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While Heinz Berggruen's collection, which was opened to the public in the city's Museum Berggruen in 1996, includes early postwar work by the likes of Klee, Picasso, and Matisse, the younger Berggruen focuses on more contemporary work, with pieces by Warhol, Hirst, and Koons. He began collecting in the early 1990s.

Nicholas Berggruen is president of the real estate and financial investments company Berggruen Holdings. Forbes magazine estimates his worth at $1.8 billion.

According to the Art Newspaper, Berggruen plans to open his museum in one of the numerous properties he owns in Berlin, hopefully near the kunsthalle that the Berlin Senate has been talking about building, but for which a definite location has not yet been announced. Berggruen had been involved in the city's plans to build the new kunsthalle near the Hamburger Bahnhof contemporary-art museum, but pulled out.

That plan "fell victim to the finance crisis," a senate spokesperson said, adding that the senate is still considering the location, but looking for others, and for new funding, as well.