Who Shapes the Art World Today?

A lecture by art historian Hasmik Gevorgyan, a former researcher at the Sergei Parajanov Museum. France’s two most influential collectors have competed for nearly half a century over fashion houses, the auction market, the finest Parisian venues and artists’ attention. Their collections are not a retreat from this struggle, but its continuation. In 1999 they clashed over Gucci, with Pinault winning. A year earlier, he had bought Christie’s, to which Arnault responded by buying Phillips. When Pinault’s Paris museum on Île Seguin failed to materialize, he moved his collection to Venice, while Arnault opened the Fondation Louis Vuitton in the Bois de Boulogne, in a building designed by Frank Gehry. Pinault returned to Paris only in 2021, to the Bourse building just minutes from the Louvre. Yet the key difference is not scale but the name on the façade: the Pinault Collection is one man’s personal choice — his taste and the artists he has been close to for decades — while the Fondation Louis Vuitton carries a brand name, with art embedded in a system where architecture, exhibitions and fashion serve a shared image.

Organizer: Sardi Gallery