Who

The daughter of disgraced financier Ivan Boesky, Marianne represents a slew of emerging artists at the gallery that bears her name.

Backstory

Boesky was exposed to fine art from a very early age: She was raised on a lavish 200-acre Bedford estate, where works by Monet, Degas, and Giacommetti hung on the walls. But her charmed life was shattered when she was a 19-year-old sophomore at Duke: Her financier father, Ivan Boesky, was sent to prison for insider trading and her parents divorced. After transferring to Middlebury, losing herself in Asia, and trying out law school, Boesky turned to art, opening her gallery in 1996. She's since used the venue to launch the careers of artists from Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami to bad-girl painter Lisa Yuskavage.

Of note

Yuskavage was Boesky's first client, and the two worked together for nearly a decade before the artist defected to rival David Zwirner in 2005, a crushing break-up that left Boesky "catatonic for two weeks." (A few months after the split, Boesky auctioned off a Yuskavage painting that had previously adorned her living room, for more than $1 million.) Boesky also made—and then lost—Takashi Murakami, whom she took on when he was a relative unknown, long before he'd stamped his work on Louis Vuitton bags all over the world. (He's now repped by Larry Gagosian.)

Boesky still maintains an impressive stable of talent, however—she reps Rachel Feinstein, Mary Ellen Mark, Yoshitomo Nara, Donald Moffett, and filmmaker (and occasional artist) John Waters. And she's capitalized on her connections to sell to Wall Street bigwigs like Steve Cohen, Adam Sender, and David Ganek. She's also in comfortable new digs these days. Boesky recently moved to a gallery space on 24th Street, the Chelsea art scene's power block, from nearby quarters on 22nd Street. She started from scratch: She bought the site when it was a parking lot and hired noted architect Deborah Berke to design the structure from the ground up.

Personal

Marianne's husband is Liam Culman, a Wall Street trader whom she's cheerfully described as a "total philistine." They have one daughter, Ellie, and live in an apartment above Boesky's new gallery; the home features pieces from Boesky's vast personal art collection, including works by Daniel Buren, Yoshitomo Nara, Robert Gober, and Damien Hirst.