Art dealers expose their personal collections

Collectors sometimes suspect that dealers keep the best stuff for themselves. Recently, notable dealers have unabashedly revealed their personal tastes, which at times mirror their gallery's specialities, in exhibitions and as inventory for sale.

This fall New York dealer Larry Gagosian will be exhibiting 72 works from his own art collection at Abu Dhabi’s Manarat Al Saadiyat, an exhibition space overseen by the United Arab Emirate’s Tourism Development & Investment Company.

The Arab nation aspires to be the cultural center of the region and is building mega-sized museums, including branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim.

The show, opening Sept. 22, features six post-war artists — Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and Christopher Wool — whose work Gagosian also sells at his nine international galleries.

Gagosian told the Wall Street Journal that he hopes the "exhibition advances the dialogue in this region.” He will have his foot in the door.

Another high profile New York art dealer, Richard L. Feigen, is airing his lauded private collection of early Italian paintings at the Yale University Art Gallery, through Sept. 12.

The show, which features gems by Fra Angelico, Paolo Uccello and Gentileschi, is part of a campaign by Feigen and his supporters "to bring old-fashioned connoisseurship back into the academy," according to The New York Times.

Other dealers are populating show booths with their personal stashes of art and antiques.

Antiques and the Arts reports that exhibitors offered up an array of works from their private homes at the 53rd New Hampshire Antiques Show this August. One crowd-pleaser was a grouping of three, multi-hued turned wooden bowls, made in mid-19th-century New England, reportedly from folk art dealers Russ and Karen Goldbergers' (RJG Antiques) personal collection.