A novel collector

Michael Prodger on Art

● HISTORY’S GREATEST ART collectors have often been fascinating characters too — the likes of the Medici, Charles I, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Leo and Gertrude Stein had character and hinterland as well as taste and discrimination: they didn’t just acquire art wholesale, although they could do that too, but commissioned it. Their modern heirs are more likely simply to be very rich — the late Paul Allen with his Microsoft billions; Roman Abramovich (whose collection, according to the Oligarch Files, a recently leaked cache of financial papers, is worth $963 million); and Bernard Arnault, who has finessed his luxury brands, Louis Vuitton, Moët, Tiffany et al, into enough art to fill an entire new museum designed by Frank Gehry in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. Despite considerably shallower…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2023

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