Top Gund
Overflowing with contemporary masterpieces, philanthropist and art-world icon Agnes Gund’s newly redesigned Park Avenue abode gives new meaning to the term “art house.”
Most dog owners train their pets not to beg at the table, jump up on guests or bark at the mail carrier. But Tina and Giotto, both Wheaten Terriers, are art-trained dogs, and being that their mistress is Agnes Gund, they’d better be. They know not to wag their tails too close to the Christo sculpture or to even think about lifting a leg over the Louise Bourgeois totem, tempting as it may be. The fluffy beige canines miraculously avoid crashing into the ancient Chinese and African sculptures collected by Gund’s second husband, lawyer Daniel Shapiro (from whom she is now separated), and clustered on pedestals. More astounding, they disturb not one grain of rice poured in piles on a slab of marble in a floor work by Wolfgang Laib, even while alternating between barking, snarling, growling and nearly mauling each other, which Gund waves off as “playing.” “They are my favorite beings, those dogs,” she says. “But we have a problem that they do get very excited.”
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