The Art World Loves to Hate Him. He’s Building an Empire Anyway.

Art dealer Stefan Simchowitz has long been treated as persona non grata by the art world’s most important galleries and tastemakers. But you wouldn’t know it while wandering around the 11,000-square-foot Los Angeles warehouses where he stores his collection, one of the biggest private troves in the world.

Wrapped paintings and sculptures are wedged, floor-to-ceiling, along aisles that stretch the length of a grocery store. One wall contains plastic-tile tapestries by Serge Attukwei Clottey, a Ghanaian artist whose works were included in recent high-profile exhibitions in Venice and Saudi Arabia. In a modern-day Medici arrangement for which he’s become known, Simchowitz pays Clottey at least $15,000 a month, which covers supplies and the salaries for the artist’s 23-person staff. “Him, I will never drop,” Simchowitz says.