About the work

The Billionaire project is rooted in the research behind the The Art Board work, that lead to the realization that while in the business world it is common for individuals to sit in multiple boards, in the art space it is rare to have individuals sitting on the board of multiple museums. The Billionaires investigation expands the research from billionaires to their family members. It relies on crowdsourced knowledge on 205,548 individuals, data collected by the LittleSis project. BarabasiLab identified 76 billionaires and 29 of their family members that had direct relationships to 39 art or cultural institutions. The resulting network (Image 28) reveals not only how billionaires themselves connect artistic institutions, but also how through their family members, billionaires are more embedded in the art world than their personal involvement suggests. 

The investigation has unveiled six billionaire families that extend their influence by family members on the board of different institutions, avoiding the appearance that the same person controls multiple institutions. For example, Leon Black sat on the board of MOMA, while his wife, Deboard Black sat on the board of the MET, with the tacit agreement of these institutions. Each of the six paintings puts a spotlight on one such family, who have bypassed conflict issues and thus, together have enormous influence on multiple art institutions.