MICHAEL DELL ACQUIRES MAGNUM ARCHIVE
Billionaire Michael Dell’s investment firm, MSD Capital LP, has acquired about 185,000 vintage photographic prints from the Magnum Photos agency in what is thought to be among the largest photo transactions in history, writes Lindsay Pollock in Bloomberg.
While no price was disclosed, the collection has been insured for more than one hundred million dollars, according to a person with knowledge of the transaction.
MSD Capital will lend the photos for five years to the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at the University of Texas, Austin. Dell, chairman and chief executive officer of computer maker Dell Inc., which is based in Round Rock, Texas, is an Austin resident and University of Texas dropout.
“Having this incredible collection in Austin is especially exciting to me,” said Dell in a press statement. Forbes magazine estimated Dell’s net worth at $14.5 billion in 2009. MSD Capital manages more than $10 billion in assets, according to a press release.
Ransom is noted for acquiring research materials from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among its holdings are the Watergate Papers, Norman Mailer’s archives, and page proofs from James Joyce’s Ulysses. The Magnum archive includes the work of 103 photographers, images dating from the 1930s to 1998 that in some case are as much fine art as photojournalism. They chronicle world events such as the Spanish Civil War and the US civil rights movement.
