Word: hirshhorn
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...sights can be more pleasing to art dealers than the appearance at their doors of Joseph Hirshhorn, a garrulous, hurrying little man with a big cigar. Multimillionaire Hirshhorn (TIME, Feb. 21) works with headlong intensity at his mining interests (uranium, gold, oil), "steals time" every week or so to make a whirlwind visit to a gallery. "I'll be in the middle of a meeting," he explains, "when I'll just get up and tell the boys I've got to go, but I don't say where...
...Hirshhorn may begin his tour of an exhibition by stepping briskly over to the dealer and demanding to know how many kids the artist has and how his work is selling. If the kids are many and sales few, Hirshhorn sees one more opportunity to "be a decent guy." He glances swiftly at the pictures, hoping hard to find some that "sing," or, better yet, make him "feel weak." In a pleasantly weak mood, he may order a dozen or more in as many minutes. Over the past quarter of a century, Hirshhorn has amassed some 800 contemporary American paintings...
Hungry Seagulls. Hirshhorn's random net inevitably scoops up many second-rate paintings, but it also snares some splendid ones. Among his finest recent purchases is Philip Evergood's American Shrimp Girl (opposite). One of the most versatile draftsmen alive, Evergood took obvious delight in depicting the hungry seagulls that circle the girl's head, and contrasting their eager grace with the girl's heavy-limbed, foursquare pose...
Cash Before the Crash. Hirshhorn, who got his start as a Wall Street market tipster and trader, got out of the market with $4,000,000 just before the 1929 crash. For more than 20 years he has commuted between Manhattan and Toronto, has set up a string of more than two dozen Canadian mining and oil companies. In 1950 New York State's Attorney General Goldstein warned investors against buying shares in American-Canadian Uranium Co., which was backed by Pax Athabasca Uranium Mines. Ltd., a Hirshhorn interest (TIME, Dec. 4, 1950), because the promoters were making...
...Hirshhorn's new $207 million deal with the Canadian government amounts to a cost-plus contract. Unlike most other producing uranium properties in Canada, which are so remote that supplies must be flown in at tremendous cost, the Algom property has access to good transportation. Miners guess it will cost Hirshhorn less than $10 a ton to get the Algom ore out, and the government is reported to be paying between $18 and $20 a ton for it. Estimated profit to Algom under the contract: $100 million. And that, says Hirshhorn, is only the beginning: "We're thinking...