 Etagen zur Verfügung, die im Zentrum von einem kaskadenartigen Treppenraum erschlossen werden. Die komplette Neugestaltung, die auch den großen Installationen mehr Platz bietet, wurde durch den Berliner Architekten Roger Bundschuh durchgeführt. Seit Januar 2011 gehört die Phoenixhalle in Hamburg-Harburg organisatorisch zur Deichtorhallen Hamburg GmbH und wird von dieser unter dem Namen „Deichtorhallen Hamburg – Sammlung Falckenberg“ betrieben. Unter der Leitung des Intendanten Dirk Luckow wird das bisherige Ausstellungskonzept fortgesetzt und um neue Aspekte ergänzt. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammlung_Falckenberg
One of the world's most respected art collectors, Falckenberg has received the Art Cologne Prize and the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award, and published numerous books on art. Known for his ability to stay ahead of the art market, he was among the first collectors to purchase works by now-major figures like Martin Kippenberger, Richard Prince, and Jonathan Meese, and his collection comprises over 2,000 pieces, shown in a 65,000-square-foot former factory building in Hamburg in collaboration with Deichtorhallen/Hamburg. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/top-200-art-collectors-2015-part-one-286048
Has art changed you? When I think about myself (that is, if I'm able to look at myself objectively – one can never know for sure)... I have become much more independent, and that is interesting. In my normal life, I was always very dependent. I could never allow myself to do what I wanted. There were some sort of rules that had to be followed. I could have, of course, changed them, but it still wasn't true freedom. When you're the boss of a company, your creativity is always limited. When you get married, you also have to adhere to certain conditions. Step by step, the number of conditions increase. And then you realize that you're divorced, and now you have another sort of drive. However, conditions exist in every society that has come to some mutual agreement, and there is nothing wrong with that; that's normal. But if life ends up being just a set of conditions, then that is no longer civilized. Daiga Rudzāte https://independentcollectors.com/interviews/haraldfalckenbergsammlungfalckenberghamburg
MARK FALCONE & ELLEN BRUSS Real-estate developer Falcone and his wife Ellen Bruss live next door to the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver in a home designed for them by architect David Adjaye. In recent years they have become avid collectors of Mexican art, and their collection now includes works by Gonzalo Lebrija, Eduardo Sarabia, and Federico Solmi, as well as Denver artists Stephen Batura, David Zimmer, Adam Milner, Bill Stockman, and Mary Erhin. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/top-200-art-collectors-2015-part-one-286048
Do you remember the first work of art you purchased? How did that evolve into a habit of collecting? I bought Mark a paper sculpture piece by Jae Ko when we were first dating. An Isaac Julien might be the first piece we bought together. When we met, Mark had never bought an original work of art; I had collected local artists for a long time. We mostly focus on artists who we have gotten to know through the MCA/D. Because MCA/D is a non-collecting institution we feel a strong desire to help preserve the record of these extraordinary artists who have made such an impression on our community. Do you and your husband have a collecting philosophy? Have any particular themes or aesthetic tendencies emerged over the years? Honestly, no. I think we are both pretty open to and provoked by lots of different things. We really don't think of ourselves as collectors, so, frankly, that takes a lot of pressure off what we choose to buy. We don't have an art consultant, and we are not trying to create an encyclopedic collection of international artists. We simply buy objects that we like by artists who we think are smart and who we somehow have established a strong interest and connection to. We value works from a great Denver-based artist as much as one of the big international names who have shown at MCA/D. Which contemporary artists are you particularly excited about right now? And where do you go to discover new artists? We tend to enjoy the biennials more than the art fairs. We have been to most of the Venice Biennales over the last 10 years, and we usually get to the Whitney, Site Santa Fe, and we went to Istanbul a few years ago—that was great. We really meet most of the new artists we collect through the MCA/D though. We just got a piece from Frohawk Two Feathers, who is amazing. Over the last several years, the museum has established a great connection with several contemporary Mexican artists. We are especially fond of the work by our friends in Guadalajara, Gonzalo LeBrija and Eduardo Sarabia. We love what Federico Solmi is doing, and he has a great new video out. And there's a number of Denver artists that we keep an eye on: Stephen Batura, David Zimmer, Adam Milner, Bill Stockman, Mary Erhin. Rachel Corbett - http://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/how_i_collect/how_i_collect_ellen_bruss-51482
HOWARD & PATRICIA FARBER The Farber Collection of contemporary Cuban art was launched in 2001 by collectors Howard and Patricia Farber. Howard Farber explains the collection’s origins and the ideas behind it. When my wife Patricia and I first traveled to Cuba in the winter of 2001, we assumed we were going for the dance, the music, and the art. Soon enough, though, art took over, especially for me. In the course of that visit we were shown many artists’ studios, and pored over whatever art books we could find. We had already amassed significant collections of American modernist and contemporary Chinese art. On that trip in 2001, we embarked on a new journey: collecting contemporary Cuban art. The Farber Collection is an international collection. It gathers together works by Cuban-born artists residing in many countries: Cuba, of course, but also Mexico, Canada, the United States, Germany, and beyond. The impulse to acquire these works did not arise from political motivation. Rather, it began as an effort to recover and preserve the art of an era—art that, to my mind, was in great danger of being lost. Many artists left Cuba in the early 1990s thinking that their fame in Havana would easily translate elsewhere. Several did achieve international success, but others struggled to reestablish their creative lives under unexpectedly challenging circumstances. Some, in Cuba and elsewhere, abandoned art for other careers. In many cases, work was left behind. Several pieces in the collection have never been publicly exhibited, either in Cuba or abroad. (...) It is our hope that through these efforts, we will help create greater awareness of Cuban art and encourage broader recognition for this vibrant international culture. http://www.thefarbercollection.com/about/about_the_collectors
A Collecting Vision Having limited knowledge of the Cuban art scene, Farber began a speedy process of self-education. “I’ve always worked with curators who would try to educate me and there was an older book on Cuban art that I used to train my eye,” he says. Perhaps more importantly, Farber collected with intent. “My collecting has a vision. And it is to start with the earlier works,” he explains. ‘With Chinese art, I picked a date, which I thought would be interesting, and that date was 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square massacre. My thought was the artists are going to really be pumped and they are going to be at their creative best, doing cutting-edge type of work.” As a starting point for his Cuban collection, Farber fixed on the Special Period — a time of decline following the collapse of the Soviet Union. “In Cuba, the works of the mid 1980s and early 1990s are highly important because of what was happening economically. The artists in the ‘80s and ‘90s, they were very, very poor. Although they might have been well-known in Cuba, they had no money to buy materials. Some of them doing wood sculpture would rob an abandoned house and take some of the wood from the kitchen to make a piece. And I have these things in my collection. (...) Provenance and quality were also hugely important to Farber. “It’s not quantity. It’s not about putting the works on a scale to see how much they weigh. It’s quality,” he says. “And I always wanted the works that were in specific shows in Cuba or traveled to shows around the world. I’m always interested in the back on the painting just as much as I am the front of the painting. Did the artists sign it? Is there a label from a museum?... (...) “I don’t believe in buying only works that I love,” admits Farber. “Sometimes I buy works that I hate. Why? Because they fit into historical perspective. In 1990, when people didn’t have enough to eat, a lot of the works dealt with some of those things and they are not pretty. I have works that I can’t hang in my dining room. But they are historically important and, if I am the ‘museum’ that I pretend to be, I need those historical works. And I can never turn one down because it’s not palatable. It could be totally cutting edge, totally offensive, but it’s what these artists thought of the government. It’s what these artists felt in their heart. And why should that be lost? It’s a part of history.” http://www.private-air-mag.com/howard-farber-collectors-perspective
DANA FAROUKI A Palestinian-American curator and collector of contemporary art, Dana Farouki is the Chair of the Guggenheim Middle East Council and a member of the Board of Trustees at MoMA PS1 and Creative Time. Based between Dubai and New York, Farouki also serves on the Board of Patrons of Art Dubai and is the Chair of the prestigious Abraaj Group Art Prize. http://artbahrain.org/home/?p=9095
Based between Dubai and New York, Dana Farouki is a Palestinian-American independent curator and collector, who focuses on international contemporary art. Dana Farouki was the first member of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi’s curatorial staff, serving as Assistant Curator until June 2010. She received her bachelor’s degree in History of Art and Architecture from Brown University in 2003, and completed her master’s degree in the History and Theory of the Art Museum at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in 2005. She also held a one-year fellowship at The Museum of Modern Art, New York and is currently a Trustee of MoMA PS1. A great advocate of regional cultural initiatives, she has served on the Board of Patrons for Art Dubai since the fair’s inception. http://www.thinkers-doers.com/speakers/dana-farouki/
Dana Farouki: Shining a Spotlight on Middle Eastern Art A Dubai-based scholar and philanthropist thinks beyond national borders I really see myself as someone who is interested in introducing people to art from this part of the world,” says Dubai-based collector Dana Farouki. As a patron of the Art Dubai fair and a member of the selection committee for its Abraaj Group Art Prize, Farouki has welcomed visitors from the various boards on which she serves, including Creative Time, the Aspen Art Museum, MoMA PS1, Bidoun magazine, and the Guggenheim Middle Eastern Circle, of which she is chair. She is energetic enough to cover these responsibilities without spreading herself too thin, noting that philanthropy takes much more of her time than art acquisitions. Farouki, 33, has assembled for her Palestinian American parents, Samia and Abul Huda Farouki, an art collection that includes works by leading contemporary Middle Eastern artists, such as Walid Raad, Akram Zaatari, Abbas Akhavan, and Walead Beshty. Her own collection contains those names but also some young international artists, like Matt Connors, Aaron Young, assume vivid astro focus, and Anna Betbeze. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Farouki studied art history at Brown University and in 2005 earned a master’s degree in the history and theory of the art museum from London’s Courtauld Institute of Art, where she wrote a dissertation on the Guggenheim Museum’s global network and the possibility of a Guggenheim Dubai, long before there was the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. She sent a copy to then director Thomas Krens, and later, while serving a fellowship at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, she ran into him at an opening. “On my husband’s encouragement, I pushed myself into his face, and it turned out he remembered my letter,” Farouki says, laughing at her own audacity. A year later, she was hired, first as a consultant and then as assistant curator on the Abu Dhabi project. She left that appointment three years ago when her husband moved the family (the couple has two young children) from New York to Dubai for a job with Goldman Sachs. “I never lived in the Middle East before that,” she says. Now, with the Guggenheim Middle Eastern Circle, Farouki aims to reverse the flow of art between the United States and Abu Dhabi by strategizing ways that Middle Eastern artists can have more of a presence at the museum’s New York flagship. “With such an ambitious project in Abu Dhabi, it really wouldn’t make sense not to have a counterpart mirroring that effort in New York,” she says. Barbara Pollack - http://www.artnews.com/2014/07/09/dana-farouki-shines-spotlight-on-middle-eastern-art/
AMY & VERNON FAULCONER Oil and gas magnate Vernon Faulconer, who was also an avid art collector and philanthropist, died on August 7 at age 76 in Dallas, Texas. The cause of death is unknown. Faulconer’s company, Vernon E. Faulconer Inc., operates nine wells in the state. He also ran the Faulconer Scholarship Program, which offers financial aid to black and Hispanic college students, and sat on the board of the Dallas Museum of Art from 1998 onward. The Faulconer collection features work by Anish Kapoor, James Turrell, Julian Schnabel, Ed Ruscha, William Kentridge, Cecily Brown, Kara Walker, John Chamberlain, and several other major names, but Faulconer began his love affair with art by purchasing the work of regional Texas artists. “Collecting isn’t about price or names,” Faulconer told D Magazine in 2004. “Art is personal; it’s about your reaction. Who am I to tell someone else ’that’s not good,’ or what a work means?” https://news.artnet.com/art-world/vernon-faulconer-dead-at-76-texas-art-collector-324407
At a time when the most highly prized trophy in the art world is a private museum with your name on it, the latest undertaking by two Texas collectors, Howard Rachofsky and Vernon Faulconer, seems downright modest. Together, they have transformed an 18,000-square-foot -furniture-storage facility in their hometown, Dallas, into a gallery showcasing works from their individual collections as well as those bought jointly with fellow Dallas Museum of Art trustees—but neither of their names appears on the facade. “It’s a yours, mine, and ours collection,” Rachofsky says of the space, which is called, simply, the Warehouse. There are about 1,000 pieces in the Warehouse’s collection, displayed on a rotating basis in thematic shows. In addition to the exhibition space, the 60,000-square-foot building houses a library and an education-program area. The pair leases part of the space to an art-handling company so that, Rachofsky explains, “I can say, ‘We need to hang a work—can you send two guys over?’ ” The idea for the Warehouse came to Rachofsky, a former hedge fund manager, about four years ago, by which time he and his close friend Faulconer, an oil entrepreneur, had jointly purchased several major pieces. After concluding that Faulconer owned works too large-scale for his homes and that Rachofsky and his wife, Cindy, owned too many to fit inside their Richard Meier–designed house, they decided to find a place where their stored treasures could see the light of day and that would be welcoming to the public. “Verne’s is a buy-what-you-like collection,” says Rachofsky, who owns the bulk of the Warehouse’s offerings. “Mine is more purposeful. Verne said to me, ‘Ah, heck, this is a great deal for me because I get to come and look at all the art, and you’ve paid for it.’” Rachofsky began collecting in 1972—first, prints by Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, and Pablo Picasso; then works by American masters like Helen Frankenthaler and Donald Judd. Eventually he moved on to the postwar Japanese and Italian movements, and started developing an interest in younger artists. In June 2008, he and his wife sold Jeff Koons’s 1995–2000 sculpture Balloon Flower (Magenta) at auction for $25.8 million to buy a group of 1982 Sigmar Polke paintings, currently on view at the Warehouse. They are part of an exhibition in rooms dedicated to single artists, including Marlene Dumas and Gerhard Richter. Last summer, Rachofsky and Faulconer purchased the largest sculpture from Koons’s recent Gazing Ball series of white plaster figures with blue glass globes that, following its loan to the Koons retrospective opening this month at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, will take up residence in the Warehouse. At the moment, one of the duo’s favorite pieces is Tom Friedman’s Untitled, 2003, co-owned by the Rachofskys and the Dallas Museum of Art, where the collection will ultimately land. “I think of it as Little Big Man,” Rachofsky says. “It’s so strong that it’s the only work in the room.” Made of Styrofoam, “it weighs almost nothing, yet it has great presence. It was an instant love affair.” http://www.wmagazine.com/story/the-warehouse-dallas-art-collectors
SUSAN & LEONARD FEINSTEIN Location: Long Island, New York Source of wealth: Retail (Bed Bath & Beyond) Collecting area: Modern and contemporary art Along with Warren Eisenberg, who is also on the 2015 ARTnews Top 200 list, Leonard Feinstein is co-founder of Bed Bath & Beyond, originally called Bed ‘n’ Bath when it first opened in New Jersey in 1971. He has served as co-chairman of the company since 1999. Along with Warren and Mitzi Eisenberg, Leonard and his wife, Susan, donated a joint $10 million to the New Museum’s building campaign in 2005. Susan was elected to the New Museum’s board of trustees in 2004. She also serves as a trustee of the Jewish Museum in New York and is on the board of the Contemporary Collectors Council of the Nassau County Museum. The Feinsteins are noted collectors of Gerhard Richter’s works; some of their Richters have been gifts (and others are promised gifts) to the Museum of Modern Art. Fun fact: Leonard Feinstein and Warren Eisenberg, the Bed Bath & Beyond co-founders, are so close, they are executors of each other’s estates, according to Forbes. “ ‘There aren’t many good marriages out there,’ says Feinstein [of Eisenberg], ‘but when you’ve got one of the great ones, it’s wonderful.’ ” http://www.artnews.com/top200/susan-and-leonard-feinstein/
FRANK & LORENZO FERTITTA Location: Las Vegas Employment: Casinos (Station Casinos) and professional fighting (Ultimate Fighting Championship) Art Collection: Modern and contemporary art http://www.artfortune.com/collectors-9/
Frank Fertitta III Day job: Owner of the other half of the Sunset Strip, owner of Ultimate Fighting Championship, owner of Gordon Biersch brewery Collects: Contemporary Collection includes: James Rosenquist, Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michele Basquiat, Robert Indiana, Takashi Murakami, Vik Muniz, Paul McCarthy Fun fact: The gamblin', fightin', beer-drinkin' man has a softer side and a lot of hard cash when it comes to collecting. Some of his spoils can be seen at his various casinos — others adorn his homes and offices — which supposedly display Warhol and Basquiat paintings of fighters. Apropos! http://uk.complex.com/style/2011/09/25-celebrities-with-baller-art-collections/4
Though the Fertitta brothers inherited their father’s casino business in Las Vegas, they increased their fortune by buying the declining mixed-martial-arts league Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2001, now worth many times the price they paid for it. “It was probably the worst brand in the United States because of all of the negativity surrounding it,” Lorenzo told Bloomberg News. Now, UFC has offices in Toronto, São Paulo, Singapore, and London, and reaches 1 billion viewers in 30 languages in 149 countries. The brothers also invest in Meadows Bank. They have been collecting art for 20 years, continuing in the footsteps of their father, Frank Fertitta Jr. The first work Frank Fertitta III acquired was William Bouguereau’s Morning Breakfast (1887), but he has since moved on to the likes of Damien Hirst, Christopher Wool, Brice Marden, and Richard Prince. The Fertittas’ collection is strong in American Pop and Abstract Expressionism. Fun fact: Over email, Frank Fertitta III told ARTnews that his favorite piece is one of Warhol’s Flowers. “I have long been drawn to them…I own several works of this subject in varying sizes.” http://www.artnews.com/top200/frank-j-fertitta-iii-and-lorenzo-fertitta/
DESIRE FEUERLE Berlin just got another publicly accessible private collection: In April 2016 De sire Feuerle opened his collection in a former Second World War telecommunications bunker, showcasing an interesting mixture of ancient and contemporary works. In our interview the Asia-based collector tells us why he chose Berlin as a home for his collection and talks about how furniture becomes sculpture. IC: Mr. Feuerle, you just opened your very own collection space in an old Berlin bunker. What made you decide to take that step? DF: I decided to open up my collection to the public outside of Asia in the hope to generate dialogues between different cultures and times; and most importantly, I hope that the visitors will be submerged in the museum’s unique atmosphere and enter a serene and sensual world that puts art into a new light. https://independent-collectors.com/interviews/desire-feuerle
Le collectionneur Désiré Feuerle ouvre un espace à Berlin Le collectionneur Désiré Feuerle va ouvrir un musée privé à Berlin dans un ancien bunker de télécommunication. L’ouverture est prévue pour avril 2016. Sa collection comprend des œuvres d’art d’Asie du Sud Est ainsi que de l’art de la Chine impériale et contemporain. On trouve des sculptures khmères datées entre le VIIe et le XIIIe siècle, des objets de la Chine impériale mais aussi des œuvres d’art contemporain signées Anish Kapoor, Zeng Fanzhi, James Lee Byars ou encore Cristina Iglesias. Soit une collection où se tisse un dialogue entre différentes formes d’art et d’expression selon les cultures et les époques et qui sera exposée dans le nouveau musée. L’ancien bunker, datant de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, a été rénové par l’architecte britannique John Pawson. Le musée ouvrira au public pour un week-end inaugural du 29 avril au 7 mai avant de laisser un espace à disposition pour la prochaine Biennale de Berlin, du 4 juin au 18 septembre. https://fr.artmediaagency.com/124549/le-collectionneur-desire-feuerle-ouvre-un-espace-a-berlin/
Feuerle Collection opens a new private exhibition venue in Berlin The new exhibition space of collector and art historian Désiré Feuerle is a telecommunication BASA-bunker form the World War II-era located in Berlin Kreuzberg which was for long term under water and that has been renovated by British architect John Pawson. It will showcase Feuerles private collection of international contemporary art including works from Cristina Iglesias, Anish Kapoor, Zeng Fanzhi, and James Lee Byars with imperial Chinese furniture and Southeast Asian Art. The curatorial concept is following Feuerles tradition of recontextualizing different periods and cultures to create new perspectives and levels of perception. It will also be one of the main venues for the Berlin Biennale which will take place from 4 June to 18 September 2016. The public preview week is open from 29 April to 7 May 2016 in parallel with the Gallery Weekend Berlin. “It is difficult to think of places more charged with atmosphere than these monumental concrete structures. I knew from the beginning when I visited the site and first had that visceral experience of mass that I wanted to use as light a hand as possible. Concentrating all the effort on making pristine surfaces would never have felt appropriate here. Instead this has been a slow, considered process – a series of subtle refinements and interventions that intensify the quality of the space, so that all the attention focuses on the art.” – John Pawson The visceral experience of mass in this civil engineering is intensifying the synesthetic perception evoked by dichotomy of time and space and creating an theatrical moment for the visitor, who is separated by the outside world by 2,5 to 3 meter thick walls. The hall in the basement is based on 27 pillars reflected into infinity through a sacral glass cube in which Incense ceremonies will take place and which is changing appearance in variation of lightning. The white-cube-like ground floor will be used for the Berlin Biennale and afterwards again for the whole Feuerle Collection. The pioneering concept of cross-cultural and multi-era combinations and its juxtaposition between ancient Asian and contemporary western art was shown before in Feuerles gallery in Cologne in the exhibitions “Eduardo Chillida and the Chinese neck rests of Ming and Song dynasties”, and “Anish Kapoor and Ban Chiang terracottas from 1500—3600 BC”. This time 7th-13th century Kmer sculptures in stone, bronze, and wood as well as imperial Chinese furniture spanning from the Han to the Qing dynasty (200 BC—18th century) will provoke a dialog with the contemporary works and challenge perception of the spectator. http://www.inenart.eu/?p=20729
MARILYN & LARRY FIELDS Location: Chicago Source of wealth: Commodities Collecting area: Contemporary art Larry and Marilyn Fields have only been collecting seriously for about 13 years, but they have already amassed an impressive collection of contemporary art. “Going to [Art] Basel is like being a kid in a candy store,” Marilyn remarked in a 2013 profile in Artinfo. “You can’t resist buying something.” The couple now own some 500 pieces by over 300 living artists, including Yin Ziuzhen, Neo Rauch, Mark Tansey, George Condo, Kara Walker, Gabriel Orozco, Richard Prince, Anish Kapoor, Jeff Koons, Trisha Donnelly, Christopher Wool, Yang Fudong, Jim Hodges, Thomas Ruff, Alec Soth, Glenn Ligon, Mark Bradford, David Hammons, and Theaster Gates. Both husband and wife are heavily involved with Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art—Marilyn joined the women’s board of the museum in 1998, later serving as board president for three years, and Larry (a former floor trader in the commodities market) is a trustee. The couple are very close with David Zwirner gallery; in the same Artinfo profile, they said the gallery “felt like family.” Fun fact: The Fields’ son, Adam, was previously involved with Artspace, and now runs ARTA Shipping, an art shipping marketplace. http://www.artnews.com/top200/marilyn-and-larry-fields/
Lawyer and former commodities trader Larry and his wife Marilyn, one of Chicago’s most prominent collecting couples, have amassed an array of some 500 objects from almost 300 living artists, 150 of which are installed in their private residence, and many of which have a political bent. The collection includes many pieces by African-American artists such as Kara Walker, Glenn Ligon, Mark Bradford, and Theaster Gates, whom they have been collecting in depth. Recent acquisitions include works by David Hammons, Jim Hodges, and Christopher Wool. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/top-200-art-collectors-2015-part-one-286048
If anyone would like an object lesson in how swiftly and thoroughly contemporary art can transform lives, look no further than Larry and Marilyn Fields. Just over a decade ago, Larry, a former commodities trader, ventured with his wife to one of the first editions of Art Basel Miami Beach and became intrigued, and then captivated, by what they saw. In the years since, the two have become among Chicago's most important patrons of new art, collecting certain artists in depth—they are said to have the single biggest holdings of Theaster Gates—and providing key support for the city's art institutions, including underwriting the Larry and Marilyn Fields Curator position at MCA Chicago that is currently held by Naomi Beckwith. Today, collecting has become a primary focus for the Fields, who have expanded their home on North Lake Shore Drive to contain not only refined areas to display art in their living quarters but also an entire conjoined gallery, which they created by buying the next-door apartment and remodeling it as a museum-worthy exhibition space. In this gallery, they display selections from their 500-piece (and growing) collection in rotations that change roughly four times a year, giving pride of place to their exceptionally strong concentration of work by rising-star African-American artists as well as the biggest names in contemporary art: Kapoor, Wool, Hirst, Condo, Prince, Orozco... it goes on. Lately, the collection has been joined by pieces of cutting-edge and classic design—the result of Marilyn's newfound love of chairs, and furniture auctions. (Art auctions, however, they have avoided thus far, preferring to work directly with artists and galleries.) This week, in honor of EXPO CHICAGO, the Fields opened their collection's doors for a generous VIP tour organized by NetJets and Artspace, where the couple's son, Adam Fields, is V.P. of partner relations. We were there, camera in hand, to document the proceedings. http://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/on_the_wall/fields_collection_tour-51676
CELSO FIORAVANTE Founder and editor of Mapa das Artes, a Brazilian art guide with both digital and bimonthly printed editions, Fioravante started his collection in 1996 while working as an art journalist. Today it includes some 500 drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs. Among his holdings are pieces by Eliseu Visconti, Antonio Maluf, Sergio de Camargo, Franz Weissmann, Amílcar de Castro, Vania Mignone, and Egidio Rocci. “About 90 percent of my collection was purchased at auctions and galleries. I rarely buy directly from an artist’s studio, unless he or she is not represented by any gallery,” says Fioravante, who in 2010 created the annual Exhibition for Artists Without Galleries, with artists submitting their work for consideration via an open call. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/artinfo/modern-painterss-50-most-_b_1694931.html
Le titulaire d'un baccalauréat en journalisme de l'Université pontificale catholique de São Paulo, il a travaillé avec la vidéo dans les années 1980, créer et diriger sept productions expérimentales, y compris manque quelque chose, deux reines et une tombe pour pleurer, qui Redbourn Leur queue de contes et chansons. Au cours d' un séjour en Italie, en 1988 et 1989, il a fait la vidéo La Donna della Cartolina (Les cartes femme Post). De retour au Brésil, il a travaillé comme écrivain, journaliste, rédacteur en chef et rédacteur en chef adjoint à Folha de São Paulo, entre 1990 et 2000 et se consacre aux beaux-arts de 1996 en avant. Depuis 1999, il a été membre du jury à beaux salons d'art, des appels ouverts et des prix dans des villes comme Piracicaba (SP), Praia Grande (SP), Curitiba (PR), Goiânia (GO), Belém (PA) et São Paulo ( SP). En 2000, il a écrit le texte du catalogue est l'art spectacle Arc de Roses - Le Marchand comme conservateur, y compris une pièce sur l'histoire du marché de l'art au Brésil, et quinze autres pièces sur des galeries d'art contemporain de São Paulo. En 2002, il a créé la publication bimestrielle Carte des Arts de São Paulo. En 2004, il a créé la version en ligne de la publication. En 2004, il a lancé l'édition Rio de Janeiro Carte des Arts, a publié jusqu'en 2010, pour un montant total de 28 éditions. En 2011, Carte des Arts a remporté le prix 2010 Antonio Bento pour le meilleur des arts visuels Publication de l'ABCA (Association des critiques d'art du Brésil). Il a organisé des expositions par Stephen Henriques solo, Egidio Rocci, Vera Goulart, Vitor Azambuja, Lopes Gonçalves Pythagoras, Rubem Ludolf, Rubem Valentim, Arnaldo Ferrari, Judith Lauand, Alberto Teixeira, João José Costa, et Antônio Maluf. Il a également les curated expositions collectives constructives et cinétique, Eye à l'écran, et noir sur blanc, entre autres. Il a collaboré avec des magazines Bravo, Vogue, Vogue Casa, Maison et Claudia luxe. En 2010, il a lancé le projet Salon des artistes Galerie Non, pour les artistes non représentés par les galeries de São Paulo. Il a organisé le spectacle Judith également Lauand: expériences, au Musée de São Paulo d'Art Moderne; et le spectacle de Paulo Von à la culture BM Poser & F, aussi bien en 2012. https://translate.google.fr/translate?hl=fr&sl=pt&u=http://site.videobrasil.org.br/en/acervo/artistas/artista/37621&prev=search
NICOLETTA FIORUCCI The Fiorucci Art Trust was founded by Nicoletta Fiorucci in 2010 to promote contemporary art in conventional and unconventional ways. Since its inception, Milovan Farronato has been Artistic Director of the Trust, which has its headquarters at 3 Spear Mews, London. The Trust produces artists’ commissions, publications, residencies and workshops every year in London as well as offsite. As part of the Public Programme of the Istanbul Biennial, it organised a one-week workshop on the island of Kastellorizo, Greece titled The violent No! of the sun burns the forehead of hills. Sand fleas arrive from salt lake and most of the theatres close. https://fiorucciartrust.com/about/
Il Fiorucci Art Trust è un centro di ricerca e produzione artistica contemporanea che dal 2010 sostiene artisti internazionali attraverso residenze, laboratori e workshop annuali situati in diverse location. Per la fondatrice Nicoletta Fiorucci "l’obiettivo è far sì che gli ospiti possano guardarsi attorno e intraprendere strade mai percorse prima, a contatto con realtà multiformi e non convenzionali". Non è casuale che durante il periodo estivo il centro abbandoni il suo quartier generale nel cuore della piovosa Londra per godere del sole e dell’energia vulcanica dell’isola di Stromboli. Nel nome del progetto la dichiarazione d’intenti: Volcano extravaganza. Molto più di una semplice residenza per artisti. Simposio d’arte esplosivo, festa ditirambica a tema, quest’anno incorniciata dal titolo emblematico In favour of a total eclipse. Maestro di cerimonia il direttore artistico del Trust Milovan Farronato, curatore italiano che dell’extravaganza ha fatto negli anni un personale manifesto. "Extravaganza è la vocazione a non seguire i percorsi conosciuti, è una pulsione all’ignoto. A Stromboli invitiamo gli artisti a cercare la molteplicità degli orizzonti e degli incontri in stretto dialogo con la natura prepotente del luogo". Tanti e internazionali gli invitati all’edizione appena conclusa. Il padre del cinema d’avanguardia americano Kenneth Anger ha aperto le danze presentando una speciale proiezione en plein air del film cult Lucifer rising, mentre Mathilde Rosier ha scelto come location per la sua performance coreografica la vetta più alta del vulcano. Raphael Hefti ha prodotto delle sculture estemporanee in riva al mare fondendo l’acciaio in stretti canali creati nella sabbia nera dell’isola, simulando una colata lavica in diretta; Thomas Zipp ha organizzato una parata d’ispirazione dadaista, con un esercito dionisiaco di musici improvvisati che ha fatto irruzione nelle strade cittadine; Goshka Macuga ha organizzato un’esilarante pièce in cui un extraterrestre, precipitato su una scogliera di Stromboli, ha interrogato il pubblico e se stesso sul malinconico destino dell’umanità contemporanea. "La sfida del Trust", continua Nicoletta Fiorucci, "è competere con l’istituzione pubblica. Da privati possiamo permetterci di sperimentare liberamente e di abitare luoghi sempre diversi, dandoci come obiettivo un nuovo sguardo anche rispetto al pubblico". Prossimo appuntamento? "La continuazione di un progetto di residenza per artisti nel misterioso arcipelago di Li Galli", conclude Milovan Farronato. Solo l’inizio di una nuova avventura. http://www.vogue.it/uomo-vogue/news/2015/11/fiorucci-art-trust
EMILY FISCHER LANDAU Location: New York; Palm Beach, Florida Employment: Real estate Art Collection: Contemporary American art http://www.artfortune.com/collectors-11/
The Fisher Landau Center for Art is a private foundation located in Long Island City, Queens, in New York City, United States. It offers regular exhibitions of contemporary art, open to the public from 12 to 5pm, Thursdays through Mondays. The center, established in 1991, was accessible by appointment only until regular public hours were established in April 2003. The 25,000-square-foot (2,300 m2), three-story facility is devoted to the exhibition and study of the contemporary art collection of Emily Fisher Landau. The core of the 1,200-work collection is art from 1960 to the present, including important works by Ellsworth Kelly, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Susan Rothenberg, Barbara Kruger, Annette Lemieux, and Matthew Barney. Once a parachute-harness factory, the building at 38-27 30th Street in Long Island City was transformed into galleries and a library by the late English architect Max Gordon, designer of the widely admired Saatchi Collection in London, in collaboration with Bill Katz. A close friend and adviser to Ms. Landau, Mr. Katz also serves as curator for the collection. The center is appointed with furniture by Warren McArthur, a mid-20th century designer of whose work Ms. Landau has collected some 150 examples. Mrs. Emily Fisher Landau, the widow of Martin Fisher and now married to Sheldon Landau, is a principal in the real estate firm of Fisher Brothers. Mrs. Landau is a generous donor to other institutions, notably the Whitney Museum of American Art, where the fourth-floor galleries are named for her, and where she serves on the Board of Trustees. She has also served on the Painting and Sculpture Committee of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Board of Trustees of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_Landau_Center
Legacy: The Emily Fisher Landau Collection presents a selection of works from the historic gift of art pledged to the Whitney in May 2010 by longtime Museum trustee Emily Fisher Landau. Considered one of the preeminent collectors of postwar art in the United States, Emily Fisher Landau’s personal approach to collecting has long paralleled that of the Whitney, an institution similarly devoted to the art of its time. The exhibition traces many of the ideas that have preoccupied artists in the United States, particularly since the 1960s. Questions about the relevance of painting in the aftermath of Minimalism, debates about representation, “culture wars,” and a revived interest in personal narratives are explored in works by artists such as Carl Andre, John Baldessari, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Peter Hujar, Neil Jenney, Barbara Kruger, Robert Mapplethorpe, Agnes Martin, Richard Prince, Martin Puryear, Susan Rothenberg, Mark Tansey, and David Wojnarowicz. Also highlighted in Legacy are some of the artists that Emily Fisher Landau collected in depth—Richard Artschwager, Jasper Johns, and Ed Ruscha—a reflection of her longstanding relationships with artists and her commitment to collecting in depth. http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/Legacy
FRIEDRICH CHRISTIAN FLICK Location: German-born Swiss-resident Employment: Friedrich Flick KGaA, the industrial empire, Daimler Benz, W.R. Grace and Gerling Konzern. Art Collection: collects Old Masters; Modern and Contemporary Art, with a focus on European sculptures http://www.artfortune.com/collectors-9/
The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection is a modern art collection founded by Friedrich Christian Flick, an art collector and heir to the fortune of the illustrious Flick industrial family. It is one of the world's leading modern art collections. The collection encompasses around 2,500 works by 150 artists. From 2004 to 2010, parts of the collection were on display in Berlin, in the Hamburger Bahnhof museum, as part of a cooperation between Flick, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Berlin State Museums. Friedrich Christian Flick began his art collection in 1975. From the early 1980s, he has principally collected modern art.[2] The opening exhibition "Creation Myths", the first of a series to be curated by museum staff, was named after Canadian installation artist Jason Rhoades's sculpture of the same name.[3] The venture was originally planned for an initial period of seven years, until 2011. The partnership was later extended by another ten years, until 2021. In February 2008, Flick donated 166 works of art to the National Gallery, the largest gift of a private person the museums since its foundation in the 19th century. This donation includes works of the last forty years, including main works by artists like Marcel Broodthaers, John Cage, David Claerbout, Stan Douglas, Martin Kippenberger, Bruce Nauman, Raymond Pettibon, Jason Rhoades, and Wolfgang Tillmans. The Hamburger Bahnhof was expanded by the annexation of an adjacent warehouse to create extra 10.000 sq.m. for Flick's artworks. In 2001 Flick hired the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to design a museum in Zurich for his collection. But Jewish groups[who?] and others criticized Flick for, unlike his siblings, not contributing to a $6 billion compensation fund for slave laborers and their families. He argued that the fund was not meant for individual contributions and instead created his own foundation to fight xenophobia, racism and intolerance. But the protests continued, and he decided to place his collection elsewhere. Through an agreement with the government, Flick then lent his collection of some 2,500 works to the Hamburger Bahnhof, where it will be shown in exhibitions that are supposed to change every nine months or so. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, in a speech at the opening ceremony, said, "The art has to get the chance to unfold itself. Every single piece has a dignity and aura, which is independent of the collector's family history."[5] Berlin's culture senator, Thomas Flierl, expressed misgivings, saying that by rebuilding his business empire in the 1950s and 1960s, Friedrich Flick personified tolerance of former Nazi moguls.[6] Salomon Korn, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, wrote an open letter to the Munich newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung asking, "Will there soon be a 'Göring Collection' in Berlin?", calling the plans "a form of moral whitewashing to turn blood money into a socially acceptable form of art ownership." Satirical posters appeared near the Hamburger Bahnhof, offering "free entry for slave labourers" and accusing Flick of using his art collection to avoid paying taxes.[7] Several prominent artists, including Gerhard Richter, Hans Haacke, Marcel Odenbach and Thomas Struth, made statements in Germany's national weekly broadsheet "Die Zeit" protesting that Flick's principles were immoral and that it was not appropriate for a private collector to be able to determine the content of a state-funded museum. Others, including photographer Wolfgang Tillmans and painter Luc Tuymans, defended Flick, praised his artistic good taste and pointed out that Berlin on its own lacks the financial means with which to purchase comparable works of art. In response to the debate, the Hamburger Bahnhof produced an in-house newspaper representing different points of view for free distribution to exhibition visitors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Christian_Flick_Collection
Friedrich Flick, who made his fortune as an arms supplier to the Nazis during World War II, once presented old master paintings to Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief Hermann Göring as a birthday gift. Now his grandson, Friedrich Christian ("Mick") Flick, 60, has loaned his own art collection, worth about $300 million, to the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlins contemporary art museum, run by the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz of the Federal Republic of Germany. "The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection" opens Sept. 21, 2004. http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/weidle/weidle9-20-04.asp
ELLA FONTANALS-CISNEROS Location: Gstaad, Switzerland; Madrid Source of wealth: Investments, real estate, and telecommunications Collecting area: Global contemporary art, video, and photography, with an emphasis on historical geometric abstraction and Conceptual art, with a focus on Cuban and Latin American art Ella Fontanals-Cisneros was born in Cuba, but fled to Venezuela at the age of 16 with her family during the Cuban Revolution. She currently lives in Miami, where she and her family founded the nonprofit Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) in 2002. Fontanals-Cisneros began collecting art in 1999 and has since become “one of the heaviest hitters on the Miami scene,” according to a 2007 profile in W magazine. Works in her enormous collection often appear in shows organized by CIFO, and include pieces by Vik Muniz, John Baldessari, Olafur Eliasson, and Ai Weiwei. She also opened Miami Art Central (MAC), whose resources she later donated to Miami Art Museum under the program name MAC@MAM. Fun fact: “I remember locking myself in a closet during a fight with my mother when I was 12 or 13,” Fontanals-Cisneros told W in the same profile. “While I was in that closet, I had this vision of what my life was going to be like. It was like watching a film. I got this confidence that I could do anything, that it would be easy for me.” http://www.artnews.com/top200/ella-fontanals-cisneros/
Ella Fontanals-Cisneros began collecting art in the early 1970s, with a primary interest in works from Latin America. Over the ensuing years, as the collection developed so did the scope of work. What started as the acquisition of artworks for personal enjoyment has matured into an ambitious life-project. The median of artwork in her collection is widespread. She has work in the constantly evolving group video and new media. Photography is an important area of her collection that has been developing rapidly. The collection’s principal concentration was upon the relationships among architecture, landscape, and urban space. Ella has pieces of artwork that focus on Geometric Abstraction and Contemporary Art as well. She started the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, a non-profit organization, in 2002 to support artists who are exploring new directions in contemporary art. They offer grants and commission program for emerging and mid-career artists from Latin America. http://www.artfortune.com/collectors-7/
The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) is a non-profit organization committed to the enrichment of the arts. Over the years, CIFO has earned the respect of the international art world; and is recognized for its rich history in the fostering of contemporary art. As an art foundation, we’re dedicated to the support of emerging and mid career contemporary artists from Latin America. Since 2002, CIFO has granted more than $1.5 Million to over 120 artists from Latin America and has exhibited their work in our signature art space in downtown Miami — The CIFO Art Space. CIFO is also the guardian of the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, one of the most important international collections of contemporary art in the world. Select pieces of this personal art collection are exhibited every year during Art Basel Miami at the CIFO Art Space as well as other well-known art spaces and museums as traveling exhibitions. Many pieces of this collection are on long-term loan at such prestigious museums such as the Tate Modern in London, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and others. At CIFO, we believe in forging relationships within the art community. We strive to inspire Latin American artists, nurture their creativity and help them transcend as artists. https://www.cifo.org/index.php/k2-demo-1/item/361-about-cifo
SHELLEY FOX AARONS & PHILIP AARONS Location: New York Source of wealth: Real estate Collecting area: Contemporary art ‘We began as art appreciators many years ago when Phil was an undergraduate art history major at Columbia,” the Aaronses told ARTnews. “Our student schedule allowed ample time for travel and frequent visits to gallery and museum exhibitions. Our student budget did not provide for purchasing any of the art we viewed. As the years passed and our budget increased, we gradually began buying some of the art we had long been viewing.” Phil is a real-estate developer who, in 1990, cofounded the firm Partner Millennium Partners; Shelley is a psychiatrist. The two own work by more than 500 artists, and are especially known for their support of artist books; Phil is the president of Printed Matter’s board. The first artists they began collecting in depth were Tom Sachs and Guillermo Kuitca, according to a Flash Art interview, and they count many as close friends. (“Shelley has given me tons of free psychotherapy,” Sachs told New York magazine in 2012.) Fun fact: The first artwork that the pair acquired together was by Lawrence Kupferman, who was a friend of Phil's parents. “[W]e boldly requested to receive one as a wedding gift,” they told Interview magazine. “He gave us a beautiful watercolor on paper, which we still own today.” http://www.artnews.com/top200/shelley-fox-aarons-and-philip-e-aarons/
I was looking for Phil Aarons, who is president of the board of Printed Matter, a storefront operation that’s proved to be one of New York’s truly great art world institutions, albeit one so familiar and modest that its importance is easily overlooked. Printed Matter was founded in TriBeCa in the mid-’70s by the artists Sol LeWitt and Lucy Lippard as a repository for just what its name suggests: all those things that exist in between multiples and monographs—roughly, anything in book form made by (as opposed to about) an artist. Aarons is not the originator of the fair (that was his predecessor, the artist-publisher AA Bronson), but he is its guiding hand and leading booster. You could describe Aarons as a wealthy real estate developer, or you could describe him as a man with an uncommon love of print. He and his wife, Shelley Fox Aarons, are major collectors of contemporary art and sit on the boards of a half-dozen cultural institutions (he’s on MoMA PS1; she’s on the New Museum); he was one of the first advisers to the High Line in Manhattan and is one of the founders of Millennium Partners. Still, he’s perfectly unassuming—low-key almost to the point of anonymity. I asked a handful of staffers and exhibitors if they’d seen him, but no one knew who I was talking about. Finally, someone told me to look for the man in the suit, which helped quite a bit. Nobody else was wearing one. “I would say book collecting is a mania and a passion,” Aarons said when I at last found him. As we made our way through the thicket of people, he pointed out that this was different from your usual art fair. “It feels more like a party, and there are more young people,” he said. He steered me toward some of his favorite self-published stuff. Another Companion to Books From the Simpsons, In Alphabetical Order, a small but thick volume of washed-out frames from every sequence of the TV show in which a book was visible. A broadsheet-size publication called Evil People in -Modernist Homes in Popular Films, which consists of stills of exactly that. There was quite a bit of Risography, a printing technique, much like mimeography, with crude lines and garish colors that can get misaligned in the printing process, leaving an effect not unlike a 3-D image seen without the appropriate glasses. The biggest and most prominent setups belonged to the dealers with the most valuable treasures, including rarities like Ed Ruscha’s early photo books, a first edition of Robert Frank’s Americans, Josef Albers’s magnificent Interaction of Color, and one of the few surviving copies of Francesca Woodman’s Some Disordered Interior Geometries. The Printed Matter store, located in Chelsea, in New York, carries more than 12,000 items in its inventory, at a median price of about $10. The fair houses around 270 vendors. Together, they help dispel a host of widespread canards: that the Internet has become the dominant force in visual expression; that art is an expensive hobby, where even a single painting by a relatively young artist can cost as much as a new Mercedes; that the all-important market is ruled by unreasonably rich people bidding anonymously at fancy auctions; that aesthetic appreciation thrives on scarcity, exclusion, and connoisseurship; and that ephemera can’t outlast more permanent work. None of these things are true. Jim Lewis - http://www.wmagazine.com/story/printed-matter-ny-art-book-fair
AMANDA & GLENN FUHRMAN Location: New York Employment: Investments (MSD Capital) Art Collection: Contemporary art http://www.artfortune.com/collectors-9/
Fuhrman, co-managing partner of MSD Capital, studied art history and was recently listed by Business Insider among the most serious art collectors on Wall Street. He is a trustee of the MoMA, is a trustee of Tate Americas Foundation, is a board member of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, and is founder of The FLAG Art Foundation in New York. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/top-200-art-collectors-2015-part-one-286048
In 2014 Glenn Fuhrman told the Austin Chronicle that he and his wife are “drawn to works that have a real aesthetic appeal but also some additional layer of meaning…something that allows the work to be more than just a pretty picture.” Certainly this is true of Robert Therrien’s Table and Four Chairs (2003), a ten-foot-tall dining set. The same quirky sense of mystery infuses their entire collection, which includes works by Jim Hodges, Jim Torok, Charles Ray, Juan Muñoz, Maurizio Cattelan, and Katharina Fritsch, among many others. An exhibition of their artwork, curated by Louis Grachos, was shown at the Contemporary Austin in Texas last year. Titled “A Secret Affair: Selections from the Fuhrman Family Collection,” the show was meant to “serve as a metaphor for the passion of collecting and the intimate relationship between the art object and its beholder.” It also appeared at the FLAG Art Foundation, the Fuhrmans’ Chelsea exhibition space, where it opened in February 2015. FLAG has done some quirkier exhibitions, including one curated by star basketball player Shaquille O’Neal. Fun fact: The Fuhrmans at one point had over 30 works by their favorite artist, Jim Hodges, installed in a single room of their house. http://www.artnews.com/top200/amanda-and-glenn-r-fuhrman-2/
…The body in art becomes a mechanism for questioning our place in the world, our identities, our roles, and our relationships to others. On some level, all of the objects in A Secret Affair can be loosely categorized as meditations on the most primal and basic emotional need in life: that of human connection.* The FLAG Art Foundation is pleased to present A Secret Affair: Selections from the Fuhrman Family Collection, an exhibition of work from FLAG Founder Glenn Fuhrman and his wife Amanda’s collection. The exhibition will be on view on FLAG’s 9th and 10th floor galleries from February 21 – May 16, 2015. The title of the exhibition, A Secret Affair, was inspired by Jim Lambie’s keyhole sculpture Secret Affair (Gold), 2007, and serves as a metaphor for the passion of collecting and the intimate relationship between the art object and its beholder. Consisting primarily of sculpture, the exhibition revolves around the figure, the close connection between two individuals, and absence. Artworks by 19 participating artists are at times playful and poignant, including: Jim Hodges’s eerily captivating pink crystal skull, divided in two, forming a (broken) heart; Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s poetic light strands and touching brass rings; Louise Bourgeois’s hand-sewn couple merged at the belly; Ron Mueck’s miniature yet monumental spooning couple; Juan Muñoz’s wall-mounted men sharing a hearty laugh at each other’s expense; Katharina Fritsch’s fantastical octopus embodying fear, control, and helplessness; Yinka Shonibare MBE’s headless ballerinas concealing revolvers behind their colorful skirts; and Maurizio Cattelan’s slyly humorous pair of inverted police officers, which take on a new resonance in the wake of recent violence and protest. The primal need to connect, with ourselves or others, and the volatile nature of intimacy, complicated by protection and imprisonment, tenderness and aggression, isolation and togetherness, are themes explored throughout the artworks in A Secret Affair. http://flagartfoundation.org/exhibitions/a-secret-affair/