Welcome to Art Angle, an Artnet News podcast that dives into the places where the art world meets the real world, bringing each week’s biggest story to earth. Join us each week for an in-depth look at what matters most in museums, the art market and more, with input from our own writers and editors, as well as artists, curators and diners. other leading experts in the field.
In the covid summer 2020the art world was rocked by a very different drama when reports surfaced that MCH Group, the Swiss company best known as the parent company of Art Basel, had entered into talks to sell a significant equity stake to Lupa Systems, the private investment company founded by none other than James Murdoch.
For listeners who haven’t spent years devouring the media business or political gossip, James Murdoch is the fourth of six children of billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, now more infamous for presiding over right-wing coverage. lasts broadcast by Fox News in the United States. and various overseas properties through his News Corp conglomerate.
The Murdoch family’s closeness to Art Basel initially sent some people in the art world into hysterics. One conspiracy theory even held that James was acting as a front for his father, who would take over the most well-known and prestigious art fair on the planet and…well, he was never quite clear what he would do, or why he would care, but clearly something vile and irreparable was about to happen, and we all had to prepare for the worst.
Yet those interested in digging soon discovered that James Murdoch is truly his own man with his own resources. Although he spent decades in the family business, including leading roles in some of its satellite television and entertainment companies, he severed his last link with the empire when he resigned from the News Corp board in July 2020.
He was a public critic of Donald Trump as early as 2017, and through Quadrivium, the foundation James and his wife Kathryn set up in 2014, he has channeled substantial philanthropic resources into tackling climate change, promoting solutions based on evidence in science and health. , expanding voting rights and countering online extremism.
He is also a tycoon in his own right. When Disney paid $71.3 billion in 2019 to acquire nearly all of the Murdochs’ entertainment assets, James received $2.2 billion from the deal. He launched Lupa Systems soon after, with sources saying at the time that he would invest up to $1 billion of his fortune in the company.
In fall 2020, MCH Group shareholders had approved the deal to make Lupa Systems the company’s new “major shareholder”, with the option to buy up to 49% of its shares. But since then, we’ve heard relatively little from James Murdoch himself about how MCH Group and Art Basel fit in with Lupa’s other portfolio companies, including media properties like the Tribeca festival, tech startups from state-of-the-art and sustainable development projects.
Before the 2023 edition of Art Basel in Basel, however, I managed to sit down with James in the offices of Lupa Systems in New York to hear his thinking firsthand.
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