If you’ve followed the often vitriolic debates over the relationship between museums and collectors, where many fret that collectors have used museums to burnish the value of their works for potential resale, then you’ll understand the riskiness of this quote from Helly Nahmad in Georgina Adam’s Financial Times column. Nahmad is discussing whether his family’s holdings — to be seen in a Swiss exhibition — are being shown to be sold:
As some of the works have already been seen in the firm’s New York and London galleries, I ask Nahmad if this is a non-selling show.
“This is not commercial, but the Swiss are very intelligent, they know that finally everything is for sale, at a price, even in American museums,” he answers, adding, “What few people realise is that we have a huge lending programme, at this moment we have 135 works of art from our collection on loan to various museum shows.”
The Art Market: Unseen Collections (Financial Times)
