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Comment by po | Hacker News Reader

> it's widely considered unacceptable for any curator to highlight themselves in their work in this way

So then he's not a curator but a patron. There's entire wings of galleries dedicated to portraits of patrons of the arts.

You make some good points but your framing of art as some kind of system with established rules, more than just heaving out your opinion on it just isn't reality.

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Yup, and it's vulgar and deserves to be condemned.

Moreover, museums don't allow the donors to curate the exhibitions, and artists do not mention their patrons in their work.

Art is in fact a system with established rules, which reflect good sense, and this collector is very much operating within that framework, just tastelessly.

> Moreover, museums don't allow the donors to curate the exhibitions, and artists do not mention their patrons in their work.

Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino (1492-1519). Raphael

https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/raffaello-sanzio-cal...

You have posted a link to a work for sale at an auction house. Perhaps I'm missing part of the context here?

The part where its a painter painting a painting of his patron?

Ah, sorry – quite obvious upon inspection! Yes, I will concede that there was a time when this sort of thing was a regular practice and I could have clarified that here I'm speaking about art in the modern context. Perhaps there are artists in the past 100 years who somehow involve their patrons in their work, but this is quite apart from what we witness with this project – the patron, dignifying himself sans-artists or art.

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