Rupert Neate: The Guardian
From champagne corks flying towards a Picasso to cornflakes splashed on a Basquiat painting, the perils facing billionaires’ floating art collections aren’t those sailors typically fear on the high seas. But the world’s ultra-rich are filling superyachts with so many masterpieces that conservationists are teaching captains and crew how to care for art as well as to pamper passengers.
Pandora Mather-Lees, an Oxford-educated art historian and conservationist, started giving lessons after a billionaire asked for help to restore a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting damaged not by sea spray, but by breakfast cereal. “His kids had thrown their cornflakes at it over breakfast on his yacht because they thought it was scary,” Mather-Lees said. “And the crew had made the damage worse by wiping them off the painting.” …Read More
Pictured: Joe Lewis, who owns Tottenham Hotspur FC, keeps Francis Bacon’s Triptych on the lower deck of his yacht Aviva. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images