Collector Charles Saatchi to donate 200 artworks to British nation for new modern art gallery
By APThursday, July 1, 2010
Saatchi’s gift to UK: 200 artworks and a gallery
LONDON — British art collector Charles Saatchi says he is donating his London gallery, including more than 200 works worth more than $37 million to the nation as a new modern art museum.
Saatchi said Thursday the works by artists including Tracy Emin and Grayson Perry will be given to the government and his 70,000-square-foot Saatchi Gallery renamed the Museum of Contemporary Art, London.
Former advertising tycoon Saatchi was the main patron of the Young British Artists movement of the 1990s, which made household names — and millionaires — of artists such as Emin and Damien Hirst.
His new gallery opened in 2008 in London’s tony Chelsea neighborhood and has mounted shows by emerging artists from India, China and the Middle East.
