More News Interview by Farah Nayeri Aug.
25 (Bloomberg) — Amsterdam’s sleazy red-light district soon will be luring visitors to London’s , courtesy of the Outset Contemporary Art Fund. Outset, started in 2003 by Candida Gertler and Yana Peel, gives about 100 patrons access to the art world for 5,000 pounds a year. It uses the money to help museums fund acquisitions and enable artists to create new works. shops at the annual Frieze Art Fair with Outset cash. The U.K. charity is helping boost individual giving to the arts, which surged 25 percent to a record 382 million pounds in 2007, according to the most recent data from the group, a U.K. charity that links cultural institutions with corporate givers. Since 2003, Outset has bought 72 works by 45 artists for , many of the artists new to the collection, says Serota. Pawel Althamer’s “Untitled†(a portable room) was purchased at Frieze in 2007. Outset “encourages galleries to bring important works, which can then be seen at the fair and bought by the Tate,†says Serota, 63. Funding Works
Gertler and Peel are complementary. Gertler, 42, is blonde, blue-eyed, and fine-boned at our morning meeting in Notting Hill’s fashionable , she wears a steel-gray satin blouse and gold designer jewelry. Born in Frankfurt to Romanian parents, she studied journalism and law. After a brief stint in TV, she moved to London in 1992 and started a family. She is married to real-estate investor Zak Gertler, who is worth 150 million pounds, according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2009 where he ranks 362nd out of 1,000.