Pompous art collector and general Art Basel-eschewer, Adam Lindemann is the husband of equally grating gallerist Amalia Dayan.

Adam is the son of billionaire George Lindemann, the entrepreneur who invented the soft contact lens in 1971 (he sold the patent for $60 million), founded a cable company (which he sold for $220 million in 1982), and then started a cell phone company called Metro Mobile in the 1980s, which yielded him a $2.6 billion windfall when he unloaded the venture in 1992. So it comes as little surprise that Adam plays a mean game of polo, collects vintage Rolexes, and possesses one of the finest collections of modern art in the city. When he isn't hanging priceless works on the wall and raising his paddle at contemporary art auctions, his nominal day job involves operating one of his dad's companies, a chain of Spanish language radio stations in Florida. He's also the primary backer of IKEPOD, a line of timepieces designed by Marc Newson that retail for $50,000 and up.

Lindemann has been a major player on the contemporary art scene for a number of years now. His collection includes works by Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Julian Schnabel, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Takashi Murakami, and Damien Hirst. (He paid $2 million for Hirst's The Sleep of Reason in 2004.)In 2006, Taschen published his Collecting Contemporary, a book of advice from art collectors, dealers, and curators.

Lindemann married his second wife, Amalia Dayan, in 2006. She's the granddaughter of the late Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan and a downtown gallerist who once worked with Larry Gagosian. He married his first wife, Elizabeth Graham, in 1989; the couple had three daughters-Helen, Charlotte, and Frances-before their marriage started to unravel in 2003 after it was rumored Lindemann had left her for Dayan. The couple later reconciled before splitting up for good in 2005.

Lindemann and Dayan live on East 77th in a macabre seven-story townhouse designed by British architect David Adjaye, equal parts medieval torture museum and luxe family home. Lindemann also has a weekend home in the Catskills (which he transformed into a faux Tudor home thanks to the work of artist Richard Woods) and a home in Montauk that he purchased in 2008 for $21 million.

Adam's brother, George Jr., was sent to prison for his role in a caper that involved killing a show horse in order to collect $250,000 insurance money. His sister is Sloan Lindemann Barnett, who is married to Roger Barnett, the chairman of Shaklee Corp.

[Image via Getty]