Leon Black, the man who made news yesterday when it was revealed he was the mystery buyer of the record-breaking $120 million sale of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, is in the news again—this time as the patron who commissioned a site-specific work by Ellsworth Kelly, Dartmouth Panels, which has just been installed on the façade of the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College, Mr. Black’s alma mater.
The sculpture is a signature Kelly color spectrum of five enormous, bright monochromatic panels, each of which is 22 feet high and five and a half feet wide, their straight edges contrasting sharply with the Hopkins Center’s curved roofline.
The Kelly sculpture is installed across from the new Black Family Visual Arts Center, which was named after Mr. Black and his wife Debra in March after they donated $48 million to build the center. The visual arts center opens on Sept. 2012, along with Dartmouth’s new Arts District, and will kick off the school’s yearlong arts celebration. So, if you’re visiting the Black Family Visual Arts Center, you’re not only promised a cutting edge visual arts experience while in the building, but great views across the way. Billionaires, they think of everything!
