Koons tops 2013 art’s ‘Power 100’

Ahead of the December 3 issue of Art and Auction magazine’s annual list of 10 most powerful people in art, a sneak preview says artist, Jeff Koons, 58, has beaten Qatar’s Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani to the number one spot.

 

The Qatari collector until now was regarded as the world’s most active art collector. But with Koons’ feat of being the most expensive living artist after his Balloon Dog sculpture sold for $58.4 million at Christie’s few weeks ago, the number one of the top ten goes to the American. 

Jeff Koons' Balloon Dog

Among the top 10, according to Bloomberg online, is Leon Black, a billionaire co-founder of private-equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC made Art & Auction magazine’s list of the 10 most powerful art world participants for the first time. Black is ranked eighth in the magazine’s 2013 “Power 100” issue.

Highly revered in the art market world, Art and Auction is published by New York-based Louise Blouin Media Inc.

Last year October, Black acquired the popular visual arts publisher Phaidon Press Ltd., a visual-arts publisher, for an undisclosed sum. He also paid $47.8 million for a Raphael drawing titled Head of a Young Apostle, which set an auction record for a work on paper.