Breakfast of…. Collectors!

I wanted to start this post by giving a big thank you to those of you that attended the Contemporary Collectors talk last Thursday, 11 October.  The opportunity to informally converse with a couple so prominently linked in the globalized art world really was- for lack of a more articulate phrase- an awesome experience.  An experience, that for me, did not end on Thursday evening.

On Friday morning (12 October), the art graduate assistants were invited to have breakfast with representatives of THE EKARD COLLECTION, Samek Gallery Director Richard Rinehart, and  Principal Gifts Director Ken Hall.  The group spent the better half of the morning discussing inspirational artists, art fairs across the globe, professional goals and interests, and how to cultivate relationships with galleries, collectors, and artists.

To coincide with the topics discussed at the lecture and breakfast, I would like to briefly share an anecdote relayed by one of the representatives of THE EKARD COLLECTION that told the story of how the couple purchased their Anish Kapoor (for those of you not familiar with Kapoor’s work, he is often associated with his Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago’s Millennium Park).  Knowing that Kapoor’s work was gaining recognition in the early 2000s, the representatives of THE EKARD COLLECTION wanted to buy one of his sculptures before  high auction sales put such a purchase beyond their financial reach.  After searching for an available Kapoor, the representatives of THE EKARD COLLECTION were put in contact with a gallery in Madrid.  One of the representatives of THE EKARD COLLECTION flew to Madrid on a Wednesday morning to view the sculpture, which had already been crated for an auction that afternoon.  Not being able to remove the sculpture from its crate (it weighed almost 900 pounds), she went into the gallery’s basement, had the bottom of the crate removed, and crawled underneath the sculpture with a flashlight (to look at the sculpture’s surface and depth) and her cellphone (to talk out their potential purchase with Bob).   Ultimately, THE EKARD COLLECTION bought their Kapoor sculpture on a Wednesday morning.  At auction that same day, another Kapoor sculpture sold for three times more than what they paid for their piece only a few hours prior to the auction.