Keen On

The Daily Mail called him the “Sith Lord” of the art world, the New York Times annointed him as the art world’s Patron Satan”, while the Wall Street Journal described him as the dealer the art world “loves to hate”. Californian voters aren’t too keen on him either, with only 0.24% voting for him in January as the Republican candidate for Diane Feinstein’s Senate seat. Yes, we’re talking about Stefan Simchowitz, the notoriously disruptive Los Angeles based entrepreneur who has built an enormously controversial art empire. So why, I asked Malibu’s self-styled enfant terrible, does almost everyone in the art world seem to hate him so much? And does he really believe, as he supposedly told another interviewer recently, that the US government should round up 150,000 homeless people in California and stick them into military camps?Stefan Simchowitz (born October 8, 1970) is the Los Angeles based art collector, art curator and art advisor who runs Simchowitz Gallery. He is a vocal proponent of social media as a leg