Call Me Aggie: The Legendary Collector Making a Difference

THE FINANCIAL TIMES
By Georgina Adam
Agnes Gund in New York © Photographed for the FT by Joshua Aronson
It is not often that one gets to talk to a legend in their lifetime. So I was rather overawed when, one bleak January evening, I called Agnes Gund in New York. Yet few art collectors have such formidable reputations. Now 81, Gund started collecting art when she was young. Two years ago, Gund surprised the art market when she sold one of her most valuable possessions, Roy Lichtenstein’s 1962 “Masterpiece”, to the billionaire investor Steve Cohen for $165m. Her plan was, if anything, even more surprising: she used $100m from that sale to set up the Art for Justice Fund, along with the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. [More]