New Private Collector Museum

An article (Rétrospective Jeff Koons prévue pour 2007, June 15) from France 2 is how I found out that another private collector is getting into the museum business. French businessman François Pinault had announced in 2000 his plans to create a museum of contempory art for his collection, the Fondation François Pinault, on Séguin Island in Boulogne-Billancourt, outside Paris, on the site of an abandoned Renault factory. The building (see picture here) will be built by Japanese architect Tadao Ando and will have some 33,000 square meters (355,212 square feet) of exhibition space. The first major exhibit, according to Mr. Pinault, will be the most important retrospective ever undertaken of the works of American artist Jeff Koons, whose work he loves and has collected for a long time. Koons is also reportedly delighted. Pinault owns over a thousand works of art, a collection he began over 30 years ago, and continues to buy art. The museum will display works "of Mondrian, Rebeyrolle, Andy Warhol, Rauschenberg, and de Kooning, in all areas of the plastic arts, from painting to sculpture, as well as photography and video."