Stevie pops the top lot? Warhol, “Coca-Cola [4] [Large Coca-Cola], 1962
Making the Internet rounds is this link to Judd Tully‘s Friday ArtInfo piece, which outed megacollector Steve Cohen as the buyer of the top-priced lot in Sotheby’s evening contemporary sale last week—the nearly seven-foot-high Warhol “Coca-Cola,” 1962, which bubbled to an estimate-defying $35.36 million.
Tully said he learned from an “unimpeachable source” that the hedge fund mogul had slaked his thirst for pop (and Pop) after temporarily removing himself from a get-together at his “palatial Greenwich estate.” The guests reportedly included Glenn Lowry, the Museum of Modern Art’s director, and collectors Eli Broad and Leon Black.
For me, the big “news” in Tully’s piece wasn’t that Steve likes Coke. It was that he was schmoozing with “fellow trustees” from MoMA.
Where are the fact-checkers when we really need them? Apparently Judd’s “unimpeachable source” hadn’t mentioned that, unlke Broad and Black, Cohen is not, in fact, on MoMA’s board…at least not yet.
Thinking that the museum’s website listing of it trustees might not have caught up with late-breaking news, I contacted MoMA’s spokesperson, Kim Mitchell, who told me:
Steve Cohen is not currently [emphasis added] a trustee of MoMA, but is on our Painting and Sculpture Committee.
UPDATE: ArtInfo has now corrected its Cohen/Coke item (as noted at the bottom of Tully’s piece).