MCLC: the new collectors

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: the new collectors
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Part of the NYT Culture of Bidding series, this is mostly a video report,
so go to the link below.

Kirk 

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Source: NYT (12/17/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/the-new-collectors/

A CULTURE OF BIDDING
The New Collectors
By David Barboza and Jonah M. Kessel

Like their predecessors across history and geography, China’s newly rich
have set out to collect the very best the world has to offer: homes,
wines, cars and, with a special passion, Chinese art.

They joust with one another at auction houses, where the fevered bidding
has driven up prices to the point that some jades, ceramics, calligraphy
and paintings now fetch huge sums. In 2011, for instance, a Ming dynasty
vase sold for $140 million at an auction in Macau.

Partly because of these free-spending bidders, China now possesses the
second-largest art market in the world, after the United States.

Like other wealthy business executives, Liu Yiqian, 50, a financier from
Shanghai, who Forbes estimates is worth $790 million, has amassed a huge
collection and plans to exhibit his treasures in two private museums in
Shanghai. He has already opened the first, a 100,000-square-foot space.
Admission is $9.

Mr. Liu, who got his start driving a taxi and never attended college, says
he collects everything: Song dynasty paintings, porcelain made during the
Qing dynasty, works from the Cultural Revolution and paintings by some of
the country’s best contemporary artists, like Fang Lijun.

“I don’t have a specialization,” he said during an interview in his office
in one of the city’s tallest buildings, the Shanghai World Financial
Center. “As long as it’s Chinese, I’ll collect it.”