Bernard Arnault at the opening of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in October 2014. Photo: Rindoff/Charriau/French Select/Getty © Rindoff/Charriau, 2014

Despite a distinct cooling in the art market, ARTnews top 200 collectors list—released yesterday (6 September)—boasts the usual array of billionaire property developers, computer software designers and hedge funders who are also serious collectors.

 

Scrolling through the alphabetically arranged list most are collectors of Modern and contemporary art, which is still the most dominant category in the market despite a 14% drop in auction sales last year, according to The European Fine Art Foundation (Tefaf).

 

Many of the collectors have recently opened spaces to house private collections and archives. They include the Russian collector Dasha Zhukova, who runs the recently reopened Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow; the French luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault, whose Fondation Louis Vuitton launched a $135m museum in Paris two years ago; and the US patrons Edythe and Eli Broad, whose $140m private museum opened in Los Angeles last September.

 

According to ARTnews, J. Tomilson Hill, the vice chairman of the private equity firm the Blackstone Group, is soon to join their ranks. He is opening the Hill Art Foundation next autumn in a Peter Marino–designed building in New York’s Chelsea art district. Visitors will be able to view his eclectic collection of Old Masters, post-war and contemporary art and Renaissance bronzes for free.