Steve Cohen Could Replace Yale's Entire Art History Department Without Ever Having Read A Book: Art Dealer

Cohen doesn't have the kind of art "aptitude" you pick up at some fancy school, or by burying your nose in some musty old tome. No. His comes from the trenches: the garden parties, the gallery openings, the wining-and-dining by auction house, the Museum of Contemporary Art board meetings, the highly-compensated art advisors. In short, it comes from having the will and ability to drop a quarter-billion dollars on two Giacometti sculptures in a few months.

Hedge fund billionaire Steven Cohen is the secret buyer of the world’s most expensive sculpture, Alberto Giacometti’s “Man Pointing,” for $141.3 million at Christie’s, Page Six can exclusively reveal. While much of the attention was on the sale of Picasso’s “Les Femmes d’Alger” for $179 million, setting a world record for the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction, Cohen quietly bought Giacometti’s 1947 masterpiece “Man Pointing,” or “L’Homme au doigt,” a life-size bronze sculpture of a thin man, at the same May 11 Christie’s auction. [...] “It’s one of the great 20th-century sculptures,’’ said Manhattan art dealer William Acquavella at the time, adding of Cohen, “Steve is a very serious, very astute collector. He also has the right instincts, ones that can’t be learned from reading art-history books.

So just, y'know, take your syllabi and shove 'em.

Man who bought the world’s most expensive sculpture revealed [NYP]