New Barbarians at the Museum Gates

The big art story in today's NY Times is not in the Arts section; it's the Business section's article by Landon Thomas Jr. about the mutual courtship between the newest art connoisseurs, hedge-fund kings, and donation-seeking art museums:

In the fast-shifting sands of New York's moneyed classes, the explosion of hedge fund wealth has created a new financial pecking order. A century ago, the steel and oil money of Frick and Rockefeller was deemed to be new until it came to endow some of New York's great cultural institutions. In the 1980s and 1990s, the buyout kings Henry R. Kravis and Ronald O. Perelman became billionaires and were furiously courted to join museum boards.

Now institutions like the Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum and Lincoln Center are making a push for the newest money on the block as they try to lure hedge fund executives to join their boards. This effort has dovetailed with an emerging tendency by hedge fund moguls to spread their wings a bit in greater New York society.

The article's Exhibit A is former Steve Cohen protégé David Ganek, now running his own Level Global Investors. Ganek "rake[d] in $4 million as co-chairman of...the Guggenheim International dinner last month." Nine other hedge funders are also mentioned for cozying up to culture.

And now comes the scary part: Ganek's "profile is likely to increase after the publication of his wife's book next June, 'Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him,' which Viking is promoting as 'The Devil Wears Prada' for the art world.

Am I really going to be professionally required to read this? I think I'll stick to John Elderfield's catalogue for "Manet and the Execution of Maximilian." (More on political art, or the lack thereof, coming soon.)