“What we’re showing at Initial Access is what’s happening at the moment—people won’t see this in museums,” says Cohen. “My fun comes from being ahead of the game.” Cohen’s artistic taste hasn’t always been received with applause: Jonathan Jones of The Guardian panned a 2004 London show of the collector’s works, calling his tastes risibly tacky. “He makes Saatchi look like John Ruskin,” wrote Jones. But the private London dealer Ivor Braka, who sells works by such artists as Kippenberger, Hockney, Freud and Hirst, says England desperately needs collectors like Cohen. “Outside London—in Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham—the museums are largely dead,” says Braka, a Manchester native. “They’re increasingly strapped for cash because the Labour government doesn’t care about the arts outside London. Private collectors and foundations have an immense role to play, and they can have a terrific cultural input in those places.” Indeed, since Britain’s museums are far more dependent on state funding than are their American counterparts, the UK may well be staring at a new generation of Guggenheims, Mellons, Vanderbilts and Whitneys. “Charles Saatchi changed the face of contemporary art in London with his groundbreaking exhibitions,” says Julia Peyton-Jones, the director of London’s Serpentine Gallery, adding that Cohen, Zabludowicz and Roberts are following in the tradition of the great art patrons. “They’re fleshing out the cultural life and are integral to the fabric of the country.”
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