Steve Cohen’s Women

By Judd Tully

Published: April 2, 2009

Steve Cohen’s Women

Andy Warhol Pablo Picasso Willem de Kooning Henri Matisse Edvard Munch Richard Prince Brooklyn Museum Names Paul Johnson Deputy Director for Development A Corporate Aftertaste at Pier 94, But Helped by Ferus

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NEW YORK—Hedge-fund maven Steve Cohen, who in less than a decade has amassed one of the world’s great (and most expensive) private collections of modern and contemporary art, is showing a rich slice of it in public for the first time.

Opening today at Sotheby’s, the loan-only exhibition, titled “Women” and running through April 14, includes 20 works depicting, predictably, women, including examples from de Kooning, Warhol, Matisse, Prince, and Picasso.

The strangeness of staging a loan exhibition at the famed auction house, in which Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors owns a 5.9 percent stake (making Cohen one of Sotheby’s biggest shareholders), a month before the big May sales adds a bit of needed theater to the flagging art market.

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It’s also a rare opportunity to consider the shrewdness of Cohen’s acquisitions in light of today’s market. Here’s a look at which of his much-talked-about buys still stand up.

Click on the photo gallery at left to see five of Cohen's women.

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