Luciano Benetton was a no-show at the recent opening of his Imago Mundi art collection at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, but he had a good excuse.
The billionaire founder of the global Benetton fashion empire was in China concluding lengthy negotiations to create a collection of art with pieces by all 55 ethnic minorities in China and publish a catalog for each group.
Benetton, 81, expects the China project to take three years. The Imago Mundi collection has 17,000 artworks from more than 100 countries, but Benetton considers it only halfway complete.