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Painting, by the Numbers
You could call Richard Feigen (MBA '54) a dealer in commodities, but he might bridle at that characterization. An internationally known dealer in fine art who has been in the business for more than forty years, Feigen told the Boston Globe (June 27, 2000), "I really am a collector. I love to buy. I don't like as much to sell." In addition to maintaining an impressive private collection, Feigen has sold works to more than one hundred museums through his New York firm, Richard L. Feigen & Co. His new book, Tales from the Art Crypt, (available at Amazon.com) is an outspoken memoir of his art-world experiences.
Feigen left a career on Wall Street in 1957 to open a gallery in his native Chicago. A second gallery followed, the very first in Manhattan's SoHo district. These days, with more museums housing more art, with fewer old collections to disperse, and a finite supply of masterworks, Feigen sees art dealing as "a dying business. I don't know whether it'll still exist in fifty years."
Meanwhile, if you'd like to pick up a conversation piece -- for example, Titian's Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (price tag: $12 million or so) -- Feigen is the man to see. But act now. "There's so much money out there," said Feigen, "and there are very few objects."
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