Who

A fixture on the contemporary art scene, Adam Lindemann is the husband of gallerist Amalia Dayan.

Backstory

Adam is the son of billionaire George Lindemann, the entrepreneur who invented the soft contact lens in 1971 (he sold the patent for $60 million), founded a cable company (which he sold for $220 million in 1982), and then started a cell phone company called Metro Mobile in the 1980s, which yielded him a $2.6 billion windfall when he unloaded the venture in 1992. So it comes as little surprise that Adam plays a mean game of polo, collects vintage Rolexes, and possesses one of the finest collections of modern art in the city. When he isn't hanging priceless works on the wall and raising his paddle at contemporary art auctions, his nominal day job involves operating one of his dad's companies, a chain of Spanish language radio stations in Florida. He's also the primary backer of IKEPOD, a line of timepieces designed by Marc Newson that retail for $50,000 and up.

Of note

Lindemann has been a major player on the contemporary art scene for a number of years now. His collection includes works by Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Julian Schnabel, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Takashi Murakami, and Damien Hirst. (He paid $2 million for Hirst's The Sleep of Reason in 2004.) His most prized piece, though, is no longer in his collection. In 2005, he purchased Jeff Koons' Hanging Heart for $4 million from Larry Gagosian before putting the piece on the auction block less than two years later, selling it at Sotheby's for a record $23 million. And just who purchased the 3,500-pound, stainless steel heart? Larry Gagosian, amid reports he was furious at Lindemann for flipping the piece so soon after purchasing it.

In print

In 2006, Taschen published his Collecting Contemporary, a book of advice from art collectors, dealers, and curators.

Personal

Lindemann married his second wife, Amalia Dayan, in 2006. She's the granddaughter of the late Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan and a downtown gallerist who once worked with Larry Gagosian. He married his first wife, Elizabeth Graham, in 1989; the couple had three daughters—Helen, Charlotte, and Frances—before their marriage started to unravel in 2003 when it was rumored Lindemann has left her for Dayan. The couple later reconciled before splitting up for good in 2005.

Habitat

Lindemann and Dayan live in an art-filled apartment in the Time Warner Center, just a few floors away from fellow art enthusiast Tobias Meyer. But they'll be moving soon: British architect David Adjaye is now renovating Lindemann's carriage house on East 77th Street, which he briefly put on the market in 2006 for $14 million. Lindemann also has a weekend home in the Catskills (which he transformed into a faux Tudor home thanks to the work of artist Richard Woods) and a home in Montauk that he purchased in 2008 for $21 million.

Family ties

Adam's brother, George Jr., was sent to prison for his role in a caper that involved killing a show horse in order to collect $250,000 insurance money. His sister is Sloan Lindemann Barnett, who is married to Roger Barnett, the chairman of Shaklee Corp.

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