Baden-Baden
Less than two years after the opening of his museum dedicated to the jeweller Fabergé in Baden-Baden, Germany, Russian billionaire Alexander Ivanov has started work on two more museums, which he plans to open at the end of this year. They will be housed in a 19th-century townhouse adjacent to his Fabergé Museum (a name that resulted in a legal dispute which Ivanov successfully contested).
The Moscow collector, who is best known for owning around 3,000 works by Fabergé (among them the gold and pink enamel Rothschild Fabergé Egg which he bought at Christie’s in London in 2007 for $17.7m), is a prolific and eclectic collector of much else besides.
“We will create a single unified museum complex,” explains Ivanov, “with a total space of 3,000 sq. m which will cost between E6 and E8m. There will be several major sections— old masters, antique automobiles and pre-Columbian gold.”
The final concept for the new spaces have not been decided, although it is likely that changing exhibitions will feature works from Ivanov’s collection as well as loans from other private collections.
Ivanov, who has been collecting for more than 20 years, owns around 400 paintings by Italian, Dutch, Flemish and German artists from the 15th to the 19th centuries. He is a major client of Christie’s International and many of the paintings were bought from the auction house in private deals.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as ‘Russian collector expands Baden-Baden showcase'