Wow. I think my mother's influential when I started looking at things. She was very much into
literature, movies, theater, and going to museums to look at art, so I think that was ingrained at
an early age by probably making all those visits. When I was in high school, I had no interest in
collecting. But when I came to the United States, I started going on my own to museums and I wanted
to have art. I wanted it to be surrounded by these beautiful things. And I remember being
19-years-old, probably, when I won some money in a poker game and the first thing I did was buy my
first lithograph. And I have three in my room, which I still have now. Marini, Miro, and Man Ray.
And you'd say, wow, for he knew from the beginning who was gonna be good or not.
And the fact is that I bought a lot of pieces through time that
I look at them now and I say, why did I buy that? But that's part of the process. It's how do I
feel about? What is my gut telling me? Art is, in many ways, like that for me.
I follow my senses a lot, but that does not mean that I don't do
huge amounts of research on art. I probably devote four hours a day just studying and looking
at art every day. So there's a lot of work that goes into making that gut feeling better.
[Interviewer]
Tell us a little bit about El Espacio 23 and what was the motivation?
Well, we've been growing this collection, we realized that we just had no storage space.
So we bought this as a warehouse and as we cleaned the space up and we said, this is a fabulous space
to show art. Particularly art not being shown at PAMM, at the museum. Not to be competitive with
PAMM at all, but to be complimentary to PAMM and maybe show more of what is deeply interesting to
me. And also artists that are not getting their due because of the countries that they're in.
We take great pains in getting the most important curators to not only curate
the shows, but to write the book, so there's an understanding of why each piece is done.
And that to me is a great personal accomplishment. It really makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
[Interviewer] I read a great quote saying that this may be a warehouse, but it
may be the most important project of your career.
I think it is because art has taken, I think in the last decade, an even greater part of my life.
And I devote probably half my time now, between business, and art slash philanthropy. 60% of my
emails today are from art fairs, galleries, artists telling them what they're producing.
Bodo from Africa. Brazil, the Campana Brothers. This is the master, . This is Bodo, the new master
from Africa in African realism.
You're seeing now a change of exhibitions and now the new exhibit is going to be
contemporary African art that follows social change. What is happening in Africa today? You
can't talk about what is happening in Africa today without talking about the issues of colonialism,
capitalism, poverty, inequality, sickness, and a lot of that is captured in the art,
plus just the plain beauty of the art. So we're looking at this as a way of promoting
these countries that have not been promoted in the past, the art of those countries. Still with
a huge focus on Latin America, which is where I'm originally from. I found a lot of the same
things that I saw in Latin America in Africa. The diaspora from Africa became very important to me,
understanding it, and it led me to start collecting African art.
I think art makes you go outside your box. And if I can expand that, not just from me,
but by showing it to as many people as I can show it, and then when I'm gone, to leave it to
a museum that will continue to show it to as many people, then I'm doing something that is good.