From the passing of a legendary artist to the retirement of a museum titan, to the appearance of a new art-world “it girl,” certain people had all the headlines this year. Below, the top 5 people of 2008.
1. Dasha Zhukova
Russian “it girl” Daria “Dasha” Zhukova may not be the most ubiquitous of art-world players, but she’s notable for the
sheer speed of her ascent. Debuting on these pages in April, the 27-year-old
oil heiress, former model, and love interest of the billionaire and
(momentary) blue-chip art collector Roman Abramovich has made a name for
herself by opening the Center for Contemporary Culture Moscow, a.k.a the
Garage, Russia’s hottest new art spot, as well as for the numerous art world
rumors she’s inspired. Zhukova’s aspirations for the center, housed in a
1926 Constructivist bus garage, are huge. The space launched in September
with part of the city’s highly anticipated, multi-venue Ilya and Emilia
Kabakov retrospective, collaborated for its second show with übercurator
Hans-Ulrich Obrist, is scheduled to exhibit works from the collection of
billionaire and Christie’s owner François Pinault in January, and, when
complete, will offer facilities for films, lectures, and other cultural
events as well. If Zhukova has her way — and there’s no reason to think she
won’t — the Garage will become a driving force not only in bringing art and
culture to younger Russians, but in bringing the art world at large to
Russia. (Larry Gagosian personally thanked her in September for creating
such a receptive environment in Moscow.) As she told Art+Auction not long ago, “I want to bring the best international contemporary art to the
Garage to help make Moscow as important an art world center as London and
New York.”
2. Robert Rauschenberg
This year saw the passing of one of the 20th century’s most relentlessly inventive American artists: Robert Rauschenberg. Born in 1925 to a dirt-poor fundamentalist Christian family in Port Arthur, Texas, Rauschenberg, who claimed he didn’t even see art until he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, made his name after coming to New York in 1949, shortly before Abstract Expressionism’s all-or-nothing romanticism began to appear formulaic. Over the next few years, he tapped into the more intellectual, iconoclastic vein of artists like Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, creating groundbreaking art that both extended Ab Ex and suggested a viable route away from it. This work — sometimes dubbed neo-Dada — depended on the then radical assumption that art’s traditional materials were no different from the ordinary ones available in the day-to-day world. In that this work — most famously, his “combines,” which fused painting and sculpture — introduced not just new media but also new subject matter, Rauschenberg is justifiably regarded as the forerunner of Pop art. Inexhaustible, he turned out works at a stunning pace and, delving into other art forms, designed sets and costumes for Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, and other choreographers, as well as making significant contributions as a printmaker and performance artist. There’s little of our visual world that Rauschenberg missed — and so much that we would without him.
3. Philippe de Montebello
True to the aristocratic preposition in his name, Philippe de Montebello was a museum director in the Old World mold. And as so many pointed out when he announced earlier this year that he’d be stepping down after 30 years as head of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, he might be the last of his kind. Today, museum directors seem more likely to be MBAs than art historians. De Montebello was the quintessential connoisseur of high culture, and under his directorship the Met has established itself as one of the world’s greatest encyclopedic museums, a rival to iconic institutions like the Louvre and the British Museum. During his three decades at its helm, the Met added countless masterpieces to its collection. In 2007 the museum opened spectacular new Greek and Roman galleries, and in the last year alone it has hosted world-class exhibitions of the paintings of Courbet, Poussin, and Morandi. We can only hope that the values at the center of his inestimable career will be the lodestar for generations of future Met leaders, starting with incoming director Thomas P. Campbell.
4. Damien Hirst
Whether his work is brilliant or absurd may be a topic of debate, but there’s no doubt that Damien Hirst is not only England’s richest living artist but also one of the world’s most talked about. This year he made the most headlines for his unorthodox, direct-from-the-studio, against-all-recession-odds $200 million mega-sale “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” at Sotheby’s, but the master self-promoter also kept the publicity wheels turning with proclamations about the art market, a lawsuit against a teenager, retail aspirations, purported victimhood, layoffs at his studio, a music video, and the travels of his $100 million diamond-encrusted skull. And now he’s back in the news, though his PR folks would not be pleased with the results. Hirst may be a bigger name than ever, but research shows that in the wake of his splashiest publicity stunt to date, his market is oversaturated and his prices are in steep decline.
5. Eli Broad
When the billionaire philanthropist and arts collector Eli Broad’s long-predicted art market correction finally came to bear this year, he swooped into the auction houses and made a few high-profile purchases. But that wasn’t the only way he made headlines in 2008, or cut against the grain. At the beginning of the year, Broad ruffled many an L.A. feather when he announced that he would not be donating his extensive collection to a museum but rather would manage and loan it through his foundation. The news came as a particular blow to the Los Angeles County Musem of Art (LACMA), which was on the brink of opening its $56 million Broad Contemporary Art Museum, where it hoped to display the expected donation. (Perhaps they were better off without it: According to the Guerrilla Girls, his collection is too white and too male.) Months later, Broad suggested a new venue for his art, a public museum in Beverly Hills where works could be displayed between loans. This came just as he was warning that museums, feeling the pinch of the growing global economic crisis, would have to cut spending and “become more populist” in terms of what they show. A few weeks later, Broad was again in the news, penning an editorial announcing a multimillion-dollar bailout offer for the cash-strapped Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), which apparently needs more than populism to solve a severe funding crisis. A week or two later, there was a new offer to MOCA, from LACMA. Payback? But in the end, the museum went with Broad’s offer, ensuring he’s likely to remain in the news in 2009.
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