Koons, Hirst Aren't on ARTnews List of Famous Future Artists

Koons, Hirst Aren't on ARTnews List of Famous Future Artists
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By Linda Sandler
Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Jeff Koons, whose collectors include billionaire Eli Broad, and Damien Hirst, whose shark is owned by hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen, failed to draw a vote from museum curators nominating artists who'll be famous in 105 years' time for U.S. magazine ARTnews.
Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Yoko Ono were chosen as some of 2112's renowned artists. ARTnews, now 105 years old, said it surveyed experts as a guide to which contemporary artists would be ``embraced'' by museums at its 210th anniversary, as part of a look at the art scene of the future.
Collectors, museum curators, galleries and auction houses have a stake in guessing which artists will last and which will be swept away. Many artists and the dealers who nurtured them disappeared in the 1990s after the last art market crash.
Participants in the survey ``were thinking with their curatorial hats on,'' said Robin Cembalest, ARTnews's executive editor. ``They were not asked which artists would be financially most successful.''
Still, some experts may have named artists they were already showing at their museums, she said in a telephone interview. Some nominations, such as Ono, widow of Beatle John Lennon, surprised her, she said. Ono isn't currently prominent in the art world.
ARTnews published the selections of more than 30 museum experts in its November issue, from Michael Govan in Los Angeles to Suzanne Landau in Jerusalem.
Bacon Over Freud
The U.K.'s Lucian Freud wasn't nominated to be famous in 2112, though Francis Bacon was. Germany's Martin Kippenberger wasn't selected, while Gerhard Richter was chosen. Peter Doig, Zhang Xiaogang and Georg Baselitz, whose works also are traded at the auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's International, aren't among 2112's famous names.
Collectors vote for artists by paying market prices for their works. London's Charles Saatchi sold Kippenberger's ``Paris Bar'' for 636,000 pounds ($1.29 million) and bought a painting from Zhang's ``Bloodline Series'' for 804,000 pounds at a Phillips de Pury & Co. auction earlier this month. Baselitz, whose art is currently on show at London's Royal Academy, is collected by U.S. hedge-fund manager Daniel Loeb.
Broad, ranked by ARTnews in July as one of the world's top 10 art buyers, has a large holding of works by U.S. pop artist Koons at his foundation that owns about 1,800 contemporary works, adding 50 a year. The artist's sculptures of balloon dogs and diamonds also are owned by French billionaire Francois Pinault and hedge- fund manager David Ganek. A seven-foot-wide blue diamond by Koons will be offered for about $12 million at Christie's on Nov. 13 in New York.
Hirst's Tour
Britain's Hirst, who is trying to arrange a worldwide museum tour for his diamond skull, has collectors including hedge-fund manager Adam Sender, who has valued his art holdings at more than $100 million. Singer-songwriter George Michael also collects Hirst.
Curators, who may indirectly influence values at auction houses and galleries, stake their reputations on choosing art to show at their museums.
Richard Armstrong, director of the Carnegie Museum of Art, nominated Alex Katz and Ellsworth Kelly, among others. Vishakha Desai, president of the Asia Society, cited Cai Guo-Qiang and Xu Bing. Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, picked Dan Flavin, Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt.
Landau, a curator at the Israel Museum, chose Christian Boltanski and Robert Gober.