The ‘cultural desert’ of Silicon Valley finally gets its first serious art gallery
The trappings of wealth are different among California’s technology millionaires, but Marc Glimcher of the Pace Gallery is confident that he can interest them in collecting digital art
Silicon Valley got its first major contemporary art gallery this week because Laura Arrillaga Andreessen – prolific art collector and heir to local real estate baron John Arrillaga – decided it was a little weird to have art sales in her house.
“I didn’t come and say I’m going to make Silicon Valley like art. It just happened,” says Marc Glimcher, who runs the influential Pace Gallery and was in town to fete the opening of his new Menlo Park location.
“In the beginning, Laura Arrillaga wouldn’t travel, so I would bring art to her house, and then her friends started wanting me to bring them art too. And she said, ‘You know, it’s a little tacky to be doing this in my house, why don’t you use my dad’s old run-down Tesla shop?’”
A Tesla building could only be considered “old” in Silicon Valley.
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It’s long been observed that the Silicon Valley elite don’t buy art. Unlike Wall Street bankers who see art as investment or prestige enhancement or who maybe even truly love art, Silicon Valley’s wealthy don’t seem to desire the same trappings of wealth, despite art dealers circling their IPOs for years. Wealth shows in different ways here: eccentric dietary habits, peculiar transportation methods such as electric unicycles, extreme fitness behaviours.