LONDON. Frank Gallipoli, a commodities trader based in New Canaan, Connecticut, has bought several major pieces from Charles Saatchi’s 1997 “Sensation” exhibition. His purchases include Marcus Harvey’s 1995 portrait of Myra Hindley, Gavin Turk’s 1993 self portrait as Sid Vicious, Pop, and works by Chris Ofili, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Gary Hume, Jenny Saville and Simon Patterson. Mr Gallipoli is one of at least five US collectors who have bought art originally shown in “Sensation”.

As the Royal Academy in London inaugurates “USA Today”, a new show of work by American artists drawn from the collection of Charles Saatchi, we reveal where many of the works originally exhibited in “Sensation” are today. Frank Gallipoli, a commodities trader based in Connecticut, is the owner of Marcus Harvey’s 1995 portrait of serial killer Myra Hindley.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and MoMA in New York have acquired major pieces from the exhibition, by Rachel Whiteread and Yinka Shonibare respectively, while Tate in London has purchased only one relatively inexpensive work from the show, a video by Sam Taylor-Wood. Private collectors in England have bought a handful of “Sensation” works while other major pieces have gone to European collections.

When “Sensation” first opened at the Royal Academy in London in September 1997, it confirmed a new movement, the so-called “young British artists” (YBAs), and helped to launch the international careers of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Gavin Turk, and Jake and Dinos Chapman, among many others. The work on show, visually aggressive and deliberately provocative, generated countless headlines and media debate. One visitor was so offended by Marcus Harvey’s Myra, which is composed of the hand prints of children, that the painting had to be removed temporarily from display after it was pelted with eggs.

The exhibition moved to Berlin and then, with still more controversy, to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This time it was Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary, 1996, a canvas which incorporates elephant dung, which caused an uproar. Then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani branded the work “sick” and “disgusting” and threatened to punish the Brooklyn Museum unless it cancelled the show. The case went to court and a federal judge ruled against the mayor and the City of New York stating that they had no right to inflict any retaliation against the museum as a result of the show, including withholding funds, evicting the museum from its building or interfering with the composition of the board of trustees.

The furore in New York persuaded the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra to cancel the exhibition; it had been scheduled to open there in June 2000.

Charles Saatchi consigned several works from “Sensation” to auction within two years of the exhibition. The signature pieces he kept went on show in his gallery at County Hall. Two years ago he removed the Britart from display to make way for a series of paintings exhibitions. He then sold most of the iconic works from “Sensation” including Damien Hirst’s pickled shark. The sales must have generated tens of millions of pounds.

The disposal of these works coincided with the arrival of a major new Britart collector. Frank Gallipoli says that he has been buying Britart for the last three years. Speaking to The Art Newspaper, he said: “I like the sensibility of this group of artists. Their work is aggressive and visually interesting. A group of artists this strong only comes along once in a generation.”

Mr Gallipoli says he almost exclusively buys work by the YBAs and now owns a large collection of art by Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume and Marc Quinn. He says he bought some of his “Sensation” pieces directly from Charles Saatchi as well as from White Cube in London. He also buys art from Sadie Coles in London and Mary Boone in New York.

Mr Gallipoli, 42, says: “These are all artists who are almost exactly my age. I travel to London often and I visit many of them in their studios. I have become good friends with several of them.”

Steven Cohen, a billionaire hedge fund manager, also based in Connecticut, has bought three major works from “Sensation”, while Adam Sender, a hedge fund manager, in New York, has bought a painting by Chris Ofili.

These developments happened in parallel with increasing business support for the arts, where participation in the general buzz brought companies closer to their target demographic groups. Youth culture became the grail of broadcasting, and much marketing activity. The enterprise culture of the Thatcherite privatisation's fed through into cultural enterprise. A growth in corporate sponsorship of the arts meant that many firms began to finance artistic activities with support in cash or kind. In the boom and bust of the 1980's and early 1990's, property developers began lending spaces to artist-run initiatives, rather than let them lie fallow: this was a way of enlivening the shells of unlet buildings. An extended recession in the early 1990's meant, in particular, that a surfeit of such spaces was available. Artists turned this to their advantage, much as an earlier generation had used derelict docklands sites as workshops and studios.
This inflow of financial investment introduced new sets of values. Art was perceived more readily as a commodity, to be acquired and sold. No insider-trading rules hampered those in the know, and great profits could be made from those artists whose work appreciated rapidly in value. With patrons such as Charles Saatchi, the lines blurred between collector, speculator and dealer. Artistic careers were made before collectors sold up and moved on. The idea of a collection as something gradually accumulated was overthrown by the increasing speed of recycling through the secondary market and auction houses; each iteration of Saatchi’s acquisitions took in a younger generation. New bodies of works were accompanied by publications that sought to identify a group spirit and a market profile to the batch of artists he was currently assembling. Saatchi’s speed of response, his getting in early at the degree shows, previewing before the opening, cornering the market by buying whole batches of an artist’s production and, more recently, by offering grants and in return getting early access or first pick of works made during the period, were strategies that drove the market forward. Several artists saw the value of their work appreciate many hundred-fold in the space of a few years, although they were not the ones who usually profited from this financially. Many other collectors rode the wave, although those who were less hungry usually picked up works at higher cost. The slower-moving public collections were unable to compete.
A new generation of advisors and consultants fed this increasing demand. They inaugurated or reinvigorated corporate collections, gradually turning tastes away from tried and tested art to more adventurous contemporary works. Generating this interest and surviving from the increased activity, many people began commercial or not-for-profit initiatives; starting magazines, working on projects, opening spaces, acting as agents.

A decade ago there was a spate of private collection exhibitions. Over the course of several months the National Gallery had more than a half dozen of them. It was at the peak of the 80's art boom, and museums, unable to compete with rich buyers in the auction rooms, needed to entice donations through whatever other means possible, and the currency of a private collection show is not inconsiderable in terms of vanity, publicity and the value added to the collection by the museum's prestige.

Periodically, showing private collections like Mr. Saatchi's, like selling off, or deaccessioning, art, erupts into public controversy and misunderstanding.

The problem stems from the puritanical American supposition that culture is pure and money is corrupt. This leads to the notion that self-interest on the part of rich collectors necessarily pollutes the sanctity of the museum, as if American museums were not the result of rich collectors' donations. Collectors' loans of their works to museums for exhibition also benefit the public and are an act of generosity. No one said that generosity cannot exist simultaneously with self-interest.

Different museums have different policies about private collection shows. Some museums prevent collectors from selling art for a period of time after the show. The Museum of Modern Art doesn't do these shows unless parts of the collection are promised to it, but even this arrangement doesn't mean that the collector isn't profiting from the event. Donating art in return for a show can itself be construed as a quid pro quo arrangement by people who see the whole relationship between museums and private collector shows as questionable. Mr. Saatchi says he isn't planning to donate any art to the Brooklyn Museum, but if he did, would that placate the Mayor or others suspicious of his motives and the museum's?

The Brooklyn Museum, which has a hard time raising money, went way too far this time by turning in an unseemly way to collectors, dealers and an auction house who will profit by its exhibition. But the blame isn't entirely Brooklyn's. The museum world has no enforcing regulatory body to oversee practices that in other disciplines might seem questionable, only the government, which is mostly concerned with outright fraud and theft.

In an ideal world, museums should have firmer rules about donations and private collection shows, with public perceptions more squarely in mind. They would bring to these exhibitions the same standards of objective scholarship that they (supposedly) bring to other shows, which would include critical investigation of the taste, and sometimes even the biography, of the collectors.

But this isn't an ideal world.

'Sensation' Is Less the Art Than the Money

Young British Artists or YBAs  also Brit artists and Britart  a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists derived from the Sensation Saatchi Gallery Exhibition.

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