Gallery Owner Almine Ruiz-Picasso, and Her Blockbuster Art Shows, Are Taking New York

Earlier this month in London a crowd of shivering, well-dressed art lovers lined up outside of the Almine Rech Gallery in Mayfair. It was the night before the Frieze Art Fair, and many of the city’s galleries had taken advantage of the flood of international art buyers to put on marquee exhibitions. Almine Rech Gallery, which is owned by Almine Ruiz-Picasso (Rech is her maiden name), was introducing a series of new works by Jeff Koons, currently the world’s most expensive living artist.

Both Koons and Ruiz-Picasso were at the opening, smiling and taking pictures with the few people lucky enough to get past the team of assistants who barred the door—pleading overcapacity—from the art world hoi polloi hoping to see Koons’s $6 million music-box ballerina statues up close.