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Within the late Seventies, Julian Robertson determined to take a 12 months off from investing and moved his household to New Zealand in an try to write down the good American novel. Whereas his literary ambitions by no means got here to fruition, the nation made a long-lasting impression on the late hedge fund investor, who in 2009 bequeathed the vast majority of his artwork assortment to a museum in Auckland.
Now, two years after Robertson’s dying at age 90, his works have settled into their new house on the Auckland Artwork Gallery and are on show in “The Robertson Reward: Paths by means of Modernity,” which opened final month. Valued at $190 million in 2022, the 15-piece assortment incorporates items from main European artists starting from Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali to Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin. “Patronage of this scale is unprecedented, and the gathering of recent masterpieces is exclusive,” mentioned Kirsten Lacy, the gallery’s director, in an announcement.
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Often called the “Wizard of Wall Avenue,” Robertson was a pioneering determine on the earth of hedge funds and quick promoting. He had an estimated web value of $4.8 billion on the time of his dying, in accordance with Forbes. After closing his hedge fund Tiger Administration in 2000, he continued to put money into rising hedge funds often known as “Tiger seeds” and assist these run by former staff known as “Tiger cubs.”
Robertson additionally remained actively concerned in enterprise pursuits over in New Zealand. Robertson and his spouse Josie, who died in 2010, cut up their lives between the nation and New York, happening to ascertain three main resorts throughout New Zealand’s Northland, Hawke’s Bay and Queenstown. Robertson was even appointed an honorary knight by the nation in 2010.
A transformative donation
The couple concurrently had been build up an unlimited artwork assortment, one full of masterpieces like Picasso’s 1938 Femme à la résille and Gauguin’s 1884 Cow in Meadow, Rouen. They often lent out works to museums like Auckland Artwork Gallery, which exhibited greater than a dozen of their items in 2006. The optimistic response to the present, which urged kids to attract their very own variations of the couple’s works, was overwhelming and impressed the Robertsons to bequeath the vast majority of their assortment to the museum. “You fall in love with these photos a little bit bit and also you need to ensure they are going to be left with anyone who loves them and that [exhibition] made us understand they might be liked,” Robertson informed The New Zealand Herald on the time.
Chris Saines, then the director of the museum, subsequently chosen an assortment of 15 works for the gallery that spanned actions like impressionism, fauvism, cubism, surrealism and post-war abstraction. These items are the core of Auckland Artwork Gallery’s “The Robertson Reward: Paths by means of Modernity,” which additionally options greater than thirty loans, current acquisitions or works from the museum’s everlasting assortment.
On the time of the Robertsons’ bequeath, it was the largest reward ever made to an artwork museum in Australasia. The couple’s resolution to donate their assortment to a smaller establishment was a purposeful one. “A number of the big cities, for those who give your artwork—until it’s simply excellent to the museum—it resides in some underground vault beneath town for the remainder of its life,” mentioned Robertson in a 2013 interview with the nonprofit Bridgespan Group. “It’s been in all probability probably the most appreciated reward we’ve ever given.”
Auckland Artwork Gallery wouldn’t have been capable of get hold of such a number of work and drawings with out the couple’s imaginative and prescient, in accordance with Lacy. The affect of their donation was monumental not only for the museum but in addition for New Zealand. “The Robertson’s reward is certainly probably the most transformative bequest of worldwide artwork to the nation up to now century,” she mentioned.
“The Robertson Reward: Paths by means of Modernity” is on view by means of January of 2026.
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