Top 100 Art Personalities

Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist and activist who was imprisoned for 81 days earlier this year, topped ArtReview’s annual ranking of the 100 most influential people in the art world, the Power 100, published this week. Any art collector of ArtKabinett social network will want to keep this artist list close by when shopping for fine contemporary art. The Beijing-based artist -- who last year paved Tate Modern’s monumental Turbine Hall with 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds -- “was ranked number one as a result of his activism as much as his art practice,” London-based ArtReview said in an e-mailed release, noting that artists no longer worked in “a privileged zone” defined by galleries or museums. Every year, timed to coincide with London’s Frieze Art Fair, Art Review gathers an international panel of art-world professionals to pick the 100 most influential people in their field. Last year’s Power 100 topper, international art dealer Larry Gagosian, ranked fourth this year. In second position on this year’s list were Hans Ulrich Obrist and Julia Peyton-Jones, co-directors of London’s Serpentine Gallery. Obrist came second also last year, and in 2009 he was at the top of the list. Losing ground were contemporary artists Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, whose auction prices have suffered since 2009. Hirst -- who was No. 1 in 2005 and 2008 -- fell to No. 64 (from No. 53 last year). Koons slipped to 66 from 47. By contrast, artist Gerhard Richter -- whose retrospective at London’s Tate Modern just opened -- soared to No. 11 from No. 55. Other high-scoring museum directors were the Museum of Modern Art’s Glenn D. Lowry, at No. 3, and Tate’s Nicholas Serota, at No. 6. Here are the top 20 names on the list: 1 Ai Weiwei 2 Hans Ulrich Obrist & Julia Peyton-Jones 3 Glenn D. Lowry 4 Larry Gagosian 5 Anton Vidokle, Julieta Aranda & Brian Kuan Wood 6 Nicholas Serota 7 Cindy Sherman 8 Iwan Wirth 9 David Zwirner 10 Beatrix Ruf 11 Gerhard Richter 12 Alfred Pacquement 13 Adam D. Weinberg 14 Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev 15 Marc Glimcher 16 Klaus Biesenbach 17 Eli Broad 18 RoseLee Goldberg 19 Francois Pinault 20 Annette Schoenholzer & Marc Spiegler