Francis Bennett Creative

In the Beginning…

 On a bright April morning in 1979, the legendary founder and chairman of the newly minted conglomerate, City Investing, walked into that year’s first strategic planning session and declared, “The only permanent element in our business is change.”  We all just sat there and waited for him to continue. He didn’t. He got up and left the room. 

The Martin Luther King housing projects in Harlem are less than a mile from the wealthiest zip code in America. The apartments along Fifth Avenue facing Central Park from 59th to 89th street sell for $3 million to $30 million. Agnes Gund, a banking heiress and president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, lives in one of those apartments. Agnes is a renowned collector of modern art who recently surprised the art world by selling the Roy Lichtenstein masterpiece that long hung over the mantle in her Manhattan apartment for $162 million, one of the 15 highest prices ever paid for artwork. She then further shocked the nonprofit world by donating $100 million from the sale to create the Art for Justice Fund, which on its website calls itself a movement to end mass incarceration.