Bloomberg

By James Tarmy

“Are we going to mention the building?” asks New York art dealer Adam Lindemann, standing in the polished entry hall of his Upper East Side mansion. In fact, it’s kind of impossible not to mention the building.

A jet-black poured concrete structure designed by the architect David Adjaye, it’s hidden behind a staid, 1897 carriage house facade, which the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission dictated remain unaltered. Inside, though, the home is ultracontemporary, with a bridge connecting the street to the main structure, whose asymmetrical windows consciously mimic Marcel Breuer’s original Whitney Museum of American Art building on Madison Avenue a few blocks away. Look up as you enter, and you’ll see a glass catwalk leading to a small, wood-paneled second-floor library that fronts the street.

For years the house has been a curiosity—in 2011, New York magazine wrote a review of it without actually going inside—but from now through June 13, the public will be allowed through the front door.

Lindemann, whose gallery Venus Over Manhattan is on Great Jones Street in NoHo, has decided to host an art show in his own home. “Urhobo + Abstraction”combines spectacular African statues with contemporary artwork.

“The Rockefeller Wing is reopening at the end of May,” Lindemann explains, referring to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 40,000-square-foot exhibition space for the arts of Africa, the ancient Americas and Oceania, which is about to wrap up a multiyear renovation. “So as the head of the visiting committee of the Rockefeller Wing, I decided to do this kind of celebratory show to honor the Met and my own personal interest in African art.”

Lindemann, whose father was the billionaire George Lindemann, has collected African art for decades. “I used to be the young collector of African art, but that was like 30 years ago,” he says. “So I can’t be the young collector anymore.”

Hosting the show in his own house, he says, was closer to a last resort than a carefully considered choice to open his private life to the public. “I was looking and looking and looking, and I couldn’t find the space on the Upper East side,” he says. “And I’m, like, what am I thinking? I built a space just for this—why don’t I try it and see how I feel about it? Because I’ve been pretty shy about it—I don’t let people in here normally.”

And so the show found a place in his entrance hall, which was designed as a private gallery space.

That said, Lindemann isn’t exactly pining for crowds. “I’m going to have some short public hours, and hopefully people will make a reservation and won’t create too much of a line around the block,” he says. (The address is 77 East 77th Street; hours are Monday through Thursday, from noon to 3 p.m; other visiting hours can be arranged independently.) “But,” he adds, “I’m separately concerned that no one will come to see the show.”

The Show

At its heart are five monumental Urhobo sculptures from roughly the mid-19th to early 20th century. Carved by master artists from the western Niger Delta, they depict powerful chieftains who’d been elevated to divine status. (One of the pieces is Lindemann’s; the other four are on loan.) In a particular quirk, two of these figures are portrayed wearing a Western top hat, a style adopted into sculptural form after being observed on European visitors. “This is kind of like the Roman or Greek sculpture of Africa,” Lindemann says. “They’re like nothing else in African art.”

Those statues are joined by a cluster of five Igbo figures from southern Nigeria, along with a group of contemporary abstract artworks by the likes of Sam Gilliam, Richard Mayhew, Jack Whitten, El Anatsui and others.

“I wanted to combine [the statues] with something that made sense, but that was abstract, because I couldn’t have a Romare Bearden behind, that wouldn’t work,” he says, referring to figurative art.

The abstract pieces are, for the most part, tied in various subtle ways to the African statuary: There’s a painting by Merton D. Simpson, for instance, who also happened to be an extremely influential African art dealer, as well as an abstract work by Gilliam, which was lent from the collection of the dealer Peg Alston, who also collects African art.

“I said to Peg, ‘If I put a Sam Gilliam with a major Urhobo, do you think that’s kind of inappropriate or disrespectful or not sensitive or too contrived?’” Lindemann says. “But she said, ‘Not at all. These artists would’ve loved what you’re doing. And I think it’s a great idea.’ So her support was important to me.”

High Quality

Lindemann organized the show with the assistance of the Belgian dealer Bernard de Grunne, whom Lindemann met at Yale University while getting his law degree. (“We were members of the same sort of social club,” Lindemann says, “and then he needed a client, so he got me into African art.”)

De Grunne, now one of the world’s most prestigious dealers of African art, says there are only about 30 or 40 Urhobo figures of this quality in existence. “Carving such a monumental piece from one piece of wood—one trunk, basically—you really have to know what you’re doing,” he says. “These are really master carvers, and they [didn’t make] many of these great objects.”

The show is technically nonselling, though De Grunne says the works’ owners are “always happy to listen to an offer like everybody else.” He continues that the record price for an Urhobo figure is about €1 million ($1.1 million), but adds that most tend to sell for €300,000 to €400,000.

Overall, he says, the market for African art is “OK.”

“The drive of the market is certainly buyers who like the connections between what they buy and 20th century, or 21st century [Western] art,” he says. “So it has to have some kind of bridge, whether that’s formal or aesthetic.” In that respect, then, Lindemann’s show is hitting the current collecting zeitgeist on the head.

“I think,” De Grunne says, “that this is what Adam’s show is trying to do. To get more people interested.”