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

  • Phillips London Evening = £14.66m ($17.9m)Phillips London Evening = £14.66m ($17.9m)
  • The Judgment of St. FrancisThe Judgment of St. Francis
  • How the Press Saw Sotheby’s Q2 2017 EarningsHow the Press Saw Sotheby’s Q2 2017 Earnings
  • Tweets from Sotheby’s NY Contemporary Evening SaleTweets from Sotheby’s NY Contemporary Evening Sale
  • The Auction Before the Auction Has Already Yielded $680m This SeasonThe Auction Before the Auction Has Already Yielded $680m This Season
  • Wm. Merritt Chase Portrait Returns to Montclair MuseumWm. Merritt Chase Portrait Returns to Montclair Museum

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

  • A Season of Improvisation: Fall 2020 New York Modern and Contemporary Art Auction Analysis
  • Keith Haring’s 1989 Retrospect Comes to Sotheby’s London Prints Sale
  • Tony Podesta's Secret Art Buying
  • Four of Picasso's Women Valued at $28m Come to Christie's from Rose-Walters Collection
  • Norman Rockwell's Not Gay. But Is He a Great Artist?
  • Login
  • Roy Lichtenstein’s Top Ten Auction Prices
  • Tracey Emin Neon Lights Up Sotheby's 'Contemporary Showcase' Pop-Up
  • Re-discovered John Constable Painting at Sotheby's in December
  • Selection Bias In Art Is What Creates Value
  • 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