Hedge Hog: Steve Cohen-Loaned Works at Met, Guggenheim, MoMA

Georges Seurat, “Landscape, Island of the Grande Jatte,” 1884, 1885, painted border c. 1889-9, Steven and Alexandra Cohen Collection
Okay, we all knew about Damien Hirst’s shark, now at the Metropolitan Museum. And I also noticed that another work from hedge fund mogul Steve Cohen‘s collection, Richard Prince‘s “Good News, Bad News,” was on loan to the artist’s current retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum (a show that Cohen also supported financially).
But today I made the unexpected and surprising discovery that he had scored a New York museum trifecta: Another Cohen-owned work—a study for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte,” above—is featured in the Museum of Modern Art’s current Seurat drawings show. The contemporary art maven fancies Seurat? Who knew?
MoMA’s Cohen Loan isn’t even a drawing; it’s oil on canvas. So how did it come to have a conspicuous wall all its own in a drawings show? The label explains:
In an area of water at the upper left, Seurat uses the canvas in the same way that he exploits the paper in his drawings….He has dragged a relatively dry brush sideways across the vertical threads of the canvas’ weave, just as elsewhere he stroked conté crayon across the ridges of Michallet paper.
A bit of a stretch, but it’s not the only painting in the show. It’s a corner of a painting that helped Cohen to corner the current New York exhibition scene.
Do you think he can also corner the market in museum board seats? I’d rate that a “buy.”