Ukraine is about to get a new contemporary art center. Victor Pinchuk is shooting to make Kiev a major art destination, so the wealthy art collector is creating a new center that will be larger than the existing PinchukArtCentre, which was the first private contemporary art center in the former Soviet Union and has had more than 830,000 visitors since its doors swung open in 2006.

Pinchuk, a steel billionaire, is an avid collector, with pieces by Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and Andreas Gursky. His new endeavor, he tells Bloomberg News, "will make Kiev and Ukraine a fantastic place for contemporary art." Pinchuk made the proclamation at a show for 20 Ukrainian artists who were nominated for the first Pinchuk Art Center Prize, which comes with a cash component of $12,200 and a one-month internship with an artist from the international scene. Hirst himself will announce the winner on December 4, 2009.

Pinchuk has a strong relationship with the artist celebrity and owns "probably half" of the skull paintings (by the collector's own estimation) in the current Hirst show at the Wallace Collection in London. He also participated in Hirst's solo auction in September 2008 but wouldn't tell what he bought.

At guerilla artist Banksy's Los Angeles show this week, Angelina Jolie spent nearly $400,000 on three pieces. One painting, called Picnic, shows a "white family of four lunching under an umbrella while 15 starving Africans look on," and another is a portrait of a man who was hit in the head with a pie. The last item was a "bullet-ridden bust." Picnic alone cost $226,000, while the other two pieces sold for $75,000 each.

You can see a photo of Picnic on Flickr, as well as more photos from the exhibition.