STYLE
LIFE
BODY
MEDIA
AN ARTFUL DODGER?
Louise T. Blouin built a formidable media company focused on fine art, but her detractors say the benevolent publisher isn’t what she seems. Joe Pompeo paints a troubling picture
106
ILLUSTRATED BY FILIP PERAIC
I
P L AY
n late September, a cabal of luminaries gathered at the Museum of Modern Art Education Center in Manhattan for a two-day gabfest. It was the Louise Blouin Foundation’s annual Creative Leadership Summit, a sort of mini-Davos that encapsulates the raison d’être of the foundation’s namesake, Louise T. Blouin. The fi rst day concluded with a black-tie reception at Blouin’s Charles Street penthouse, but really, the summit was all about making the world a better place, and its lineup was quixotic and lofty: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on democracy and technology, Financial Times U.S. managing editor Gillian Tett on the future of the Eurozone and so on. “Innovation, Creativity and Change” was the theme, according to a description for Blouin’s address, which noted, “… innovation and creative leadership can be applied to pressing global challenges. These challenges include not only the mitigation of destructive forces, such as war, poverty or security threats, but also the reinvigoration of positive practices that enable nations, communities, organizations and businesses to thrive.” Lending a touch of irony to the confab—but absent from the agenda—was the fact that Blouin’s business, by all appearances, is anything but thriving. In fact, after years of troubles, Louise Blouin Media seems to be at a breaking point. The company has faced rounds of layoffs and lawsuits alleging non-payment, as well as speculation over when, not if, it will self-destruct completely. An arts-focused publisher lugging around more baggage than a Louis
WORK
C U LT U R E
Vuitton boutique, Louise Blouin Media is wholly owned by its proprietor. The company was created in 2003 with Blouin’s acquisition of Art & Auction (soon renamed Art + Auction). The French-Canadian multimillionaire has since expanded into a collection of print titles and international websites; she’s nothing if not ambitious. “You need to be f ive times better than the New York Times in terms of volume,” she once advised employees, re-
“I DO THIS TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE.” —LOUISE BLOUIN
ferring to performing-arts content. To hear Blouin tell it, she doesn’t buy and launch art publications and organize boldface conferences for the sake of it. “I have everything I want in my life,” she said back in 2005. “I do this to make a difference.” Difference or none, it wasn’t long before people were saying Louise Blouin Media wasn’t paying its bills. More than 10 years on, the company is said to be at a place where the lights could go out and the phones might not work. And Blouin—never mind her aristocratic mien, her reported $600 million net worth, her lavish properties in Manhattan, Southampton and London—seems a case study in how to become a formidable businesswoman and society maven while still ending up a punch line. Slim and blonde with a soft voice known to deliver monologues equally assertive and meandering, Blouin rose from the Montreal convent where she spent her upper-middleclass adolescence to the top of a near-billiondollar classified publishing company she cofounded in 1987 with her second husband, John MacBain, and which she later cashed out on for a reported $250 million. Her foray into the art world began in the early 2000s with a short-lived relationship—allegedly more than just business—with the auctioneer Simon de Pury. Having relocated to London, where the tabloids feasted on her rumored fling with Prince Andrew, Blouin set out on what was said to be a $500 million mission to build up her publishing empire and its affiliated philanthropic arm. Her persona, described in 2004 by Britain’s Telegraph, was that of a “future George Soros of the art world.” Two years later, when she was moving Blouin Media to New York, where she had dropped $20 million on that Richard Meier–
BLOUIN ’S NEIGHBORS IN HER TONY WEST VILLAGE APARTMENT BUILDING HAVE INCLUDED CALVIN KLEIN , MARTHA STEWART, VINCENT GALLO AND NICOLE KIDMAN .