Holy Hamptons Hostilities

"Goldman Ex-Partner, Hedge-Fund Chief Sender Fight Over Church." That's a headline on Bloomberg.com this morning, and the issue at hand is as ridiculous as it might suggest.

Dennis Suskind, formerly of Goldman Sachs, has bought a Methodist church in Sag Harbor, New York with plans to turn it into a house, and Adam Sender, the manager of Exis Capital, is pouting because he says he wanted to buy it for the purpose of showcasing his collection of contemporary art.

The fact that two money machers are arguing over gets to rip apart a place many consider holy in order to satisfy personal ambitions may just be the most telling sign yet that we are in the thick of an age of excess. But that's beyond the scope of this blog.

What's not is that Sender implies that his vision for the church is better than Suskind's because it would provide a public service to the community. "Nowhere in the Hamptons is there a dedicated contemporary art museum on a large scale," he told Bloomberg's Linda Sandler.

The Hamptons have the Parrish Art Museum, which includes the work of Dan Flavin, Chuck Close, and April Gornik, and the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and, soon enough, the New Museum (not to mention the hundreds of contemporary galleries in Chelsea) are just a few hours drive away (less if you commute via helicopter). Couldn't Sender donate his collection to one of the museums struggling to compete with collectors like himself for great works of contemporary art? Maybe even a museum in a place less art-rich than New York and its satellite towns? Sender's plan to build a private museum for his trove (Damien Hirst, Kara Walker, Chris Ofili, and Jeff Wall included) looks a lot like a move to flaunt what he's got in an exceptionally privileged community. And if his project stems from the less narcissistic suggestion that the growing number of private museums reflects collectors' wishes to maintain control over how their pieces are exhibited and ensure they aren't locked away in some storage facility, we'd say take a look at what's happened to Albert Barnes.

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