The picture of wealth
Love it or hate it, you’ll find ARTnews’ annual list of “the world’s 200 top art collectors” in its summer issue. And who’s the biggest spender? Sheikh Saud Al-Thani of Qatar -- to use the magazine’s spelling -- who is said to have dropped hundreds of millions of dollars on antiquities, Islamic art, photography, Old Master paintings and rare books. Not to mention an additional fortune on places to display them. When he isn’t shopping, he is reported to be supervising the construction of five art museums in Qatar.
The other 199 collectors aren’t rated by their art-buying budgets. But the magazine singles out the top 10, including Los Angeles philanthropist Eli Broad and Las Vegas hotel-casino mogul Stephen A. Wynn.
All it takes to join this crowd, says ARTnews publisher Milton Esterow, are deep pockets, big closets and no memory. The third requirement reflects advice from an unnamed collector, who says it’s best to forget how little you might have spent on a particular work if you’d been sharp enough to grab it before the artist got famous.
-- Suzanne Muchnic