The legacy of Mnuchin, the powerful gallery owner who left Wall Street

When in the early 1990s he left Goldman Sachs, one of the largest and most influential investment banks in the world, where he had held the role of partner, to open an art gallery in New York, many thought it was the eccentricity of a luxury pensioner. Mnuchin had just concluded a legendary career in finance and no one expected that a man who grew up on stocks, arbitrage and block trading would choose to start over in the opaque and unpredictable system of art. In reality, that choice revealed his deepest nature: the belief that talent, if authentic, does not depend on context but on vision.

In 1992 he transformed part of his townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side into C&M Arts. Not just any ‘white cube’, but a space that from the beginning spoke the language of museum quality. Mnuchin didn’t follow trends: he dictated them, or more often ignored them. His gaze was turned to the great American masters of the second half of the twentieth century, those who had built the artistic identity of the United States in the post-war period: Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Barnett Newman. And above all Willem de Kooning, the leading artist of his activity, to whom he dedicated eight exhibitions, convinced that no one else had gone through so many creative seasons with the same strength.

The art gallery quickly became a point of reference for collectors and museums. Each exhibition was a cultural operation before a commercial one: rigorously selected works, sober layouts, solid catalogues. Mnuchin had brought to the art market what was increasingly missing: time. Time to study, to explain, to build trust. In an increasingly accelerated system, its slowness was a political act.

In the following years C&M Arts transformed into L&M Arts, thanks to the partnership with Dominique Lévy, and then, from 2013, into the Mnuchin Gallery. The perimeter widened to minimalism and historical contemporary: Donald Judd, Frank Stella, Alexander Calder, Philip Guston, up to Jeff Koons and David Hammons. But the common thread remained unchanged: iconic works, never decorative, capable of standing up to history.

Mnuchin was also an atypical collector. He hated the word “collection” and loved to repeat that art should be experienced, not stored in vaults. The works he purchased ended up on the walls of his home, not in storage. It was a philosophy that he also reflected in his work as a merchant: selling did not mean getting rid of an object, but finding the right place to make it last.

If in the galleries he was measured and thoughtful, in the auctions Mnuchin became a magnetic presence. Sitting in the front rows, often with a simple folding phone in his hand, he embodied a quiet authority that put the entire room on edge. The symbolic moment came in 2019, when Christie’s offered $91.1 million for Jeff Koons’ “Rabbit”, setting the world record for a living artist. A gesture that had nothing spectacular, but which perfectly summarized his style: decisive, surgical, definitive.

Despite being the father of Steven Mnuchin, former US Treasury Secretary, Robert Mnuchin always remained away from politics and media protagonism. In the art world he was appreciated for an increasingly rare quality: integrity. “One of the most correct in the sector”, defined him by Amy Cappellazzo, former president of Sotheby’s. A judgment that circulated as a shared certainty.

In recent years, despite physical difficulties, Mnuchin continued to attend exhibitions and large sales, only giving up Art Basel in 2019 after over twenty years of uninterrupted presence. “I would be lost without this job,” he said shortly before the pandemic. It wasn’t a casual statement. (by Paolo Martini)