Critics have derided ArtPrize as a naked bid to buy cultural cachet in a flyover-country backwater, and fans have hailed it as radically open, a populist wresting of aesthetic judgment from the snobbery of elites in New York and Los Angeles, writes Matthew Power in the current issue of GQ.
The New York Times mocked it as "Art Idol." The critic Jerry Saltz called it "terrifying and thrilling" and wondered what effect such a model would have on the traditional bastions of art-world power. I shared Saltz's wonderment, but even more than the event itself, what made me curious were the motives of the man behind it, a 30-year-old heir to a vast fortune named Rick DeVos.
DeVos's 86-year-old grandfather, Rich DeVos, is the multibillionaire co-founder of Amway, the private multitiered marketing business that generates enormous wealth by selling products and training materials to gullible salespeople. Rick's father, Dick, spent $35 million of his own money—and $6,800 in donations from Mitt and Ann Romney—on an unsuccessful 2006 bid to become Michigan's Republican governor. Rick's uncle is Erik Prince, the ex–Navy Seal and billionaire founder of Blackwater, the private military-services firm now rebranded as Academi.
