What We're Reading: 12/20/22
Billionaire Ken Griffin Moved His Art Out of The Art Institute to Florida's Norton Museum
In 2015, the hedge fund titan Kenneth C. Griffin became the first person to spend half a billion dollars on art in a single transaction. David Geffen made a deal with Griffin to sell him Willem de Kooning’s boldly colored abstract masterpiece Interchange for $300 million, and Jackson Pollock’s Number 17A—the splatter painting Life magazine plastered in its pages in 1949, minting Jack the Dripper an American celebrity—for $200 million.
Griffin could have scurried away with the masterpieces to one of his homes: a $238 million apartment at 220 Central Park West and a $120 million London mansion near Buckingham Palace, the most expensive apartment in Chicago history, getaways in Aspen and Hawaii, a large chunk of Miami’s Star Island. Instead he let them go on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, placing 20th-century masterworks next to the museum’s iconic impressionist and postimpressionist holdings.
Via Vanity Fair
This was a year whose high points included an adult-feeling Whitney Biennial, a major survey of contemporary Puerto Rican art, and one of the great big-little exhibitions of all time.
Via NYT
Former President Donald Trump has sold a lot of self-branded products in his day. Trump Ties. Trump Steaks. There was even a short-lived Trump Shuttle airline. And now, Trump NFTs—excuse me, Trump Digital Trading Cards.
The collection of 45,000 non-fungible tokens depicting Trump in absurdly heroic poses, each priced at $99, sold out within a day of last week’s “major announcement” of the drop. Political commentators had been expecting news surrounding Trump’s third presidential campaign. Instead, we got JPGs. Thousands and thousands of them.
Via Artnet