More than $70 million for Rothko’s “White Center” in 2007, a high-water mark for that artist.
More than $20 million later that year for a Damien Hirst pill cabinet, then a record for a living artist.
And $250 million for Cézanne’s “Card Players” in 2011, the highest known price ever paid for a painting.
Given the secrecy of the art market, few knew at the time who had laid out such unprecedented sums.
But it has become increasingly clear that those masterpieces and many
more have been purchased by Qatar, a tiny Persian Gulf country with
enormous wealth and cultural ambitions to match: it is buying art at a
level never seen before.
“They’re the most important buyers of art in the market today,” said
Patricia G. Hambrecht, the chief business development officer for
Phillips auction house. “The amount of money being spent is
mind-boggling.”
The purchasing is directed through intermediaries by Sheika al Mayassa
bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, chairwoman of the Qatar Museums
Authority and a sister to Qatar’s new emir. At age 30 she has become one
of the most influential players in the art world.
No one knows exactly how much Sheika al Mayassa has spent on behalf of
her family or the museum authority since she was named chairwoman by her
father, the former emir, in 2006. But experts estimate the acquisition
budget reaches $1 billion a year and say the Qataris have used it to
secure a host of undisputed modern and contemporary masterpieces by
Francis Bacon, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons.
Where all this art will eventually end up remains something of a
mystery. But it seems clear that, just as Qatar has used its oil riches to boost its influence in the Middle East
with ventures like arming Syrian rebels, its wealth is also being
deployed to help the country become a force in the world of culture.
This effort to create a first-class contemporary art collection,
essentially from scratch, has buoyed the international art market,
experts say, and contributed to some of the escalation in prices.
Until Qatar’s 2007 purchase, for example, the most expensive Rothko ever
sold at auction (“Homage to Matisse”) had drawn $22 million in 2005,
less than one-third of the price Qatar paid. In 2011 the $250 million
spent for “Card Players” was four times the highest public price ever
paid for a work by that artist.
“When they finish their buying program and withdraw from the market,”
said David Nash, a New York dealer who spent 35 years as a top executive
with Sotheby’s, “they will leave a big hole which I don’t see anyone
else ready to fill at their level.”
In recent years the Qatar Museums Authority has created three high-profile museums in the capital, Doha,
by the architects Jean Nouvel, I. M. Pei and Jean-François Bodin. But
each of these projects — a new home for the National Museum of Qatar now
under construction; the Museum of Islamic Art; and Mathaf: Arab Museum
of Modern Art — is focused on regional art and artists. So experts
expect that a good portion of the Western collection being amassed will
become part of a new contemporary art institution in the country, though
officials have yet to announce that.
The annual acquisition budgets of major museums typically amount to just
a small fraction of what Qatar is spending. The Museum of Modern Art,
for example, spent $32 million to acquire art for the fiscal year that
ended in June 2012; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, $39 million.
While other gulf states like Abu Dhabi and Dubai are also trying to
become cultural capitals, those two members of the United Arab Emirates
have teamed up with existing institutions — namely the Louvre and the
Guggenheim — to establish themselves. Qatar, meanwhile, is going it
alone.
“They see themselves as an international center for many cultures,” said
Allen L. Keiswetter, a scholar at the Middle East Institute in
Washington. “It establishes them as another reason to be a destination
for travel, for business. If you want to attract people, you need to
have a reason to go there.”
Sheika al Mayassa declined to be interviewed for this article, but she
has made limited remarks about the role art will play in Qatar’s future.
“We are revising ourselves through our cultural institutions and
cultural development,” she said in a 2010 TED Talk. “Art becomes a very
important part of our national identity.”
In an interview that year with The New York Times, the sheika suggested that establishing art institutions might challenge Western preconceptions about Muslim societies.
