When Marissa Mayer Isn't Saving Yahoo!, She's Collecting "Happy Art"

Her Vogue profile reveals a lot about her collecting preferences.

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Complex Original

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Yahoo! President and CEO Marissa Mayer is known for making power moves. Since joining the company in July 2012, she's bought Stamped, OnTheAir, Snip.it, Alike, Jybe, Summly, Astrid, MileWise, GoPollGo, Loki, and little company called Tumblr. She's made her employees' lives happier with free lunches and an extended parental leave policy. In short, she's dedicated to doing things big and keeping it positive.

That positivity extends to her art collection, chronicled by Vogue in their recent profile of Mayer, titled Yahoo's Marissa Mayer: Hail to the Chief. We aren't surprised that she collects work by Jeff Koons or Roy Lichtenstein, because pop art is cool, looks nice in pretty much any space, and it's a secure investment. We are surprised that she's defined her taste in art as "happy art," and that's not all.

Mayer's art is so happy that it's also nostalgic...and had to be forklifted into her backyard. She and her venture capitalist husband bought a 15-foot, red-and-white miniaturized model playhouse of Palo Alto’s Peninsula Creamery, where she used to get milkshakes during college at Stanford. BusinessInsider found the diner on Google Street View, so you can more fully imagine what it looks like by her predictably pristine lawn, which is "large enough to accommodate a skating rink for holiday parties." The diner is also kept company by another piece of "happy art" in the form of a three-foot-tall bronze frog.

The story somehow gets better. The walls of her dining room have the words PEPPERMINT, COLORS, PARIS, and ETRO, representing Mayer and her husband's "favorite things," which were printed on purple-and-gold marquees made for their wedding. 

The takeaway is this: "happy art" is a thing now (pick some up on Amazon's art store ASAP), and it's likely about to eclipse the trending "performance art" wave. It's also very possible that the key to massive success is surrounding yourself in nostalgia, happiness, and life-size mementos whenever and wherever possible. 

[via Vogue / BusinessInsider]

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