Art Collector Spotlight: Flag Luxury Group Co-founder Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos

I’m looking into real estate developer and art collector Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos after attending her Business of Art Women’s Power Breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad, which brought together a panel of art world leaders that included public art leader Yvonne Force, gallerist Nicola Vassell, art advisor Jeanne Greenberg and Marlies Verhoeven Reijtenbagh, co-founder and CEO of The Cultivist. As I scan the search results, this sentence catches my eye: “Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos is used to being the only woman in the room.” As it turns out, it was the lede in a profile written earlier this year by Chava Gourarie for our sister publication, Commercial Observer. (Olarte de Kanavos was honored on this year’s Commercial Observer Power List.)

The irony, of course, is that while the Flag Luxury Group co-founder, president and COO has no doubt often been the sole woman at the table many, many times, she’s also currently actively engaged in creating spaces in which there are only women in the room. Her Women’s Power Series, which she launched with her daughter, Sophia Kanavos, invites women from across industries to come together and learn from each other as a way to empower ambitious women and narrow gender gaps.

Initially inspired by International Women’s Day (March 8, for those out of the loop), the pair had accessibility on their minds. “We noticed that there were not that many women participating in these huge business conferences that can be extraordinarily expensive to get to and attend, and some are hyper-exclusive or by invitation only, so you have to be at a certain level in your industry to even get in,” Olarte de Kanavos tells me. “There really seemed to be a need for a women’s business conference that would be accessible to all.”

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Accessible regardless, she emphasized, of what level you’re at or what business you’re in and whether you’re just now considering starting a business or you’re currently home with kids but ready to jump back into the workforce or you’re in the thick of doing it all. “Even if you have a two-income household, a lot of the family coordination and what happens after work still falls onto the shoulders of women,” she says, alluding to the roadblocks a woman might face just trying to figure out the logistics of getting away for a multi-day conference. A single-day Power Breakfast series, with a sliding scale of ticket prices, seemed like an ideal solution, and more than 450 women attended the first multi-panel event in Miami at the Ritz-Carlton, South Beach.

Those that followed were similarly well attended, and bringing the Women’s Power Series to more cities was the natural next step. New York’s smaller late-summer Business of Art event both was and wasn’t a test case for bringing the already-successful series to the city, following a proven formula but breaking new ground by focusing on art world leaders. Yvonne Force, one of Olarte de Kanavos’ frequent collaborators and the eye behind the art collections at the Ritz Carlton, South Beach and the Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad, helped her curate the panel.

“She and I talked about what we’d done in the past and how the people on the various panels had interacted, and then we thought, rather than having all gallerists, let’s look at women doing different things in the art business,” Olarte de Kanavos says.

The audience was eclectic and not overwhelmingly artsy—mingling pre-panel, I chatted with women in media and luxury goods, women who introduced themselves as entrepreneurs and hospitality professionals. There were also gallery owners, art advisors, artists and people looking to break into the art world in attendance, which Olarte de Kanavos sees as a big win for both the Women’s Power Breakfast series and for women.

“Women who own their own galleries came; art advisors came. They didn’t think, oh, those panelists are my competitors or ‘Why didn’t I get invited?’ They came to be part of the conversation and for support and to lift up other women in the arts.”

But why art? In an interview with The Cultivist (of which she’s an ethusiastic member), Olarte de Kanavos said she discussed integrating her professional and personal interests to create a symbiotic relationship between the two. It doesn’t take long to find examples of this in action. She’s been collecting art since she was about 25 years old, and she’s a fixture of the New York and Miami gallery scenes. The curated collection at the Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad includes works by artists including Ross Bleckner, Donald Baechler, Pat Steir, Johan Creten and Janaina Tschäpe. Ritz-Carlton, South Beach is a sponsor of this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach and is leading Miami Art Week initiatives like “Women in the Spotlight,” with work by Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya.

Meanwhile, Olarte de Kanavos’ own art collection includes works by Marilyn Minter, David Salle, Wilfredo Lam, Armando Morales, George Condo and Robert Rauschenberg, among many others. Her very first piece was a commissioned work by Victor Matthews, who she still collects. “When you really love something, you’re always going to love it,” she explains of her collecting philosophy. At galleries, auctions and art fairs, she looks for works that feel authentic, and she feels drawn to the work of a lot of Latin American artists. As is common, her collection is primarily made up of oil canvases (mostly contemporary but some Old Masters) with a little bit of fine art photography mixed in and a few sculptures—she tells me she’d like more.

At this point, our conversation returns to the art of the hotels. She’s quick to tell me the art in the rooms and public spaces of the Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad isn’t a reflection of her own tastes but rather of her vision for the property, which is attracting younger and younger audiences. “If you’re visiting New York, you want to feel the essence of New York, so I wanted New York artists to be represented in the hotel,” she says. That doesn’t mean there’s no overlap between what’s there and what’s in her personal collection—or that she doesn’t find herself inspired by the hotels’ artwork. “Sometimes, when I don’t have those artists in my collection, I end up buying them after learning more about them and seeing them installed.”

That symbiosis is, she says, one of the highlights of her job. “I love spending time with creative people,” she concludes. “I feel like it makes me better at what I do, being able to have that time with artists and with collaborators like Yvonne and Jeanne. They’re just so inspirational and exciting to be around, and I’m always learning.”