Billionaires’ Nonprofits Are the Art Market’s Golden Ticket
At Art Basel this week, dealers hope their biggest artworks will go to private foundations.
Tom Wesselmann's Still Life #60, 1973, presented by Gagosian at Unlimited, in Art Basel.
Photographer: Robert McKeever, courtesy of Gagosian
During the opening of Art Basel’s Unlimited section on Monday in Switzerland, technicians in jumpsuits pushed life-size, three-dimensional models of cars through a mechanism that sprayed acrylic paint. Around the corner, a 30-foot-long blow-up sculpture of a Nike sneaker towered over passersby. Across the hall, two 62-foot-long walls were covered in banners highlighting 200 people accused of sexual harassment.
These artworks are for sale, but this is not the kind of art that would end up in a house, let alone on a living room wall.