After reporting yesterday that Leon Black‘s publishing house Phaidon Press was in talks to purchase online art gallery Artspace, Bloomberg has published an article confirming the deal. Although the price paid by Phaidon for Artspace remains unknown, the article reports that, when Auctionata was in talks to acquire the gallery, Artspace had been valued at just under $5 million. The article also points out that this merger will give Phaidon Press and, by extension, Leon Black access to Artspace’s extensive mailing list of 150,000 active art collectors, increasing “[Phaidon’s] access to global art collectors who are also consumers of its art and design books and multimedia products”.

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Artspace has announced that is in the process of acquiring VIP Art, another online art sales site run by gallerists James and Jane Cohan.  The move broadens Artspace’s number of collectors to well over two hundred thousand, and its list of gallery collaborators to over 200.  “As we augment our gallery presence, we augment our insight into how best to serve galleries and collectors.”  Says Artspace founder Christopher Vroom.
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