A surprising dimension to Thom Weisel in today's NY Times
BikeAdman
"A Collector Is Selling 21 Treasures Out of 700."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/11/arts/design/11WEIS.html
Tomorrow night, Sotheby's is auctioning art belonging to Thoms Weisel estimated
at $43.3 million to $60.7 million--and it constitutes merely 21 pieces of 700
in his art collection.
Here's the article:
A Collector Is Selling 21 Treasures Out of 700
By CAROL VOGEL
Thomas Weisel does not like the buzz. Although his name is nowhere in the
auction catalog, since September, when Sotheby's announced it was selling $43.4
million to $60.7 million worth of primarily Abstract Expressionist art from "A
Private American Collection," everyone in the art world knew the seller was Mr.
Weisel, a San Francisco investment banker.
It did not take a detective to figure it out. Over the years he has lent many
of his best pieces to museum exhibitions and allowed his name to be published
in their catalogs.
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As the sale, which takes place tomorrow evening, neared, Mr. Weisel agreed to
talk about his decision to sell. "A lot of people want to know why the heck I
didn't just give these paintings away to museums," said Mr. Weisel, a trustee
of both the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan and the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art. "I'm continuing to give both money and art to various museums. I'm
not backing away from that. These are 21 out of 700 works that I own. It's not
like I don't have a lot of Gorkys, Klines and Thiebaud left."
Thomas Weisel Partners, Mr. Weisel's investment firm, gained its reputation
backing technology companies in Silicon Valley. Its business has fallen off
dramatically from its peak in 2000, according to Thomson First Call, a
securities research firm. There have recently been reports that the company was
slowly rebounding.
Asked how he responded to speculation that he was selling part of his
collection because he needs the money, Mr. Weisel replied: "I don't even answer
the question. It's ridiculous."
When he talks about art, Mr. Weisel may well be discussing the value of
Microsoft or Yahoo. "Art has appreciated to a point where I had to look at this
from a portfolio standpoint," he said. "After the May auctions, when I saw
where prices were, I called up the two auction houses and said, `What's going
on here?' " he recalled. At those auctions prices for artists like Donald Judd,
Louise Bourgeois, Gerhard Richter and Ed Ruscha rose to new heights .
"I don't know if it's such a great time to sell," he said. "As a matter of fact
I'm not sure that it is. But it seemed like the market was decent in May, and I
doubt it's gone down much. I think that the returns on financial assets are
going to be substantially less in the next 10 years than they've been over the
last 15. And smart money has figured this out early, and they're investing in
hard assets like art. I think there is a large tail wind behind art, and it
will continue to be behind art."
While he did not take an art history course in college, after he graduated from
Stanford University in 1963 Mr. Weisel, 61, spent six months traveling in
Europe, visiting all the great museums. Then, in the early 70's, some of his
colleagues formed a group that would get together every month in San Francisco
and invite emerging local artists to speak.
"It was an interest along with business and athletics that I really enjoyed,"
he said. The first artwork he purchased was a 1954-55 painting by Richard
Diebenkorn that had belonged to Walter P. Chrysler Jr., an heir to the family
automobile fortune. It is one of the two Diebenkorns he is selling tomorrow.
Over the years with the help and advice of Alan Stone, a Manhattan dealer, he
began acquiring postwar art, primarily Abstract Expressionists like de Kooning,
Kline and Gorky as well as many West Coast artists who were working during the
same period. What has made the Sotheby's sale so talked about is that early
Abstract Expressionist works rarely come on the market anymore, and when they
do, they command high prices.
"I picked these works to sell because they are the early New York School," Mr.
Weisel said. "They all fit into a certain period in time and they all played
off each other."
Among the prized paintings for sale is de Kooning's "Orestes," a 1947
black-and-white abstraction, which is estimated to go for $8 million to $10
million. The auction also includes two images from de Kooning's 1940's "Woman"
series, an oil from 1947, which is expected to bring $3 million to $4 million,
and a pastel shown in 1953 at the Sidney Janis Gallery in Manhattan, which
carries a hefty $4 million to $6 million estimate. It is the largest and most
complete of the single-figure works on paper from the series.
"Historically these are very significant pieces," he said. "They're absolute
turning points."
Mr. Weisel chose not to have his name printed in the auction catalog because
when someone is named, he said, "there's a lot of verbiage spent on the
collector and this is all about the art."
Mr. Weisel and his wife, Emily, are looking for the next generation of artists.
"Over the last four or five years we've been going in a more contemporary, more
minimal direction," he said. He has also been buying slightly younger blue-chip
artists than, say, de Kooning or Kline. "We've done a lot of work with Kelly,
Serra, Scully, Gursky, Craig-Martin and others," he said.
His collection is spread among his homes in San Francisco, Hawaii and Sun
Valley, Idaho, and his company's offices are in New York, Boston, San Francisco
and London. And like so many collectors now, he has become particularly
interested in sculpture. He recently bought a monumental work by Richard Serra,
who helped site the piece on the grounds of Mr. Weisel's Sun Valley home.
When he went to the Basel Art Fair in Switzerland several summers ago, he
purchased a sculpture by the Briton Barry Flanagan. The Weisels also own
sculptures by David Smith, Henry Moore and Maillol. "We've got an outdoor space
at our home in California that's just perfect for this kind of thing," he said.
He has also recently developed a love of Oceanic art and has put together a
collection of about 150 pieces for his Hawaiian house.
"Collecting is somewhat of a disease," he said, recounting many of his latest
purchases. "There's no question about it. "
_______
...Makes you wonder what this man's drive is that feels the need to be so
self-aggrandizing in USAC matters.
Richard
Fab5Freddy
surprising.
Why is he selling? Let's see, 20 pieces of a 700 piece collection,
maybe he needs to tile a guest bathroom in gold, or buy McHammer's
mansion in Oakland.
Maybe he's using it to keep Boonen?
Monkeyhillcs
fallen out of the Fortune 500.