Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
It features collectors, museum directors, artists, an Internet search engine and a French tycoon who made his billions in fashion retail and now spends them on Venetian palaces and pickled cattle.
ArtReview magazine’s annual list of the 100 most powerful people in the contemporary art scene was published, prompting predictable modest coughs from those who found themselves near the top, and sniffy dismissals from those who had been bumped down the list or, worse, banished from it altogether. The magazine named the Frenchman Francois Pinault, one of the world’s leading buyers, as the most powerful man in modern art.
Pinault’s position at the top is thanks to the private gallery in Venice to house some of his 2,000 pieces of contemporary art.
The top 10
1 Francois Pinault,
Owner of Gucci and Christies
2 Larry Gagosian, Dealer
3 Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Modern
4 Glenn D Lowry,
Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York
5 Samuel Keller, Director of the Art Basel art fair
6 Eli Broad,
Los Angeles-based collector and philanthropist
7 Charles Saatchi,
Collector and gallery owner
8 Matthew Slotover & Amanda Sharp,
Co-publishers of Frieze magazine and co-directors of Frieze art fair
9 Bruce Nauman, American artist
10 Jeff Koons, American artist
