Biography

Overview

With over 35 years of expertise across Europe and the United States, Akim Monet specializes in museum-quality works by Auguste Rodin, modern masters, and conceptually significant contemporary art. His practice integrates deep art-historical scholarship with a distinctive curatorial vision, guiding collectors toward acquisitions that carry intellectual weight and enduring value.

Training and Foundation

Born into art in 1968, Akim's earliest visual memory is of an important Yves Klein painting California set against Egyptian and Greek antiquities in a Swiss mountain home near Gstaad. After earning a BA in Comparative Literature and Art History from Cornell University, he began his curatorial career at age 22, privately mounting nearly 30 exhibitions beginning with La poésie de l'objet—from Duchamp to Steinbach.

His formative years included work with legendary Picasso dealer Jan Krugier, where he learned that great art dealing is not solely about transactions —it is about transmission. There he developed an eye for the cosmological weight inside objects: the ability to see not just aesthetic value, but meaning, lineage, and cultural significance.

Berlin and International Recognition

In 2011, Akim founded Side by Side Gallery Akim Monet in Berlin, which the Welt am Sonntag hailed as "the latest and most spectacular addition to the Berlin gallery scene." Over seven years, he presented a critically acclaimed program exploring transformation, mythology, and the human condition through works by Rodin, Kirchner, Grosz, Bourgeois, Emin, and others.

His 2017 exhibition Mythology & Science marked a conceptual breakthrough, revealing how ancient myths are becoming technologically real —an insight that continues to inform his curatorial practice today.

Rodin Expertise and Museum Partnerships

Akim has maintained a close partnership with the Musée Rodin for over a decade, specializing in Les Inédits —the plaster models bequeathed by Rodin to the French State in 1916, many of which have only recently been cast in bronze for the first time.

His deep knowledge of Rodin's practice, combined with direct access to the estate and museum archives, positions him as one of the leading authorities on Rodin sculpture for serious collectors and institutions.

Current Practice

Now based in Dallas, Akim operates Akim Monet Fine Arts with a global reach spanning New York, Miami, London, Paris, Switzerland, Italy, and Asia. He works with high-net-worth collectors, museum patrons, and institutions seeking museum-quality works, curatorial guidance, and meaning-driven advisory.

His services include

• Rodin acquisitions: Estate-level access to bronzes, drawings, and rare editions
• Modern and contemporary consignments: Historically significant and conceptually rigorous works
• Curatorial advisory: Collection development guided by intellectual coherence, not decoration
• Authentication and provenance: Museum-level scholarship and documentation

Philosophy

Akim's approach to collecting is distinctive: he believes art is not merely decoration, but rather a means of orientation. Every object he places carries meaning, context, and a place within a larger cosmology. His clients acquire not just artworks, but entry into frameworks of understanding that elevate their collections beyond market trends.

Through Akim Monet Fine Arts and his research platform IntuitionX, he continues to explore the intersection of art, consciousness, and transformation, guiding collectors across the threshold of the immaterial age.

In parallel, Akim maintains an active photographic practice exploring perception, time, and the architecture of attention.