The CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper reveals his art buying strategies in Town and Country magazine, highlighting how his tastes dovetail with his partner’s preferences. He met nightclub owner Benjamin Maisani nine years but “wasn’t collecting anything other than—oddly enough—African hand-painted signs. Then I started becoming more interested in contemporary art, and following Benjamin’s interest in Old Masters.” He stresses how he “got serious” about collecting two years ago. “I met a great art advisor named Marisa Kayyem, who is affiliated with Christie’s, and started going around with her, educating my eye and figuring out what I liked,” Cooper adds. The couple like rooting round the Tefaf fairs, and Anderson points out how the pair fell for, and acquired, a 1775 work by Anton Raphael Mengs at Tefaf New York Fall last October (the piece was reportedly priced at around $275,000). “We first saw the Mengs portrait that we bought at Tefaf last year in the Unfinished exhibition at the Met Breuer. We loved it there and couldn’t believe that it was at Tefaf. We were very lucky to be able to get it, along with two lovely works by Andrea Vaccaro from Otto Naumann,” he says. Cooper was spotted at this year’s edition of Tefaf New York Fall, which closed yesterday (1 November), but there has not yet been a broadcast of any purchases.
