In his after-school job working for his father's New Jersey cartage company, Albert Scaglione quickly became adept at wrestling massive barrels down basement bulkheads. Later, working in an art gallery owned by a relative, the teenager quickly mastered the skills of matting, framing, and hanging art. It was a step up the employment ladder, but despite his drive and newfound interest in art, never in his wildest dreams did young Scaglione imagine that he would one day profoundly reshape the art world.
Although born a few years too early to qualify as a boomer himself, Scaglione came of age in a world that had was undergoing a seismic shift, in large part the result of the baby boom following World War II. In the 1960s and 1970s, discounted airfares allowed a tsunami of college students and other young boomers to descend on Europe, armed with copies of Europe on Five Dollars a Day in their backpacks. When they returned to the United States, they brought with them new ideas about furnishings, clothing, food, music and art. Equally profound was the boomers' attitude toward authority. From rock and roll to sushi rolls, it was a whole new world. Born after a cataclysmic war, boomers were keen on rewriting the rules-or disregarding them altogether.
Scaglione and other trend-spotters not only intuited this immense paradigm shift in attitude, but also acted on it. Quite independently of one another, a group of young entrepreneurs rose to meet baby boomers' aspirations for a more refined and simultaneously more casual "European" lifestyle. In 1962, Gordon and Carole Segal founded Crate & Barrel offering well-designed furnishings at reasonable prices; in 1969 Donald and Doris Fisher founded the Gap, making jeans the uniform de jour; and starting with a catering business in 1976, Martha Stewart's eponymous company proved that good taste is not just for the priviledged. And in 1969 Albert Scaglione founded Park West Gallery, bringing great art to people regardless of their income and education.
These diverse and imaginative lifestyle purveyors ultimately transformed the cultural landscape, but initially, they all faced the same challenge: how to successfully bridge the mass vs. class conundrum, a feat that had bedeviled countless earlier entrepreneurs. How do you democratize taste without lowering it? How does one build European fashion sense into a dollar pair of jeans - or sell a Picasso to someone without a trust fund? Can mass and class peacefully coexist?
A former professor and NASA engineer, Albert Scaglione's career in art began in 1979 selling pictures from the back of his truck. His children Marc and Niki, who now work for Park West Gallery, remember a life as nomads. In those early days revenues came as much from framing fees as from selling the art itself. Scaglione started running small auctions for charitable groups in the Detroit area. Tall, blue-eyed, charismatic and a man of his word, he quickly built a loyal client base, opened his first gallery/auction house, and-what's rare in the art world - established a large line of credit.
A defining moment for Scaglione was meeting Peter Max, the German-Jewish refugee artist whose iconic LOVE poster of 1968 was to define the counter-culture era for decades to come. Despite his fame - he was on the cover of LIFE in 1969 - Max felt he wasn't connecting with a growing legion of fans and collectors. Scaglione offered to help. Their partnership became extraordinarily productive, forging a bond that continues to this day. Major European artists soon came into Scaglione's fold-Erte, Victor Vasarely and Yaacov Agam-as well as the trustees of the estates of such creative giants as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Marc Chagall.
From Paris to Tel Aviv to Japan, the Old World establishment liked what they saw in the charismatic young art dealer from Detroit. They were impressed with the fact that he obviously did his homework - a trait facilitated by a photographic memory for images and styles. They also responded to an almost inexhaustible curiosity and desire to experience firsthand -- combined with a famously hands-off respectfulness towards the artistic process. Most of all, Scaglione was a man to be trusted at his word; unusual in a hyperactive market attracting growing numbers of poseurs and wheeler-dealers.
Scaglione's success in the United States was fueled by baby boomers, who also responded to his charm and straightforwardness. Shunned by the serious art market, this increasingly influential cultural group now had a friend in the maverick Midwesterner. Scaglione encouraged them to buy only what they liked and to trust their own eyes. "If you are looking for an investment," he would say, "buy securities. Art is for a lifetime. You have to love it." And love it they did. It wasn't unusual for "newbie" clients to go from the single purchase of a small lithograph to building sizable collections-all from Park West Gallery. Given this fan base of collectors, Park West Gallery's revenues rocketed due north for every decade since its founding.
The eminent author and art historian Anthony Janson, whose History of Art is considered the art history "bible" has this to say about Scaglione: "Albert Scaglione, CEO of Park West Gallery, is one of the most unusual people in the art world, which is notable for its amazing characters. A youthful-looking and vigorous man, he is certainly a savvy businessperson, as the remarkable success of the gallery attests. He has made it the world's largest dealer in original art. He is also a man with a vision who is passionately committed to what he sees as his mission. This 'left brain-right brain 'duality, as he puts it, is fundamental to his personality. So is his enthusiasm, for the man is a natural-born teacher."
In the last decade, one of Scaglione's most important innovations was the development of auctions aboard cruise ships. At first, the major cruise lines were skeptical. One CEO even vowed "he couldn't sell a postcard "aboard his ships. Yaakov Agam proved the CEO wrong, offering to donate works to a charity auction. The test worked out. Agam and the CEO encouraged Scaglione to develop the business. "It just grew like a weed," recalls Scaglione.
A billion dollars in sales later, Park West Gallery is now the dominant art player in the cruise industry with its auctioneers working on 85 ships worldwide. With more than 1,000 employees and thriving land-based auction houses in Miami and Southfield, Mich., Scaglione's Park West Gallery is now the largest art dealer in the world, as well as largest dealer of Picassos-and the largest dealer of Dalis. The gallery represents a wide spectrum of artists, all of whom embody the idea that mass and class can happily coexist: Thomas Kinkade, Igor Medvedev, Itzchak Tarkay, and, of course, Peter Max.
A recent 40th-anniversary gala brought many Park West Gallery artists to Detroit for three days of rollicking good fun. Yaakov Agam flew in from his Paris studio along with his beautiful companion, the renowned cellist Chantal Thomas d'Hoste; Thomas Kinkade from a Hollywood adaptation of his life starring Peter O'Toole; Peter Max from his New York studio where he is currently overseeing over 100 staffers in preparing a new series of prints. Others came from Israel, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and other countries. Joining them were many of the art lovers who are regulars at the Park West auctions held throughout the year in Detroit and Miami.
Perhaps the most notable guests of all were children and young adults from Detroit's ghettos, whom Albert and Mitsie Scaglione have taken under their wing. Park West Foundation, which the couple founded in 2006 to offer a range of services for children and families, helps underwrite New Directions for Youth, a support system for young women making the difficult transition to independent living after they "age out" of state-sponsored foster care at 17. Some of the girls are now pursuing college degrees; all have been helped to master the basic skills necessary to move on with their lives. As part of their commitment to education, the Scagliones have donated ,000,000-worth of art to university art programs.
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