Sharing the Wealth: Collector and real estate developer Marty Margulies is led by passion for art - and compassion for others.
By Hannah Sampson
The developer and art collector Martin Z. Margulies took a trip to the Royal Academy in London last year to view an exhibition of large-scale works by German artist Anselm Kiefer. That led to a jaunt to the influential artist’s studio outside Paris.
And that, nearly a year later, led to major renovations at one of the buildings that houses the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse in Wynwood. They were done to accommodate a major installation from the London show and other works by Kiefer for an exhibition this fall and winter. Multi-ton stones comprising a Michael Heizer sculpture have been shifted outside to the front of the Warehouse to make way for the monumental, 10,000-square-foot Kiefer exhibition of sculptures, installations and paintings from 1986 to 2014. Visitors will be in for a raw and powerful experience as Kiefer unflinchingly confronts modern Germany’s history through painting and sculpture incorporating charcoal, ash, straw, dried branches, sackcloth and photographs. The works reflect key Kiefer motifs, including books, Kabbalah and poetry by Paul Célan.
The Kiefers and Heizer may seem a universe apart from paintings by Mark Rothko and Yves Klein, sculpture by George Siegel and John Chamberlain, photographs by Thomas Ruff, Ed Ruscha and Justine Kurland. Yet all have caught Margulies’ finely tuned eye and his collecting zeal. Said Margulies: “There’s no plan with me. It just kind of happens.”