19: Anne Cox Chambers

“Anne Beau Cox Chambers (b. 1919 in Dayton, Ohio) is an American media proprietor, who has a stake of interest in Cox Enterprises, a privately held media empire that includes newspapers, television, radio, cable television, and other businesses. She is the daughter of James M. Cox, a newspaper publisher and 1920 Democratic Presidential nominee. She owns and controls her father’s business interests, through Cox Enterprises.

Active in business and politics, Chambers was appointed ambassador to Belgium by U.S. president Jimmy Carter from 1977-81. She was a director of the board of the Coca-Cola Company during the 1980s, and she was the first woman in Atlanta to serve as a bank director (Fulton National Bank) and the first woman in Atlanta appointed to the board of the city’s chamber of commerce.

Chambers holds the Chair of Atlanta Newspapers and serves as a Director of Cox Enterprises, one of the largest diversified media companies in the US. It owns one of the nation’s largest cable television businesses, Cox Communications, which provides Internet and telephone; publishes newspapers including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and owns and operates broadcast television and radio stations.

Chambers is also a supporter of a wide range of cultural and educational charities, particularly in the arts and international affairs and has received many honorary doctorates and awards. She serves on the boards of the Atlanta Botanical Garden, the Atlanta Historical Society, and the Woodruff Arts Center, as well as on the boards of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pasteur Foundation, and the Whitney Museum in New York. In 2005 the High Museum of Art named one of the wings of its expanded facility after Chambers in honor of her lifetime of support. In collaboration with the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, opened the exhibition “Louvre Atlanta”, in a partnership facilitated by Chambers.” [edited from Wikipedia]

Dear Mrs. Chambers:

I’m a musician, artist, and writer, and one of my current projects is called “Make an Artist a Millionaire.” The purpose is to collect and invest the million, enabling me to live off the interest and to achieve the ultimate goal: to pursue an art career without the need for a day job. The original method of the project was to get one million people to donate a dollar. The present phase of the project is to write letters to the members of the Forbes 400 list and solicit their help (in any amount). This phase is called “400 to 1,” an optimistic expression of my odds of success.

Your background, however, makes me optimistic that you would be receptive to the idea of an artist as a millionaire, and also aware of the irony in the name of this larger project. As not only a supporter of the arts but as a powerful woman who has surely had her share of challenges navigating a male-heavy business world, you may be familiar with the underdog culture of the arts.

This letter to you marks a departure from a simple, carefully-crafted fundraising proposal grounded in research into the personal background of the recipient. You and I, as businesswoman and artist respectively, have firm opinions based on wildly different sets of experience, but just because you are a billionaire doesn’t mean I know anything about you or what you think, any more than picking up one of Cox’s newspapers and simply holding it against my head would familiarize me with its contents.

So instead of a pitch, here is a set of questions. Starting with answers, in the form of letters, assumptions, etc. has not helped me become a millionaire or even made me any wiser. I’d rather hear what you think, learn from you, and see things from your perspective. Since we all know that artists should not be millionaires (joke), this project can at least get us closer to knowing why not.

Thank you for participating and I wish you a happy new year.

QUESTIONNAIRE
[In the following, “art” and “artist” are used in the broadest sense to describe visual artists, social practice artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, etc.]

1. To what extent should an artist’s ability to make a living on art depend on the quality of their work?
2. To what extent should a person’s ability to make a living at their job depend on the quality of their work?
3. Should artists be supported by individuals?
4. Should artists be subsidized by the government?
5. Do you purchase artwork and/or musical recordings? If so, in what media?
6. What role should the marketplace play in an artist’s career?
7. Please describe the relationship between the artist and the public.
8. Is art a viable career? Why or why not?
9. Is practicing art as a profession, without the safety net of a day job, gambling with one’s life and health?
10. Is a piece of art or music a commodity? Why or why not?
11. Is paying money out or foregoing compensation to expand the audience for one’s art an investment?
12. In general, is art undervalued?
13. Is art overvalued?
14. What is artistic “genius”?
15. At about what age should an artist give up the idea of making a living at art?
16. At what age should a financial services professional do this?
17. Should artists be trained in the way that doctors, teachers, lawyers, etc. are?
18. If art were a business, would one be required to be licensed to practice it?
19. If artists were a professional class, what kinds of individuals or organizations would their employers be?

More Notes on Becoming a Millionaire Artist: Psychology

• Donor levels vs. Connector (Facilitator? Game-Changer?) levels: silver, gold, platinum, elite
• Get donor boxes in galleries: Doppler, Disjecta, etc.
• How to make this project cool? And not just desperate – desperate is not attractive romantically or financially!
• Enlist help of the enthused
• Interview people who don’t get it
• MAAAM web site with links to charities
• Diagram of current financial setup next to diagram of financial setup as millionaire—full disclosure
• Document past attempts to do this by others: harrell, Chris Burden
• Full pro. resume posted on site
• Make the logistics of the project engaging to people
• Include the public in the process (think Drawing Restraint), make the process the subject of the piece, but not in a way that makes them spectators.
• Spectator vs. Participant: how do ppl participate beyond giving?
• Make it cool to participate and uncool to be a spectator
• Pitch myself as the underdog team and get people to root for me
• Combat the notion of me as an entitled white guy—being geeky vs. too cool for school
• What’s the editorial stance? Regular Joe or weirdo? Innocence vs. experience? Cocky vs. humble? Challenging vs. beseeching
• Not enough time to argue my case with everybody: post “interview” answering FAQs and doubts. Don’t even argue the case, cast doubters as people trying to nickel-and-dime me. The FAQs should turn the logic of objectors around: “I’m not asking for a handout, I’m actually executing an idea that takes a lot of work and will allow me to be independent. Instead of crawling on my knees for gallery shows and grants and public money, I’m rewriting the rules, beating the System”
• It’s not either/or, not donation to MAAAM vs. a donation to the Red Cross. Small $ amounts avoids dichotomy
• Pic and caption of people who have contributed ideas: Frank.
• MAAAM Employee of the Week. “tenner of the week”.
• Incentives that don’t involve an exchange — psychology
• Find as many ways as possible to show gratitude, but don’t overdo it
• Skeptics may see the project from the p.o.v. of the million, not the $1: focus people on the $1.
• Restrict donations to $1, but encourage people to donate for someone else, a friend, family, colleague, fellow artist—if 1 person donates for 10, I only need to reach 100,000 people. The “Power of Ten”.
• The language of self help
• Find out who gave multiple $1s and get them to vouch for others / bring the total names up to equal the $1s
• Make gift card for holidays, weddings, etc. “$1 has been given in your name to MAAAM”
• Gold star next to “power of ten” people
• Phone tree as donation structure – grassroots, fundraising – Why would ppl do this?
• Research effective reward systems
• Encourage others to start their own project—a little tricky, might create competition
• Strategic gifts of promo swag to key helpers
• I’m not a dynamic personality verbally or natural public speaker: how to deal with this?
• Apply for residencies
• Repetition is key
• Take risks
• Rethink assumptions
• Rethink donor levels – display everything, even ineffective ideas, as residue
• Will disclosure about doubts and ineffective ideas undermine momentum and positivity?

Notes on Becoming a Millionaire Artist: Branding

The artist shown at lower right

• Portraits of power: grid of photos of me, Trump, Fuld, Gecko, etc.: ambiguous relationship between what I’m doing and what bankers, etc. are doing
• Infomercial—collaborate with Jason? Exposure through collaborating.
• Query public access TV about airing infomercial – late night OK – think about gold box
• ABC: Always Be Collecting
• 3-4 minute mp3 to sell on iTunes
• iPhone app?
• Find better way than mail or Paypal for donations
• How to avoid being taxed?
• Not letting the Man take a cut
• “Do unto others…” poster – religious / evangelist angle?
• Create ad campaign-style posters
• Political-style posters with donation as vote
• Make banner for posting on blogs and sites
• Downloadable pics and graphics on site
• FB page / Twitter
• Tie blog to FB
• Frequent blog posts – every day or every other day
• Be up front about quitting day job?
• Examples of how little artists and musicians make—breakdown of record sales
• I’m transitioning into less object-based art and more participatory, ephemeral work
• Don’t play the victim. Play the entrepreneur.
• Parking meter with “What exactly am I paying for?” label – mass produce stickers?
• Picture of ATM fee screen
• Experiment with fonts and wording of materials: fonts used by banks, corporate, sports
• Rubber stamp with MAAAM for dollar bills?
• Infiltrate all media: fashion, art, music, TV, books, magazines and newspapers
• Document myself doing Personal Power. Embrace the goofy and geeky? Semi-ironically portray MAAAM as a self-help program. Slogans, cheerleading, and always stay positive.
• YouTube and Vimeo messages
• Cards to museums: Stedelijk, PS1, ICA, Mattress Factory, Aldrich, Walker, Boston ICA
• Why didn’t the press catch on? Send cards again to the same people?
• Logo for project
• Branding: irony?

382: Open letter to John Glen Sperling

Dear Mr. Sperling:

I’m a musician, artist, and writer, and one of my current projects is called “Make an Artist a Millionaire.” The primary method of the project has been to get one million people to donate a dollar. The purpose is to collect and invest the million, enabling me to live off the interest and to achieve the ultimate goal: to pursue my artistic endeavors without the need for a day job. It has been slow going but not unfruitful: collecting $167 over the past 4 years means it will only take me another 23,948 years to reach the goal. Not counting inflation, of course.

How would you like to help me become a millionaire? This is not an investment opportunity in the strictest sense, but a request for what I consider seed money. Why would a businessman like yourself, who has brought yourself up to where you are today, be interested in something that could be seen as a handout? Because it wouldn’t be a handout.

For almost thirty years I’ve had a job. Since the age of 13 I’ve tried many kinds of work: in offices and restaurants, on ships, out in the field as a photographer. I’ve also tried working hard to build a career in a single field and doing what you’re supposed to do while working for someone else. But helping someone else pursue their vision seems mostly to be about making them wealthier. Even if it were going as planned–with advancement, raises and increased respect—it’s still five days a week sucked out of my creative life. As Tony Robbins says, the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results.

Currently I work in a city with a high cost of living in marketing, an undervalued and disrespected profession, for a below-average salary. Were you to make me a millionaire (or even some percentage thereof), I would be in a position to develop my work in two fields that offer little to no compensation: music and writing. With the demise of record companies and publishing, the onus for making a living at what they are best at is on the musicians and the writers.

In reading your autobiography, it’s clear that you’re committed to helping people create opportunities for themselves. The fine print is clear: you help people to create their own opportunities, you don’t do it for them. You might say “If you can’t make a living from music maybe the music’s no good, or you need to try harder at the business side of it.” Well someone in business wouldn’t be faulted for not being a good painter, right? Outside of the creative field, no-one is expected to have a second job to support their primary work. Whether in the corporate world or the art world, the business savvy are those who rise to the top, not necessarily the most talented, and not those who contribute most to society in a non-material way.

It’s an unexplained phenomenon that positions in business yield fantastic financial rewards and those in creative fields are vastly undervalued. This is simply another part of the System to beat, and I’m not looking for a shortcut, but instead a David looking for a better sling to use against Goliath.

This phase of the Millionaire project is called “400 to 1,” which is an optimistic expression of my odds of becoming a millionaire. I’m writing to every person on the Forbes 400 list not as a social or political statement, but because wealth at a certain point is superfluous, both as a reward and compensation. Successful individuals often support institutions and causes important to them and invest capital in start-up companies—why not invest in an individual? (As capitalism replaced feudalism and aristocracy, so patronage went the way of the dodo. Aristocrats never have gone away though, just their patronage of individuals.)

An earlier draft of this letter had a lot of detail illustrating my particular circumstances and how these ideas have played out. Instead, I thought the ideas themselves might resonate more with you, and sound less like a sob story. Nonetheless, I’d be happy to share them with you in conversation, as well as show you some of my work. Indeed, please consider this letter as the first statement in that conversation.

Best, Dan Nelson

#382: John Glen Sperling – Info

photo credit: Laura Segall – http://chronicle.com/article/Phoenix-Risen/46988/

According to my Finder, I haven’t worked on the “400 to 1” project since March 2012. What mostly explains the hiatus is that the more I researched the members of the Forbes 400 list, the more discouraged I got. Encountering number 382 on the list, the project seemed to hit a distinct wall. [Just to refresh your memory “400 to 1”–a sub-project of “Make An Artist A Millionaire,” in which I seek a donation of one dollar each from a million individuals—involves soliciting a donation of a substantial amount, ideally $1M, from wealthy individuals on the Forbes list.]

My research on John Glen Sperling was particularly thorough, considering this project would take a solid 14 months given a letter a day: he wrote the autobiography “Rebel with a Cause,” which I found and read. In it I discovered a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of guy, very different from the privileged inheritors, the political conservatives, and the natural resource or fried chicken tycoons that are all over the Forbes 400. He might be one who’d sympathize with an underdog artist, but he might also expect underdogs to fight their way to the top without “handouts.”

[The following is edited and expanded from the Wikipedia entry on Sperling and my research.] John Sperling was born into a poor sharecropper family in the Missouri Ozarks in 1921. His father worked for the railroad and his mother was a fundamentalist Christian. He escaped an oppressive home life and spent several years as a sailor in the merchant marine, and even as a wandering 1950s “beatnik.” He received his BA at Reed College, Oregon, a master’s from the University of California, Berkeley under the G.I. Bill, and then a PhD in Economic History at the University of Cambridge.

He is best known for founding the University of Phoenix in his fifties with no investors and no track record in business, while facing what he describes as “mean-spirited” opposition from accreditation agencies, competitors, and the press. His motivation was a feeling that “working adult students were often invisible on traditional campuses and treated as second-class citizens.”

In 1973, Sperling founded the Apollo Group to own and operate several higher-learning institutions: the University of Phoenix, Western International University, Axia College, the College for Financial Planning, and the Institute for Professional Development. Apollo describes the for-profit University of Phoenix as “the nation’s largest regionally accredited private university.” With a student body in North America second only to the State University of New York, it has a current enrollment of half a million undergraduate and grad students.

The UoP was created–by a man who had brought himself up from literally nothing–to serve a working population who, like himself, wanted to join the professional class. The school also offers associate or bachelor’s degree applicants advanced placement through its “prior learning assessment”: not limited to academic coursework, college credit can come from experiential learning essays, corporate training, and certificates or licenses. This gives you an idea of the value Sperling puts on using your experience to shape your own life.

Before becoming an entrepreneur at age 53, Sperling was a tenured professor at San Jose State University. He was an activist for several liberal causes during the 1960s, such as building a powerful new California faculty union, and was part of several conflicts with authorities and university leaders regarding his experimental adult education schemes. This activism grew out of a personal experience in his difficulty developing his own professional career.

Similarly, he used marijuana to combat pain caused by the cancer he fought during the 1960s, which led to his being an opponent of drug prohibition and actively financing initiatives to decriminalize medical marijuana in the US. It’s clear the source of his activities has always been overcoming the challenges presented to him as an individual. He might be characterized as a “rugged individualist” gone beyond-the-beyond who identifies obstacles to his path and not only hurdles them but attacks them on a broader—sometimes even global—scale.

Not surprisingly, then, as Sperling aged and began to confront death, he directed significant attention and financial resources toward research into life extension technology or “biological immortality.” Wired magazine reported in the February 2004 article “John Sperling Wants You to Live Forever” that his fortune was approaching US$3 billion, and he planned to donate it to human biology research if and when he died. Had he done so, it would have been the biggest private program ever devoted to human biology. (He has since indicated that his fortune will instead go mainly to environmental causes.)

Sperling provided financing to Genetic Savings & Clone (GS&C), of Sausalito, California, with whom he spent seven years and $10 million trying to clone a dog named Missy in a project called Missyplicity. Clones of Missy were produced in December 2007. A subproject of Missyplicity was called Operation CopyCat, which successfully created the first cat clone, named CC.

In August 2004, he co-authored and self published “The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America,” a sociological treatise attempting to explain the Red America/Blue America cultural and political divisions of the United States. Despite a $2 million advertising campaign, the book was not widely embraced by its intended progressive audience. Thomas Frank, author of “What’s The Matter With Kansas?,” ridiculed Sperling’s view of American society: “One America, to judge from the book’s illustrations, works with lovable robots and lives in ‘vibrant’ cities with ballet troupes, super-creative Frank Gehry buildings and quiet, tasteful religious ritual; the other relies on contemptible extraction industries (oil, gas and coal) and inhabits a world of white supremacy and monster truck shows and religious ceremonies in which beefy men in cheap clothes scream incomprehensibly at one another.”[21]

Reviewing Sperling’s auto-biography Alex Lightman wrote, “Las Vegas bookies probably would have given Sperling 100-to-1 odds against his business, but he not only survived, he grew the Apollo Group–parent of University of Phoenix and related interests–into a public company with a market capitalization (as of May 2001) of almost $7 billion, making it roughly as successful as many vastly more publicized dot-com champions.”

I include that last blurb because it illustrates that Sperling not only thinks big, but found the power to turn the molehill of his life into a mountain. Despite his success, he remains a renegade and underdog at heart (and probably considers himself as such): throwing money and time at his pet projects has not turned out to be a recipe for guaranteed success. He’s also politically liberal but independent, resisting attempts by the establishment to regulate us, whether it’s schooling, marijuana, or the media, and resisting biology itself in its attempt to end life. He is definitely a two-sided coin, and I’ll have to emphasize several opposing qualities in myself to appeal to him: the underdog who is capable of and demonstrated success; the hard worker who is nonetheless powerless against the System; the advantaged in a disadvantaged position who has found a loophole leading to massive possibility.

123: Kirk Kerkorian – letter

March 17, 2012

Tracinda Corporation
attn: Kirk Kerkorian
Beverly Hills, CA

Dear Mr. Kerkorian:

I’ve read that you’re a private person who doesn’t relish the public eye, so I thank you for taking a moment to read an unsolicited letter. I take the liberty of writing because I see in you a skill to turn nothing into something great, and am looking for a way to have some of that skill rub off on me. Your astounding success has been a mixture of hard work, resources, and a knack for seizing opportunity, with a little bit of luck thrown in and, last not least, help from some people along the way. You’re clearly someone who has had a great impact on our country, having literally made an oasis out of a desert, but you havent done it alone.

I’m a musician and an artist, and one of my current projects is called “Make an Artist a Millionaire.” The primary method of the project is to get one million people to donate one dollar, which has proved difficult, but not unfruitful. The purpose is to collect and invest the million, enabling me to live off the interest and to achieve the ultimate goal: to buy back time to work on my artistic endeavors without the need for a day job. Time is money, but for artists especially, money is time. How would you like to help me become a millionaire?

This is not an investment opportunity in the strictest sense, but a request for a donation. Why would a businessman like yourself be interested in something that doesn’t yield a return to you? I have a good answer to this, so bear with me. I grew up lower middle class in Pennsylvania and got my first job when I was 12, in my moms bookstore. I played music and developed a visual art practice while washing dishes in high school, then while shucking oysters to help pay for college. Though the progress has been slow, I’ve had some success, and given and received more joy from music and art than from anything else in life. I still work hard all day at my day job, and then into the evening on my own projects, but the job saps most of my energy and focus, which feels squandered on other peoples business. I have more ideas and plans than ever but, frankly, the arts is one hell of a line of work to be in if you want to realize those ideas.

My research suggests that you are someone who views money as a way to create opportunities, as an instrument of change. For an artist, on the other hand, money is something that time and ideas and artistic production in general must be translated into, in order for that production to continue. A completely free mental attitude and free time are necessary to create art (at least for me). The process by which this freedom is converted into cash on the table is vast and complex and, in short, it stinks.

Money is both a necessary tool for, yet non-essential byproduct of, making art. Artists are, in some sense, trapped in a market sector that doesn’t go by the same rules as the rest of the market. It seems like one of the few areas where you can be successful and not make a living. For example:

• Fine art: artworks are made on spec, then consigned to a gallery which will give the artist–if the work sells–50% of the proceeds.
• Music: the sale of physical recordings is falling sharply, while their price goes up; digital files, when they are not shared freely, are sold by outlets like iTunes; royalties from digital sales, when paid at all, are anywhere from 70% to 5% of their value.
• Writing: pieces and books are made on spec, the writer receives–in the best possible deal–50% of the profit.

None of this is your problem–you didn’t make the rules of business. But it at least explains why an artist would be driven to create a crazy scheme like this where he writes letters seeking a patron: instead of playing by these rules, I’m breaking them. I’m not interested in money for consuming things like cars and clothes and fine wine, but for producing and creating. If there’s one thing that you and I, artist and businessman, have in common, its that we look at money as a means.

At the same time, I recognize that the causes you’ve contributed to have been the worthiest possible: disaster relief, education, hospitals, and so on. And that they benefit the many and not merely the few. In a long life of exercising great power and effecting change, there’s one thing you probably never though you could do: invest in one person to give him the power to produce and to be a dynamic member of his cultural community, and not just a cog.

Thanks for your time, and I’d love to hear your thoughts, this project isn’t confined to yes or no answers.

Best,
Dan Nelson

123: Kirk Kerkorian – info

Before going through the Forbes 400 list in roughly strictly reverse order, I’ll start with the oldest of its members (for obvious reasons that will be left unsaid due to propriety), one of whom is Kirk Kerkorian. Kerkorian looks like he will be a tough nut to crack. Though very generous to charities and to UCLA, he’s very private and seems to have no particular interest in art. Thinking about ways to approach him made making a list of Why the Rich Give Money seem like a good exercise. Here are some reasons to start with:

• Recognition
• Belief in a cause
• To help
• Tax Purposes (wealthy folks please weigh in, is this valid?)
• To be instrumental/a mode of creation

If these were the only reasons in existence, and it had to be one only, I’d pick #5 for Kerkorian. At the same time, I frankly don’t see much creativity or anything else going on in the purchase and resale of real estate, beyond making money. Given the daring and seat-of-pants nature of his early life (and this trend of an interesting early life preceding an apparently bland business life may turn out to be a trend with those on the list), it’s puzzling that he should become just a real estate developer, if only because it seems like a dull profession.

The following is my condensed edit of his Wikipedia entry, with tidbits from newspaper articles on him.

Kerkor “Kirk” Kerkorian is an American businessman who is the president/CEO of Tracinda Corporation, a private holding company based in Beverly Hills, California. Kerkorian is known as one of the important figures in shaping Las Vegas and, with architect Martin Stern, Jr. the “father of the mega-resort.”

Kirk Kerkorian was born on June 6, 1917 in Fresno, California, to Armenian immigrant parents. Dropping out of school in 8th grade, he became a fairly skilled amateur boxer under the tutelage of his older brother, fighting under the name “Rifle Right Kerkorian” to win the Pacific amateur welterweight championship.

In 1939, he met Ted O’Flaherty, for whom he installed water boilers. O’Flaherty was taking flying lessons, and Kerkorian took a guest seat one day and was converted on the views of the Californian coast. Sensing the approach of World War II and not wanting to join the infantry, he learned to fly at the Happy Bottom Riding Club in the Mojave Desert. In exchange for flying lessons from pioneer aviatrix Pancho Barnes, he agreed to milk and look after her cattle.

On gaining his commercial pilot’s license in six months, Kerkorian learned that the British Royal Air Force was ferrying Canadian-built planes over the north Atlantic to Scotland. The Mosquito’s fuel tank carried enough fuel for 1,400 miles, while the trip directly was 2,200 miles. Rather than take the safer Montreal–Labrador–Greenland–Iceland–Scotland route (although, going further north could mean the wings icing and distorting, and the plane crashing); Kerkorian preferred the direct “Iceland Wave” route which blew the planes at jet-speed to Europe — but it wasn’t constant, and could mean ditching. The fee was $1,000 per flight, but the statistics were that only one in four completed the journey. In May 1944, Kerkorian and his Wing Commander J.D. Woolridge rode the wave and broke the old crossing record. Woolridge got to Scotland in six hours, 46 minutes; Kerkorian, in seven hours, nine minutes. In two and a half years with RAF Ferry Command, Kerkorian delivered 33 planes, logged thousands of hours, traveled to four continents and flew his first four-engine plane.

After the war, having saved most of his wages, Kerkorian bought a Cessna. He worked as a general aviation pilot, and made his first visit to Las Vegas in 1944. After spending much time in Las Vegas during the 1940s, Kerkorian quit gambling and in 1947 bought Trans International Airlines, which was a small air-charter service which flew gamblers from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. He then bid on some war surplus bombers, using money on loan from the Seagrams family.  He operated the airline until 1968 when he sold it for $104 million to the Transamerica Corporation.

In 1962, Kerkorian bought 80 acres in Las Vegas, across The Strip from the Flamingo, for $960,000. This purchase led to the building of Caesars Palace, which rented the land from Kerkorian; the rent and eventual sale of the land to Caesars in 1968 made Kerkorian $9 million.

Married three times, Kerkorian met his second wife Jean Maree Harbour-Hardy at the Thunderbird Casino. Ms. Harbour-Hardy, an accomplished choreographer and dancer from England, traveled the world instructing dance troupes. By chance, they met and fell in love while she was sent to check opportunities to choreograph a performance in Las Vegas. His most enduring marriage (1954–84) produced Kerkorian’s two daughters, Tracy and Linda. The name of Kerkorian’s personal holding company – Tracinda Corporation – is a portmanteau of the two daughters’ names. Although divorced, they remain close friends and confidants. Ms. Harbour-Hardy Kerkorian is financially successful in her own right.

In 1967, he bought 82 acres of land on Paradise Road in Las Vegas for $5 million and, with architect Martin Stern, Jr., built the International Hotel, which at the time was the largest hotel in the world. The first two performers to appear at the hotel’s enormous Showroom Internationale were Barbra Streisand and Elvis Presley. Presley brought in some 4,200 customers every day for 30 days straight, breaking all attendance records in the county’s history. Kerkorian’s International Leisure also bought the Flamingo Hotel.

After he purchased the MGM movie studio in 1969, Kerkorian and Stern opened the original MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, larger than the Empire State Building and the largest hotel in the world at the time it was finished. In 1986, Kerkorian sold the MGM Grand hotels in Las Vegas and Reno for $594 million to Bally Technologies. The Las Vegas property was subsequently renamed Bally’s. Spun off from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, MGM Resorts International owns and operates many prime properties, including the Bellagio, the current MGM Grand resort complex, The Mirage, Mandalay Bay, and the newly completed CityCenter in Las Vegas.

Beginning in 1969, Kerkorian distanced himself from MGM’s movie studio arm. In 1979, Kerkorian issued a statement claiming that MGM was now primarily a hotel company; however, he did expand the film library and production system with the purchase of United Artists in 1981. In 1986, he sold the studios to Ted Turner, which initiated a fifteen-year period of financial turmoil for the struggling studio. In 2005, Kerkorian finally sold MGM to a consortium led by Sony. He retained a 55% stake in MGM Mirage. In May 2009, following the completion of a $1 billion dollar stock offering by MGM Mirage, Kerkorian and Tracinda lost their majority ownership of the gaming company.

His involvement with the American auto industry began in 1995, when with the assistance of retired Chrysler chairman and CEO Lee Iacocca, Kerkorian staged a takeover attempt on the Chrysler Corporation. Chrysler’s management treated the takeover as hostile, and after a lengthy battle, Kerkorian canceled his plans and sold his Chrysler stake in 1996. In 2007, with Chrysler now owned by Daimler-Benz, Kerkorian made a $4.58 billion bid for the Chrysler Group. After a bidding competition, 80% of the Chrysler arm of Daimler-Chrysler was sold to Cerberus for $7.4 billion.

Kerkorian’s short-lived third marriage (1999) was to professional tennis player Lisa Bonder, 48 years his junior, which under a prenuptial agreement lasted only one month. He subsequently was involved in a breach of privacy suit filed against him by Steve Bing. Kerkorian claimed Bing was the father of Bonder’s daughter, which was later established by DNA testing. On August 10, 2006, the LA Times reported that Kerkorian’s attorneys were being sued by Bonder because of their connection to former high-profile private investigator Anthony Pellicano, who is currently serving a fifteen-year prison sentence for running a wiretapping scheme. Bonder’s attorney alleges that Kerkorian’s lawyers hired Pellicano to wiretap telephone calls illegally between him and Kerkorian’s ex-wife in order to gain a tactical advantage in the divorce proceedings.

Kerkorian once owned 9.9 percent of General Motors. According to press accounts from June 30, 2006, Kerkorian suggested that Renault acquire a 20 percent stake in GM to rescue GM from itself. On November 22, 2006 Kerkorian sold 14 million shares of his GM stake (it is speculated that this action was due to GM’s rejection of Renault and Nissan’s bids for stakes in the company as both of these bids were strongly supported by Kerkorian). His further liquidation of stock over the next three years helped precipitate GM’s bankruptcy in June 2009.

Kerkorian began buying Ford Motor Company stock in April 2008, and spent about $1 billion to accumulate a 6% stake in the automaker. By October 2008, the investment had lost two thirds of its value, and he began selling. On October 21, Tracinda sold the 7.3 million Ford shares at an average price of $2.43, and said it planned to cut further its existing 6.1 percent stake in Ford, for a potential total loss of more than half a billion dollars. Kerkorian sold his remaining stake in Ford in December 2008.

Kerkorian has a penchant for expensive clothes (especially custom-made outfits by Italian designer Brioni), but drives relatively low cost vehicles such as a Pontiac Firebird, Jeep Grand Cherokee and a Ford Taurus.

Kerkorian splits his time between his residences in Beverly Hills, California and Las Vegas. The richest person in Los Angeles, he may also be the most private. He almost never gives interviews and seldom appears in public. Even though his charitable foundation has dispensed more than $200 million to schools, hospitals, non-profits, companies, and charities, he has never allowed anything to be named in his honor.

Kerkorian founded the Lincy Foundation in 1989 in response to the devastating earthquake in Armenia. 25,000 people died in the earthquake as two major cities and 100 villages were completely destroyed. The substantial contributions from the newly formed Lincy Foundation provided housing to thousands of displaced individuals and families and reconstruction of roads and other key infrastructure.

In 2011, The Lincy Foundation gave $200 million to UCLA to create the “Dream Fund at UCLA”. He received the Mesrob Mashdots Medal from the Republic of Armenia for his services to Armenia and its people in 2001.

400: Sanford Weill – letter

Dear Mr. Weill:

I’m writing to you because of your love for and support of the arts.  If one thing hasn’t changed for thousands of years, it is the reliance of the arts on the patronage of the generous, and your work with universities, Sonoma State, Carnegie Hall, and classical music in general is impressive, and much needed. It’s individuals like you who help people like me spend their youth in the cheap seats at the Baltimore Opera and the Met soaking up Verdi and Mozart.

I’m a musician and an artist in Portland, Oregon, and one of my current projects is called “Make an Artist a Millionaire.” Until recently, the method of the project was to get one million people to donate one dollar, which has proved difficult, but not unfruitful. The money is being saved, not spent, since the purpose is to collect and invest it, enabling me to live off the interest and to achieve the ultimate goal: to free up time to work on my artistic endeavors without the need for a day job. Time is money, but for artists especially, money is time. How many works have suffered, or never been created at all for lack of time? How would you like to help me become a millionaire?

You might ask, “Why do you, a person with a job and only the needs of an individual, deserve a donation?” I grew up lower middle class in Pennsylvania and got my first job when I was 12, in my mom’s bookstore. I played music and developed a visual art practice while washing dishes in high school, then while shucking oysters to help pay for college. Though the progress has been slow, I’ve had some success, and given and received more joy from music and art than from anything else in life. I still work hard all day at my day job, and then into the evening on my own projects, but the job saps most of my energy and focus, which feels squandered on other peoples’ business. And now, just as I have more unrealized ideas and plans than ever before, and my band has reached a pinnacle, my job requires me to leave Portland, and probably spells the end of a very, very special collaboration between four people.

It’s up for debate (and I’d love to hear your opinion about this), but the fact that finance is a great way to earn a living and the arts is often a lousy way is just a matter of chance. They both bring value to human life, both require an enormous amount of work and dedication, as well as talent honed by training. Businesses and the people that depend on them could not function without investment; and the spirit would not be human without culture. Wouldn’t you agree that life would be impoverished indeed without Beethoven? I can’t explain the inequity of compensation between the arts and business, I can only recognize it and look for ways to beat it.

Enclosed is a gift (and proof that I’m an artist!), one of a series of my “24 Illustrations of Schubert’s “Winterreise”” song cycle. This print illustrates the song “Gute Nacht.” I learned about Schubert while studying music at St. John’s College (the Great Books school), and still think his songs beat John Lennon’s any day. This is one small-scale example of the kind of commissioned work I could make for you in return for your generosity.

I get out to the east coast when I can to visit family and would love to meet you in New York if you’d be interested, we might have a lot to talk about! I hope this letter finds you in good health. Thanks for your time in reading it.

Best,
Dan Nelson

400: Sanford Weill – info

Sanford Weill strikes me as a pretty nice guy, and profiles of him emphasize his commitment to classical music. I have a feeling the amount of giving he has done to cultural institutions will be a rarity among members of the Forbes 400, and my letter to him will rely heavily on our shared appreciation for music. My approach to Weill will focus on the notion of patronage, and the importance of artists having support in advance to execute work, rather than hoping for success later in life. The following is my condensed edit of his Wikipedia entry, with tidbits from newspaper articles on him.

“He was born on March 16, 1933 and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He married his wife Joan shortly after graduating from Cornell University in 1955. Weill had joined Air Force ROTC while in college and planned to be a pilot, but cutbacks in defense spending canceled his military career, and he went to work as a $35-a-week runner for the New York stockbrokers Bear Stearns. He quickly moved to work in the office and became a broker himself.

In 1960, Weill and three partners started the small brokerage firm of Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill. Over the next 20 years, Weill led the brokerage through 15 acquisitions, building it into the financial powerhouse Shearson, the second largest company in the securities industry. He sold Shearson to American Express in 1981 for $930 million. Weill became President of American Express, whose directors specifically hoped he would be able to turn around their failing insurance operation, Fireman’s Fund. Although Weill succeeded in this goal, he became frustrated with the corporate culture at American Express and attempted unsuccessfully to buy Fireman’s for himself. In 1985, he resigned from American Express.

At age 53, Weill, although wealthy, was out of work and thwarted in his efforts to find a job. In 1986 he traveled to Minneapolis to persuade Control Data to spin off its subsidiary, Commercial Credit, in an IPO (initial public offering) worth $850 million. Control Data sold 82 percent of the company to the public, Weill took over as CEO, investing $7 million of his own money. Besides Commercial Credit’s lending operation, Weill had acquired its subsidiary, a property and casualty insurance company called Gulf Insurance.

By 1988, Weill and his team had turned Commercial Credit around and acquired Primerica Corp., for $1.5 billion, along with its holdings, the brokerage Smith Barney and the A.L. Williams insurance company, which Weill renamed Primerica Financial Services (PFS). The whole conglomerate of brokerage, commercial credit, and insurance operations would continue under the name Primerica Corp.

Over the next several years, Weill’s Primerica Corp. absorbed the consumer lending operations of Barclays American/Financial, acquired receivables and branches from Landmark Financial Services, 27 percent of Travelers Insurance, and regained control of Shearson, buying it from American Express for $1.2 billion. With Shearson under its belt, Weill’s Primerica purchased the remaining shares of Travelers with $4 billion in stock. Weill merged Shearson with Smith Barney. Travelers Group, as the resulting parent company was called, included brokerage, term insurance, consumer finance, property-casualty insurance, life insurance, money management, and investment banking operations. In 1996, Weill acquired the property and casualty operations of the insurance provider Aetna for $4 billion.

Throughout his career, Sanford Weill ran his businesses like an owner. He avoided consultants and got to know his company by getting to know people at all levels of the business. All of Travelers’ employees were encouraged to own stock in the company. Senior managers received up to 25 percent of their pay in stock, which they were not allowed to sell for two years.

In September 1997, Travelers paid $9.1 billion in stock to acquire Salomon, Inc., the parent company of the investment bank Salomon Brothers. Weill merged Salomon with Smith Barney to create the second largest securities firm in the world. In April 1998, Weill announced the biggest coup of all: Travelers Group would merge with Citicorp, the parent company of Citibank, to create Citigroup, Inc. At the time, Citicorp was the world’s largest supplier of credit cards, and Citibank was the second largest bank in the United States. On the morning the planned merger was announced, the value of the companies’ combined stock increased by $13 billion to $83.6 billion.

Weill had already overcome significant regulatory hurdles to merge his insurance businesses with investment banks and brokerages, but the merger of Travelers with Citibank faced a seemingly insurmountable legal obstacle: the 1933 Glass-Steagall Banking Act, which strictly separated investment banks and commercial banks. In the 1980s, banks and insurance companies had won limited regulatory waivers from the Glass-Steagall restrictions, and many in the financial services industry called for their complete repeal. Weill and Citicorp Chairman John S. Reed decided to force the issue. They went ahead with their plan and secured a waiver whereby the temporary merger of the companies would be permitted, pending congressional action.

In 1999, both houses of Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act by overwhelming margins, and President Clinton signed the act into law. The measure won bipartisan support by reforming certain discriminatory banking practices, such as the “redlining” of low-income neighborhoods, while repealing the Glass-Steagall restrictions on the intermingling of commercial banks and investment banks, and of banks with insurance companies. Gramm-Leach-Bliley permitted the completion of the Citigroup merger, and set off a wave of similar combinations in the financial services industry. Some economists believe this deregulation contributed to the credit crisis that engulfed the world economy in 2007.

Few considered this possibility in 1999, as Citigroup became the largest financial services company in the world, with 100 million customers in 100 countries. Under Weill’s leadership, Citigroup achieved unprecedented growth, earning $13 billion in 2001. New subsidiaries were acquired or created all over the world, particularly in Asia and the newly liberated economies of Eastern Europe. Weill stepped aside as CEO in 2003 and retired from the Chairmanship in 2006.

Weill served as a Cornell University Trustee for many years, and in 1998 he endowed Cornell’s medical school, now known as the Weill Cornell Medical College. As chairman of the Board of Overseers of Weill Cornell Medical College and an emeritus member of the Board of Trustees of Cornell University, Weill orchestrated a $400 million donation to Cornell, of which he and his wife personally contributed $250 million. In June 2007, he endowed the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology at Cornell, housed in a new life science building named Weill Hall.

In May 2003, he received the Baruch Medal for Business and Civic Leadership, presented by Baruch College for his work in public education and his accomplishments in business. He is currently the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Academy Foundation, a non-profit he founded in 1982. NAF supports career-themed academies in the areas of finance, hospitality and tourism, information technology and engineering in over 500 high schools across the United States. He is also currently the Chairman of the Board of Carnegie Hall and is an avid champion of classical music in the United States.

In September 2006, Joan and Sanford Weill Hall was dedicated at the University of Michigan. The building is home to the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Weill donated $5 million towards the construction of the building and an additional $3 million to endow the position of the dean of the school.”

400 to 1

I’ve just begun the next phase of the “Make an Artist a Millionaire” project, and the working title is “400 to 1.” The project entails writing a letter to each of the people on the Forbes 400 list (i.e. the wealthiest individuals in the US) and asking them to donate to MAAAM. Collaborating on this project will be my stepmom, who has a lot of experience and success in university development. It was she, in fact, who planted the seed for “400 to 1”: after listening to me describe MAAAM, she made the offhand comment “Honey, it would be easier for you to get one person to write you a check for a million dollars than to get a million people to each give you a dollar.”

What at first seemed simply like a euphemism for “your project will never succeed” grew into, if not a more effective approach to getting the million, at least an interesting challenge. More interesting than asking people over and over for a dollar. Rather than sending a form letter to each of the Forbes 400, I’ll research each one and craft a personalized plea. The project seemingly will be more about sussing out human nature and understanding how to get through to the kind of person who, on the surface, couldn’t be more different from the average artist: the business person. The same challenge of asking for something in return for nothing that exists on the lower end of the scale of quantity–$1–will presumably be amplified many times in approaching millionaires and billionaires. So, like many of my projects, I’m really taking on the impossible, with the odds stacked against me.

Almost certain failure means a greater chance for glory, right? As I’ve always suspected, though, the real matter of the MAAAM project is the psychological aspect. People give up small amounts of money all day every day, willingly and unwillingly. The question is, why do they do it? The least that could emerge from “400 to 1” is that we learn a great deal about human nature and about the society we currently live in. As I said, my stepmom (who I won’t name just yet, lest she want to remain free from the search engines) will be collaborating on drafts of the letters. For now, I’ll simply post research material about each person followed by the final draft of the letter that gets sent. Hopefully soon I can interview my stepmom and other individuals who have insight into the subjects that arise during the project.

Though each letter is addressed to a member (is that the right term?) of the Forbes 400, it has other audiences: the personal assistant who will decide whether to pass it on to the boss, my friends and fellow artists, the readers of my blog, and hopefully a wider public. The tone of these letters will not be one of supplication, since becoming a millionaire is not a matter of life and death, nor is it a question of seeking charity. To be an artist, writer, or musician in 2012 is to be part of a business that doesn’t function as successful, healthy businesses do. It’s being asked to follow the rules of commerce, but with little likelihood that you will prosper from it.

“400 to 1” may ultimately be a process that allows all of us creative types to rewire our brains from that of the milquetoast to that of the hard-ass. How do the successful think? How do you get some money and then use it to structure your life according to how you think it should be? Why on earth would anyone ever give me a million dollars?

Throughout this project, which at minimum will take 18 months, I encourage comments and any input from you! Just as each letter is structured not as a yes-or-no question but as the beginning of a process, this entire project is a dialogue and an attempt to expand our notion of what is desirable and possible for the life of the artist.