Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

  • AMMpro
  • AMM Fantasy Collecting Game
  • Podcast
  • Contact Us

The Art Swaps Market

December 2, 2009 by Marion Maneker

Daniel Grant, in the Maine Antique Digest, discusses the ways dealers and museums trade works to meet each other’s needs. Grant talks to Paula Cooper and Lucy Mitchell-Innes among other dealers:

Then there are swaps: you give me that painting from the collection, and I’ll give you this one that I own. Swaps don’t happen often, but they do take place. One swap that took place within the past year involved the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, which acquired an assemblage/painting by folk artist William Hawkins (All About Eve, circa 1989) through part gift, part purchase (“five figures,” according to David Brenneman, the museum’s director of collections and exhibitions), and part trade with New York City gallery owners Frank Maresca and Roger Ricco.

The Ricco-Maresca Gallery represents the Hawkins estate. All About Eve (84″ x 48″ x 12″) is “one of Hawkins’s major pieces,” Frank Maresca said, and would have been priced at $100,000, if selling the work had been uppermost in the dealers’ minds. “We very much wanted this painting to end up at a major museum, and the High was high on our list.” Because of the painting’s cost and the fact that “budgets are tight at museums these days,” Maresca noted, the gallery “figured out a way to make it happen. We made a sizable chunk of it a gift and got paid in part with a smaller Hawkins in the museum’s collection.”

The Art of Trade (Maine Antique Digest)

More from Art Market Monitor

  • Hirst's Top 5 Art MomentsHirst's Top 5 Art Moments
  • Smaller Galleries in New York on the EdgeSmaller Galleries in New York on the Edge
  • Robert WebeckRobert Webeck
  • Wealthy Detroit Area Resident Offers $5m to Secure DIA Art, Says Others Will Follow SuitWealthy Detroit Area Resident Offers $5m to Secure DIA Art, Says Others Will Follow Suit
  • The Season of Seventies de KooningsThe Season of Seventies de Koonings
  • If Auction Houses Are Like Banks, Which Ones Are They Like?If Auction Houses Are Like Banks, Which Ones Are They Like?

Filed Under: General

About Marion Maneker

Want to get Art Market Monitor‘s posts sent to you in our email? Sign up below by clicking on the Subscribe button.

Top Posts

  • Keith Haring’s 1989 Retrospect Comes to Sotheby’s London Prints Sale
  • Roy Lichtenstein’s Top Ten Auction Prices
  • Tony Podesta's Secret Art Buying
  • David Hockney's $20m Pacific Coast Highway & Santa Monica
  • Norman Rockwell's Not Gay. But Is He a Great Artist?
  • How to Chant Like an Auctioneer
  • Four of Picasso's Women Valued at $28m Come to Christie's from Rose-Walters Collection
  • Christie's Announces $70m Picasso Self Portrait
  • Basquiat's Last Girlfriend
  • Mark Rothko, Tamara de Lempicka, Mickalene Thomas to Star in Phillips London Evening Sale
  • About Us/ Contact
  • Podcast
  • AMMpro
  • Newsletter
  • FAQ

twitterfacebooksoundcloud
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
California Privacy Rights
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Advertise on Art Market Monitor