Eczacıbaşı named on US list of art

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Businesswoman Oya Eczacıbaşı is among the most powerful names in art.

The U.S. magazine Art+Auction included the Istanbul Modern Executive Board Chair Oya Eczacıbaşı among its list of the top 100 Most Powerful People in the Art World.

The list was made up of curators, collectors, traditionalists, trend creators, artists and designers in the field of art.

“If you want to follow changes in balance of power, you should look east,” said the magazine’s editors.

“Eczacıbaşı, the doyen of contemporary art sponsorship in Turkey, is the founder of the city’s first private museum dedicated to the 20th century, Istanbul Modern, which has hosted many rising stars from Kutluğ Ataman to Ryan Trecartin,” the magazine said. “Eczacıbaşı is the executive board chair of the museum, which collaborates with Centre Pompidou in order to support young artists.”

Others on the list included Carlos Slim Helu, who was listed as the richest man in 2011 by Forbes magazine and owns a collection of 60,000 pieces of art with a value of $700 million in Mexico’s Saumaya Museum; Prada CEO Miucca Prada; Walmart’s successor Alice Walton; one of the leading German businessmen Reinhold Wurth; the founder of IRIS Foundation and Moscow’s The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture Dasha Zhukova; Annenberg Foundation Chairman Wallis Annenberg; LVMH (Louis Vuitton S.A.) and Christian Dior S.A. Arnault companies CEO Bernard Arnault; one of the founders of the Los Angeles Contemporary Art Museum Eli Broad; and China’s first private company Taikang Life’s founder Chen Dongsheng.