You can now buy WeWork exec Miguel McKelvey's luxury townhouse for $21 million - but the erotic, rainbow-print art in the dining room isn't included
- WeWork cofounder Miguel McKelvey is selling his three-floor NYC townhouse for $21 million, The New York Post reported.
- A Twitter user spotted that the listing includes a photo of two erotic pieces of artwork on the dining room wall, made by artist John Giorno.
- Although it's unclear whether this is McKelvey's art, the listing agent confirmed to Business Insider that all the furniture and artwork featured in the pictures is "as it was" when the owner lived there.
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WeWork cofounder Miguel McKelvey's NYC townhouse is on the market, but the apartment's heated floors and $21 million pricetag aren't the most outlandish features of the listing.
McKelvey's three-floor apartment near Manhattan's Washington Square Park was recently listed for $21 million, as the New York Post first reported. It didn't take long for people to discover additional photos of the apartment, including one photo that shows two pieces of eye-catching artwork on the wall that are colorful in more ways than one.
In bold white text, one of the rainbow-print pieces proclaims, "We gave a party for the gods and the gods all came," while the other makes an even more explicitly sexual statement. We'll let you see it for yourself:
McKelvey, who's worth an estimated $900 million, reportedly purchased the townhouse for $12 million in 2015. McKelvey remains WeWork's chief culture officer, even after the coworking space company's IPO failed spectacularly and cofounder Adam Neumann was ousted as CEO.
It's not clear whether these pieces of art belong to McKelvey, or whether McKelvey had rented out the place to someone else. The apartment's listing agent, Douglas Elliman's Clinton Stowe, confirmed to Business Insider that all the furniture and artwork in the photos is as it was when the owner lived there. Stowe confirmed that the furnishings and artwork are not being sold with the house.
WeWork did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the artwork.
The two pieces of art are by artist John Giorno, a gay New York native revered for his brightly colored pieces featuring words of explicit poetry. Giorno died of a heart attack in October 2019 at 82 years old.
Giorno's artwork is known for featuring phrases like "suicides are songs of aspiration," and "prefer crying in a limo to laughing on a bus." Giorno is also credited as the inventor behind Dial-A-Poem, a service started in 1968 where people could call in to hear poems that were often based in sexual imagery or political activism.
Other pieces by Giorno, which are similar in appearance to the two pieces in McKelvey's home, are available for purchase online for various prices, ranging from €1,200 to €2,500 each (about $1,340 to $2,793).
