For years, Russian billionaires have had a huge presence in the art world, whether as collectors, benefactors or board members. Now, however, the glitz has worn off
Last December in Moscow, dozens of international art world luminaries stepped out of the snow and into the vast, pristine galleries of GES-2, a new art centre. Located in a converted power station just a short walk from the Kremlin, the institution was funded by oligarch Leonid Mikhelson’s V-A-C Foundation. The westerners weren’t its first visitors, however. President Putin had visited two days earlier and tinkled on a piano set up in the atrium.
Mikhelson was one of several oligarchs who was summoned to the Kremlin the day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine started. With the Russian super-rich facing prohibition, the glamour of such glitzy art events has faded – and left many observers questioning how reliant the art world has become on Russian money, both in terms of museum patronage and oligarchs’ spending power at the auction houses and galleries in London, Paris and New York.
