Art Collections And Collectors

Twenty-two contemporary works, including a prime early painting by Francis Bacon that is expected to break the British artist's record of $1.76 million, will be offered May 2. Four modern works, by Rene Magritte, Jean Delville, Giorgio Morandi and James Ensor, will be sold May 9 in a sale of Impressionist and modern art. Though Janss and his family made their fortune in the American tradition of developing land--about 90,000 acres of Southern California...

In Santa Paula, art has always been everywhere and nowhere. For seven decades, the agricultural town's civic art collection has been scattered through municipal offices and public buildings, but not assembled in any one spot. People being rushed to emergency appendectomies at Santa Paula Hospital might get a glimpse of some California Impressionists in the hallways. High school students could eyeball landscapes as they chowed down in the cafeteria. Now, as some cultural institutions cut their hours or even shut their doors, a hometown group has opened a museum to display paintings that have become a source of local pride.

NOT art news: Los Angeles billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad has, once again, made ARTnews magazine's annual top 10 list of art collectors. (As they did last year, Broad and his wife, Edythe, rank No. 2 behind New York investment banker Leon Black and wife Debra.) Art news: Two Hollywood players -- producer and writer Michael Crichton and Warner Bros.

The owner of a multimillion-dollar collection of artwork stolen last month has unexpectedly waived the insurance policy he owns to protect the paintings, Los Angeles police detectives confirmed Thursday. The art world was abuzz in early September with word that a series of original works by famed Pop Art icon Andy Warhol had been stolen from the walls of noted art collector Richard L. Weisman's Westside Los Angeles home. In all, 11 brightly colored silk screen paintings were gone -- 10 are portraits of famous athletes and one is of Weisman, 69, who was friends with Warhol and commissioned the series in the late 1970s.

An announcement on Friday that the government of Spain had agreed to purchase about 775 artworks from Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza for $350 million ended seven years of speculation about the fate of the Swiss industrialist's celebrated collection. Thyssen had been courted by the J.

Something must have gone awry with the instructions. There can't possibly be a residence here on this Venice street, at least not a three-story concrete contemporary, and brand new to boot. Surely there are restrictions: This is smack in the heart of an old Venice retail and restaurant district, several carefree blocks of mostly low-slung, charm-galore stucco and brick structures. But here's the address, all right, just past a hippie throwback shop in a tiny clapboard bungalow.

A federal investigation into looted Asian antiquities at Southland museums has broadened to include a prominent Chicago industrialist and art collector who purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of allegedly stolen artifacts from a Cerritos arts dealer. On Thursday, the same day federal agents raided four Southern California museums suspected of displaying stolen art, authorities also searched the private museum of Barry MacLean, a trustee of the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago.

GREETING guests on his penthouse rooftop, Eugenio Lopez Alonso seems to have all the requisite props for his jet-set playboy lifestyle. Swingin' bachelor pad crammed with expensive artworks? Check. Second home in Beverly Hills, done up in chic, high-Modernist style? Check. Two yippy dogs, named Jasper (as in Johns) and Pollock (as in Jackson)? Yup. Posse of glamorous, attractive pals hanging out nearby? Check. Private source of steady income? Um, you're kidding, right?

Cliff and Mandy Einstein are the kind of couple you can't imagine apart. They finish each other's sentences. They savor the same coffees and wines. They treat each other with great affection and yet are quick to quibble over a forgotten fact in the stories they love to tell. Married 42 years, they're the definition of how a relationship can grow within the aura of stability.

Habibollah Sadeghi looks vaguely irritated to see me: not surprised, seeing as he has spent the last 10 days evading my phone calls, letters and polite appeals delivered through intermediaries. He knows I want to see his Picassos. He doesn't want to show them to me. But Iranian hospitality being what it is, Sadeghi is forced to invite me into his office for tea. "I got your letter," he says. "Frankly, I was somewhat offended that you seem to think our paintings are like some big nuclear secret.

A multimillion-dollar collection of original work by famed Pop Art icon Andy Warhol was stolen last week from a Los Angeles home, police said Friday. On Sept. 3, a housekeeper for noted art collector Richard L. Weisman walked into the dining room of Weisman's residence and saw that 11 large portraits that had been on the walls the day before were gone, according to Det. Donald Hrycyk, head of the LAPD's art theft detail. The housekeeper called police, and investigators soon brought in Hrycyk, who has spent years chasing forgers and thieves in the shady art underworld.

"The advantage of not being able to produce art is that you can spend all your energy looking at art," said Don Rubell, whose family of self-confessed contemporary art fanatics is perpetually in search of the next addition to its 5,000-piece collection. Pleased to have uttered a complete sentence without being interrupted by Mera, his wife and collecting partner of nearly 45 years, he eased into a knowing smile as she jumped in to explain how their collecting obsession works.

"A COLLECTION of everything. So big it can never be cataloged or appraised. Enough for 10 museums. The loot of the world." That's the description of the art collection in "Citizen Kane," Orson Welles' masterpiece inspired by William Randolph Hearst. And the 1941 film has left an indelible impression of a voracious accumulator who focused on quantity, not quality. Art history has been no kinder to Hearst, whose mining inheritance financed a media empire and an enormous art collection that filled six palatial dwellings -- including Hearst Castle, the 250,000-acre, 165-room estate that overlooks San Simeon on the Pacific Coast.

I'm no fan of public art museums exhibiting private collections. The negatives so far outweigh the positives that such shows hurt, rather than help, a museum's mission. The latest example is "Los Angelenos/Chicano Painters of L.A.: Selections From the Cheech Marin Collection," which opened recently at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The clumsy title is the least of its problems. "Los Angelenos" is a smaller, more focused version of "Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge."

Jennifer Bornstein was a kid in a candy store -- with almost half a year to gorge herself. When Hammer Museum curator Allegra Pesenti asked Bornstein to rummage through the institution's huge collection of graphic work and put together a show of whatever she fancied, the Los Angeles artist was thrilled. Five months later she was exhausted. "I can't believe how much work it was," Bornstein says. "I thought it was going to be a breeze. It wasn't. I have a lot of respect for curators."

Two days, two modern art masterpieces, two record-breaking auction prices -- and one buyer: Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. A respected art publication says London-based Abramovich was the anonymous buyer of Francis Bacon's "Triptych" and Lucian Freud's "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping," which sold at separate New York auctions last week for a total of $120 million. Abramovich represents a new breed of super-rich collector from emerging economies -- such as China, the Middle East and, especially, Russia -- that is buoying the art market through tough economic times.

"What would I be doing if I weren't doing this? Playing bridge three times a week? I like bridge, but art keeps me from doing that all the time." Audrey Irmas, the noted philanthropist and collector, laughs as she offhandedly says these words at the end of a wide-ranging conversation about her charitable efforts and love of art.

What does a prominent patron of the arts wear when visitors come to see his world-class collection in his Beverly Hills home? Whatever he wants. On a warm Indian summer day, Robert Gore Rifkind, a 73-year-old retired lawyer who has acquired one of the most extensive and important collections of German Expressionist art in the world, conducts a private tour wearing a royal blue knit polo shirt, loose black shorts, tall tube socks and plastic sandals.

Bank of America has launched a free exhibition and loan program that will make its vast art collection available to museums around the world. Participating institutions may organize shows from the bank's holding of paintings, sculptures, prints and photographs or select one of about 30 prepackaged exhibitions. The bank will pay all expenses -- crating, shipping, insurance and marketing. Twenty-six exhibitions are planned over the next two years, including a survey of contemporary art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia this summer and prints by David Hockney, Jim Dine and Richard Diebenkorn at the St. Louis University Museum of Art in the fall.

Fisk University broke the terms of a donation from painter Georgia O'Keeffe but shouldn't lose the art collection to a New Mexico museum, a judge ruled in Nashville. Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle permanently banned any sale of the 101-piece collection and set an October deadline for Fisk to retrieve the artwork from storage and put it on display. Lyle had rejected several previous attempts by the cash-strapped school to sell artworks, including O'Keeffe's signature 1927 oil painting "Radiator Building -- Night, New York."