ARTnews Taps Warhol Protégé Vincent Fremont as CEO

Fremont went to the "university of Andy Warhol."

Vincent Fremont.
Photo: Patrick McMullan.

A former employee at Andy Warhol’s Factory, who is also a Warhol Foundation co-founder and a documentary filmmaker, has been hired as CEO of ARTnews SA, the Polish-owned company that publishes ARTnews, Art in America, The Magazine Antiques, and Modern.

Vincent Fremont worked at Andy Warhol’s Factory for nearly two decades, starting when he arrived in New York from his native San Diego and until the artist’s death in 1987, serving for part of that time as the executive manager of the studio. As head of Warhol Enterprises, he produced video projects with the artist, including the shows Andy Warhol’s TV and Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes. He was the foundation’s sales agent for Warhol paintings, drawings and sculptures from 1991 to 2010.

After the artist’s death, he was a founding director of the Warhol Foundation. According to a representative of the foundation, Warhol’s will granted him that position, alongside the artist’s brother John Warhola and Fred Hughes, his business manager.

With his wife, Shelly Dunn, Fremont codirected and coproduced the documentary Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story, about the Warhol “superstar.” In the New York Times, Stephen Holden called the film “fascinating but somewhat repellent.”

Asked for more information on Fremont’s bio, a press representative sent the following from the man himself: “I have a high school education and went to the university of Andy Warhol.”

Fremont has his work cut out for him, running a company that owns several print publications in an era that has seen print publications struggle. ARTnews and Art in America merged this past summer, joining two century-old magazines and leaving Peter Brant, longtime Art in America owner, as the majority shareholder in the Polish company. (For the record, I worked at Art in America in various editorial capacities from 2004 to 2014.) Fifteen months prior,  longtime owners the Esterow family bought ARTnews.

A few months later, ARTnews went down from a monthly to a quarterly publishing schedule. The former CEO, Izabela Depczyk, whose father serves on the company’s advisory board, abruptly resigned last month.


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