Russian billionaire spends $400 million on island-based art museum project

Russian billionaire spends $400 million on island-based art museum project
By Zachary Roth, Yahoo!News

A Russian oligarch has paid almost $400 million as part of an ambitious plan to create an art museum and commercial center on an island in the heart of St. Petersburg.

Roman Abramovich is buying an array of crumbling buildings on St. Petersburg's New Holland island, a former military base, reports the Daily Telegraph. The self-made steel and investments magnate, whose fortune is estimated at around $12 billion, plans to convert the 18th-century warehouses into art galleries, housing, retail and hotel spaces, according to a spokesman.

Abramovich, 45, is best known in the West as the owner as Chelsea F.C., the London-based soccer club that he has helped turn into a European powerhouse over the last decade with a slew of high-profile signings. But since taking up with his girlfriend, art-world darling Daria Zhukova, in 2007, he has also become a leading collector of contemporary art. On a 2008 trip to New York, he spent $68 million on Francis Bacon's "Triptych" and $27 million on a Lucien Freud painting. Those big-ticket purchases are fueling speculation that the planned new art gallery could be intended as a home for his collection.

Zhukova, the 29-year-old daughter of a Russian oil magnate, runs her own gallery in Moscow, and is a member of the board of trustees of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Last year, Abramovich bought an $85 million estate on the Caribbean island of St Barts. He also paid a reported $474 million for the world's biggest yacht, Eclipse. Naturally, it's said to have its own art gallery aboard.