Cult of Personality

Paul McCarthy Andy Warhol Dan Flavin Jean-Michel Basquiat Keith Haring Matthew Barney Andreas Gursky Cecily Brown

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The upbeat Capellazzo’s sunny temperament and appreciation of art and the value that the auction market can add to it have persuaded many a collector to consign a piece. She seems to work at making herself appealing to both men and women. But, she says, “for women, power is about being demure and charming. How does a woman have it and not look like she’s just showing her female charms to make a deal? It’s challenging for me as well.”

Perhaps for this reason, most of the women whom the art world generally finds magnetic are directors of museums—not just Halbreich and Phillips but also Ann Philbin, of UCLA’s Hammer, and the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Thelma Golden. “Philbin has turned the Hammer into a major force, and she’s done it with an enthusiastic personality, not fame, money or power,” says the collector Marty Eisenberg, a vice president of Bed, Bath and Beyond. “Golden is a stunner who turns heads. She’s utterly brilliant, has a killer smile, is fashion forward, and her programming has elevated African-American art to a place that it has never been before.” In other words, money and charm are both assets. But in the art world today, the first is merely desirable; the other is a necessity.

"Cult of Personality" originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's November 2008 Table of Contents.