Image by Artknowledgenews / A portrait of young woman
In the art world, lots of people hold power: artists, dealers, and curators among them.
But one particularly powerful group consists of the folks who actually shell out millions of dollars for art: the collectors.
They are all at the top of their game, for the depth and breadth of their collections, and for the sheer amount of money they spend on art.
Peter Brant
Image: zimbio.com
Who is he? An entrepreneur and businessman who owns White Birch Paper Company and Brant Publications, Inc. His estimated net worth is $500 million.
What's in his collection? He's a patron of Urs Fischer, Josh Smith, and David Altmejd, and his Brant Foundation Art Study Center, housed in a barn in Greenwich, Conn., is home to more than 600 works.
Steven A. Cohen
Image: New York magazine
Who is he? Cohen is the founder of hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, and has an estimated net worth of around $9.3 billion.
What's in his collection? He's known for dropping huge sums of money on big-name artists: Cohen reportedly spent $137.5 million on de Kooning's Woman III (the second most expensive painting ever sold), and just recently paid $110 million for a Jasper Johns.
He also has some strange pieces in his collection, including a shark in formaldehyde by Damien Hirst.
George Economou
Image: AP Images
Who is he? A Greek shipping magnate and billionaire.
What's in his collection? Economou, who started collecting a decade ago, publicly shared part of his collection for the first time in February. He acquires between 150 and 200 works a year, and is partial to 20th century Austrian and German Art.
Names in his collection include Picasso and Magritte, and he owns the world's largest collection of Otto Dix prints.
Laurence Graff
Who is he? Graff is a British-born diamond mogul known for buying some of the world's most expensive diamonds and selling them to A-listers.
What's in his collection? In addition to buying millions of dollars worth of diamonds each year, Graff is also known to snap up high-priced art.
In 2010 he bought Picasso’s 1963 Tête de femme (Jacqueline), for $12.8 million, and Matthew Day Jackson’s 2007 Bucky, for $938,00, both at auction, according to Art+Auction.
Pauline Karpidas
Who is she? The widow of Greek shipping tycoon Constantine Karpidas and a major patron of the arts.
What's in her collection? British-born Karpidas owns a gallery on the Greek island of Hydra, where she has displayed works by Urs Fischer, Wilhelm Sasnal and Sergej Jensen, and more recently by American artists Frank Benson and Mark Grotjahn.
She made headlines in 2009 when she auctioned off Andy Warhol's 200 One Dollar Bills for $43.8 million, more than 100 times what she paid for it two decades earlier.
Jose, Alberto, and David Mugrabi
Who are they? Jose is a self-made millionaire and former cloth merchant from Bogotá, Colombia. Alberto and David are his sons, who now work with him in New York.
What's in their collection? Mugrabi started collecting art in the early 1980s and owns the world's largest collection of Andy Warhol paintings, currently standing at around 800 works. He also owns pieces by Picasso, Rodin, and Jeff Koons.
The family is known for trying to keep prices of Warhol works high, and stores its massive collection in storage rooms and apartments from New Jersey to Zurich. The elder Mugrabi recently won a self-portrait of Warhol in a three-way bidding war at Christie's, paying $27.5 million for the piece.
François Pinault
Image: AP Images
Who is he? The founder of luxury conglomerate PPR, which owns Gucci and a ton of other brands. His estimated net worth is $11.5 billion.
What's in his collection? Pinault is the owner of Christie's and an avid collector: his works are displayed in two museums in Venice and he reportedly owns some 2,000 pieces, many acquired directly from artists such as Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, according to Slate.
He also displays works at his Paris home and will probably use the wall space in his new $32 million London townhouse to showcase additional art.
Steven and Chiara Rosenblum
Steve and Chiara Rosenblum's collection in Paris is open to the public
Who are they? Steve is the founder of European digital goods e-tailer Pixmania.
What's in their collection? Last year the couple opened Rosenblum Collection & Friends, a contemporary art showroom in Paris. They started collecting African masks, but have moved towards contemporary art. Recent acquisitions include abstract works by younger artists like Aaron Curry, Andrew Dadson, and Tamar Halpern, ArtInfo reports.
Budi Tek
Who is he? An Indonesian-Chinese agribusiness tycoon and the owner of a contemporary art museum in his hometown of Jakarta.
What's in his collection? Tek started by collecting Chinese pieces, but has recently started purchasing works by Western artists, according to ArtInfo.
Last year he made headlines when he paid $6.7 million for “Chapter of a New Century — Birth of the People’s Republic of China II” by Zhang Xiaogang, which he intends to display in a soon-to-open private museum he is building in Shanghai.
Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani
Image: via Zimbio
Who is she? The Sheikha is the daughter of the Emir of Qatar and chair of the board of the Qatar Museums Authority. This year, Art+Auction called her the most powerful person in the art world.
What's in her collection? She is in charge of purchasing art for Qatar, the world's biggest buyer of modern art. She's believed to be behind major acquisitions including Rothkos, Warhols, and other works in Doha's three national museums, according to ArtInfo.
Wang Wei and Liu Yiqian
Who are they? Liu Yiqian is a self-made stock trader and billionaire; he and his wife are considered to be China's biggest art collectors.
What's in their collection? Wang acts as a curator for the pair's enormous collection, which consists primarily of Chinese art, according to BBC News.
In October 2010, Liu paid about $11 million for a Qing Dynasty imperial throne with carved dragons at Sotheby's Hong Kong, BBC reported. And the couple recently showed around 60 of their Chinese paintings at a show in Beijing, which was insured for $1.5 billion.
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