Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/907630
Above: French artist Valérie Belin took the double portrait of Haukohl in 2007, which was published by the Pompidou. Top middle, British Pop-influenced photographer Boo Ritson's portrait of Haukohl. On right, Ritson's self-portrait. Left, an image by Geneva-based art star Sylvie Fleury. Also visible are some of Haukohl's extensive photo archives, still in their boxes. Left: A wall in the master bedroom hung salon style with works by classically inspired Carla van de Puttelaar, based in Amsterdam (large levitating nude, top left), Elina Brotherus, and Elisa Sighicelli, the latter acquired from Gagosian Gallery in New York. Second shelf from bottom, works by Picasso (left) and Georges Rouault (right). Old Master paintings and drawings went to the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin in 1998. After a heads-up by the Manhattan power couple, late MFAH director Peter Marzio gave a luncheon for the Haukohl family to welcome them to town. "We had one of our first luncheons in Houston in Peter's dining room in the Museum of Fine Arts, in his office," Haukohl says. "It was a great introduction." For his in-depth investigation into the marvels of the Italian Baroque, as well as his work for establishing a branch of Save Venice in New York, Haukohl received the ultimate accolade bestowed by the country of Italy a decade ago. "I was knighted by the president of Italy on December 17, 2007," he says. "It's a very humbling experience when the president of Italy calls you on the phone and says, 'We would like to present the National Medal of Honor of our country to you.'" It was a defining moment of his life. The occasion was marked by a series of august celebrations: a ceremony in New York at the River Club, a commemoration at the Houston Country Club, an event sponsored by the U.S. ambassador in Rome. It concluded with a flourish with a state dinner in Washington, D.C., given by the Italian ambassador at his official state residence, Villa Firenze. "The wonderful thing about receiving a knighthood," Haukohl says, "is that they stand up on the stage and talk about you for half an hour, and you wonder, 'Who is this person?' And then they pin the ribbon and the medal on your chest." His collecting did not end with the splendors of the Baroque era. In 2000, he began exploring an entirely new area of collecting, where he was a trailblazer: He adopted a Guerrilla Girls approach to photography by European women of the 21st century. "I wanted to do something that no one had done. The working title of the collection is 'The European Woman of the 21st Century.' This is the largest collection of contemporary women European photographers in the world and will eventually be a museum gift. I decided to do a pan-European survey of European women photographers because no one had ever done it." "In America, we are very pronounced about the American women photogra- phers — Cindy Sherman, Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin. We wanted to determine: Who are the Cindy Sherman, Diane Arbus, and Nan Goldins of Europe?" Haukohl also rails about the discrepancy of women in the fraught field of contemporary auctions and the marketplace, pointing out Vera Lutter, Candida Höfer, or Marina Abramovic's prints bring $100,000 to $175,000, while male contemporaries Thomas Struth and Andreas Gursky routinely fetch that "to the power of 10, topping $1 million." The results of Haukohl's photographic 79