Collecting Stories: Christian Levett, Museum Man
Founded with the principles of access and community, CURA Art utilizes a broad network and expertise to support collectors with all aspects of managing their passion and investment.
While many of the collectors we know and work with choose to remain private, several have generously allowed us to share their stories with you, to inspire others and encourage open discussion on the role of the collector in the 21st century.
The aim of the Collecting Stories series is to de-mystify the world of collecting, but also represent the many different approaches to acquiring and supporting the arts. Collecting is so much more than amassing beautiful or interesting works of art and objects; collectors can invest in the future and document the past and present – through this series we hope to bring this to light.
CURA Art is passionate about encouraging collecting with purpose and providing guidance surrounding philanthropy, support of artists and the wider arts community, as well as encouraging access to collections.
Former investment manager Christian Levett has long been an impassioned arts patron, having at times described his collecting habits as “intense” or “enthusiastic.” This started from impulses as a child to amass football cards and other collectibles, and has since turned into a refined pursuit that focuses on Levett’s changing interests and focuses.
Levett has always been interested in sharing his collection and opened the Mougins Museum of Classical Art (MACM) in 2011 in Mougins, France, displaying antiquities, armour and classically inspired artworks.
Image: Figurative Gallery at FAMM, photgraphed by Jerome Kelagopian ©FAMM
In recent years, his focus has undergone a drastic shift, with Levett instead turned towards the work of women artists, especially Abstract Expressionists.
This transformation was fully realised in June 2024 with the re-opening and re-branding of his museum into Femmes Artistes du Musée de Mougins (FAMM), becoming the first private museum in Europe solely dedicated to work by women artists.
Displaying only artwork created by women, the institution’s collection, spanning from Impressionism to Contemporary artworks, will include renowned artists such as Tracey Emin, Carrie Mae Weems, Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine De Kooning and Cecily Brown.
We were honoured to join the opening of the museum recently and speak with Christian about his collecting journey.
Image: Musée FAMM ©FAMM
From our experience, collecting is a habit or interest that starts in childhood. Was this the case with you?
Yes, definitely. My interest started with a box of military medals at home, awarded to various family members over the years, some dating back to the late 19th Century. I was fascinated by the stories behind them. My grandad’s brother was killed in WWI, my father was in the army, and another grandad was part of the Metropolitan Police sent to Germany after the war. My mum lived through the war in London and experienced bombings as a child, so conversations about history and war were always part of our household.
Image: Christian Levett in front of Dorothea Tanning's artwork Eperdument, photographed by Jerome Kelagopian ©FAMM
I discovered a medal shop near where I lived in Southend-on-Sea, Essex. One day, I went in with my mum, saw all these medals, and thought it would be fun to start collecting campaign medals. They were quite affordable then, around 50p, and today they might be worth around £20. I also started collecting coins, like Victorian pennies, and it became a bit of a bug filling gaps in my collection.
As a child, I was also into collecting football cards, just like many others. Opening a packet, getting duplicates, and trading them at school was quite thrilling. Whether this collecting bug was always in me or triggered by these experiences, I’m not sure, but once you get that little burst of excitement from acquiring something new, it tends to stick with you. It’s a feeling many collectors understand.
As a child, I was also into collecting football cards, just like many others. Opening a packet, getting duplicates, and trading them at school was quite thrilling. Whether this collecting bug was always in me or triggered by these experiences, I’m not sure, but once you get that little burst of excitement from acquiring something new, it tends to stick with you. It’s a feeling many collectors understand.
Image: Figurative Gallery at FAMM, photographed by Jerome Kelagopian ©FAMM
How did your collecting develop further?
Everything changed when I moved to Paris at 25. I was living near the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay, which opened up a whole new world of art for me. Growing up, my family wasn’t big on art. Our holidays were about exploring historical sites, not art galleries. But Paris was a revelation. I started spending my weekends exploring museums, particularly the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay, and I was especially drawn to early 17th century Dutch and Flemish masters.
Eventually, I felt ready to start collecting art myself. I bought a few pieces, like a painting by Spanish artist Ignacio Escosura and one by Dutch artist Egbert van der Poel, and that’s how my serious collecting began.
You said that your family weren't established in the art world. Infiltrating the art world is sometimes about inherited knowledge and connections; was it therefore hard to establish yourself in the art world as a collector?
I never really thought about it like that. Most people just start buying pieces they like, thinking about where they'll hang them at home. When I was assigned to Paris, I figured it would be for 18 months to 2 years. I had an apartment in London from when I was 24, so I knew where I'd eventually place these things.
I wasn’t trying to establish myself in the art world; I just bought pieces because I liked them and thought they were of high quality. That didn’t change even as my collection grew over time.
Image: Impressionist Gallery at FAMM, photographed by Jerome Kelagopian ©FAMM
I started buying Impressionist and Post-Impressionist drawings, then antiquities in my early 30s. It wasn’t until around 2009 that I got noticed in the art world, after I announced plans to open a museum in Mougins. That’s when the media took an interest.
Before that, Christie's and Sotheby's knew me because I was buying significant pictures and hand-painted natural history books. So, while the auction houses knew who I was, the broader art world didn’t catch on until the museum announcement.
Image: Abstract Expressionist Gallery at FAMM, photographed by Jerome Kelagopian ©FAMM
When individuals start collecting, they usually rely on established connections and especially advisors to be pointing them in the right direction, but you've done it all through your own instinct, which I think is really impressive.
When I started in my 20s, I was too small to attract an art advisor’s attention anyway. The art advisor model wasn't really a thing back then. The kind of art advisors we see now started emerging in the early 2010s, and now it's a huge industry. Some advisors, like Melanie Clore and Henry Wyndham, have been amazing, with decades of experience at places like Sotheby's. But when I started, you mostly had to figure it out on your own.
Image: XXIth century Gallery at FAMM, photographed by Jerome Kelagopian ©FAMM
It sounds like the works that you've collected over the years are based on your personal interests, which has influenced your collecting focus or themes. Your most recent focus is art by women artists. Could you explain a bit more about how you decided to focus the collection on that?
About ten years ago, I decided to focus almost entirely on modern and contemporary art, mostly post-war. Finding great antiquities and Old Masters with good provenance was becoming very hard. I'd always bought modern pieces in bits and pieces, but it had never been a major focus.
Around 2013 or 2014, I decided to just focus on post-war art. I bought great pieces by a mix of male and female artists. People like Picasso and Basquiat, and Tracy Emin, Louise Bourgeois, and Helen Frankenthaler. I was simply buying great art by great artists who I liked.
I then came across a catalogue for a show on female Abstract Expressionists at the Denver Art Museum. It opened my eyes to many artists I hadn't considered before. I started looking into their careers and market values, discovering they were significantly undervalued despite having amazing backgrounds and exhibitions.
Image: Vue d'intérieur FAMM_crédit, photographed by Jerome Kelagopian ©FAMM
I got interested in Françoise Gilot and then bought pieces by Dora Maar including a self-portrait from 1950. While I was looking into these artists, I found a gallery who were selling some work by artists like Sonia Gechtoff and Deborah Remington who were all in the Denver show. This was during lockdown, and obviously I couldn't travel to see these paintings in person, but galleries sent videos, and I took a chance and ended up buying about 40 paintings. When they arrived, they were in great condition, mostly needing just a clean and reframe. I then decided to open up my collection for private university tours, museum patrons groups and collectors groups in Florence, which was incredibly popular, with four to five tours a week.
Because of the interest in Florence, I proposed a female Abstract Expressionist show to Iwona Blazwick at Whitechapel Gallery. Coincidentally, Whitechapel were originally supposed to host the Denver Museum of Art show, but it sadly never went ahead. So, there was a lot of excitement that the works could come to Whitechapel and be exhibited. We decided to make it a global show, including artists from America, South America, and Asia. The show opened in February 2023 and was a huge success, traveling from Whitechapel to Fondation Vincent van Gogh in Arles, and then onto the Kunsthalle Bielefeld near Dortmund. And, seeing this amazing art and learning about these artists’ lives has been incredibly fulfilling.
A selection of 100 works in the collection will be displayed in the newly opened Femmes Artistes du Musée de Mougins with this new focus on art by women artists. Is the aim of the museum to inspire people just as you were inspired visiting museums as a child? Is the aim to educate? What do you feel like its contribution will be?
I like to think that people will experience this museum of women's art and see how astonishing the collection of exclusively female artwork is. It’s a stark reality to hear that almost 90% is the art on the walls of museums are by male artists, most of whom are also white. And so, I hope that visitors will be thought provoked after seeing the museum to question how we ever got to the point of almost exclusively showcasing male artists in Western Museums. Because, there is so much great artwork by great female artists, if you just look for it. And that starkness and that realisation is what I think I would really like to achieve. The collection consists of over 500 pieces, so we will be rotating the display, which also means that there will always be something more and something different to see. I think there will also be an interesting experience for people who come into the museum who maybe don’t realise that it’s filled with art by women. And they experience an incredible collection, without that context, and interact and enjoy the artwork for just what it is, which is just great art. It’s just another interesting encounter that I think the museum will open the doors to.
Image: Christian Levett in the Abstract Expressionist Gallery, photographed by Jerome Kelagopian ©FAMM
Absolutely. And the impact is huge. I mean, it's only really when you flick through Katy Hessel’s book and you see art history purely through the lens of women artists, for the first time, that you realise the impact that it has. I think the impact of having them all in one place will be huge for education and for visibility.
Yeah, well this museum is going to pack a serious punch. We’ll be showing about 160 years of female art, from about 1865 through to the present day.
Image: XXIth century Gallery at FAMM, photographed by Jerome Kelagopian ©FAMM
Your role in not only collecting but showcasing the works of lesser-known artists will have an impact on art history. Do you consider yours or a collector’s role in art history?
No, I don’t really think like that at all. Of course, I think it’s important and I’m very proud that it will help to establish more female artists, but I think I just like to put collections together that have a firm narrative and theme, and I think they’re more interesting like that. I used to jump around into different collection themes that have captured my focus for a period of time. Interestingly, I think that focusing on female artists is going to become my forever focus now.
Image: Surrealist Gallery at FAMM, photographed by Jerome Kelagopian ©FAMM
While I know that collecting female artists in the way I have been doing will directly support female artists and help to take a step towards a more equal industry, it has never been a conscious decision in terms of the drive behind ‘the why’ of the collection. I’ve just looked for A1 artists with A1 artwork. Of course, there is a struggle that’s inherent in the history of women's art and the history of these paintings. And that adds context and great importance to the context of these pieces. But really, all I want to do is buy a great artwork by a great artist.
Do you have any advice that you would give to anyone thinking of starting a collection?
Firstly, buy an artwork that grabs you emotionally, for whatever reason that that may manifest itself in. It could be because you find genius in its execution, it could be because you find it funny, provocative, sensual, vibrant, or something else entirely. But it has got to grab you. There's got to be something about the work that you truly connect with when you look at it.
Secondly, if you want to collect properly, then always buy the best art work from the best artist that you can personally afford. Don't buy two or three mediocre works if you could buy one exceptional work for the same combined price. Just save up and buy the better work when it comes along as you’ll be better off in the long run.
And then after that, you should be careful about the condition. Make sure you’re prepared to look after your collection properly. You must also be conscious of the provenance. If it’s not a contemporary work, make sure it’s registered with the artist register if it's more than 20 or 30 years old. It’s important that you do your own due diligence to make sure something isn’t stolen. So ideally you would try to get provenance back to the artist, if it's a late 20th Century work in particular. And you would want provenance to back before the Second World War if it's 19th Century.
Image: Entrance at FAMM, photographed by Jerome Kelagopian ©FAMM