Oligarch and Sheikh: The Art Newspaper Names Buyers of "Rockefeller Rothko" and Koons "Heart"


Chic for a Sheikh? Mark Rothko's $72.8-million "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)," 1950

While we're waiting for some contemporary art auction records to be set later this month, The Art Newspaper claims to know the names of big winners of auctions past. Sarah Thornton reports:

Ever since their culture minister, Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al Thani, was arrested and investigated (and then pardoned) for alleged misuse of public funds, the collecting clan (whose cultural assets include Al Jazeera) has been keeping a low profile. But we can reveal that they are now major players in the modern and contemporary market acquiring, among other things, Mark Rothko's "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)," otherwise known as the "Rockefeller Rothko," which sold at Sotheby's in May 2007 for the world-wide record price of $72.8 million--the most expensive post-war work of art to sell at auction ever....

When "Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold)" was bought at Sotheby's New York for $21 million hammer price ($23.6 million with buyer's premium) by Gagosian for Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian billionaire with a taste for high-impact figurative work, it...made [Jeff] Koons contemporary art's uncontested top dog.
So Sarah, since you know so much, who bought the Guennol Lioness?

COMING SOON: AUCTIONEERS GONE WILD? UNFAIR "FAIR MARKET VALUE"
May 4, 2008 10:24 PM |

About

CULTUREGRRL is your inside guide to the artworld, consulted daily by the most important museum directors and curators, art dealers and auctioneers, collectors, scholars, critics, journalists and art lovers. Bringing wit and wisdom to informed, informative reviews of artworld events and issues, CultureGrrl (aka Lee Rosenbaum) is avidly read for her influential critiques of best and worst practices in the field.

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LEE ROSENBAUM LeeAcrop.jpg I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I am contributing editor of Art in America magazine and a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School and on museum governance at Seton Hall University.

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The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection (museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

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The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

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Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
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This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
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LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

ART IN AMERICA:
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

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Criticism of AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

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Murakami at Brooklyn Museum
Whitney Biennial
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on the Art Market

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Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

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This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on May 4, 2008 10:24 PM.

Recession Obsession: Have Auction Houses Tightened Up on Guarantees? was the previous entry in this blog.

Auctioneers Gone Wild? Unfair "Fair Market Value" is the next entry in this blog.

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