Walter Robinson reminds the deaccessionists that some recent auction stars come from a German museum that is using the proceeds to shore up the museum’s finances, not fund new acquisitions:
The Swiss Hyperrealist Franz Gertsch, saw his Luciano I, 1976 — based on an oversized snapshot of the handsome young artist and transvestite performer Luciano Castelli after a long dinner, complete with a pile of cigarette butts in a dessert plate — sell for $2,398,145, double the presale high estimate. The painting, which had been a centerpiece of the artist’s recent traveling retrospective, was put on the block by the financially straitened Weserburg Museum für modern Kunst in Bremen, which had also sold Gerhard Richter’s The Sailors for $13.2 million last November, as well as a collection of photographs. According to the museum director,Carsten Ahrens, the sales are designed to secure the fiscal health of the institution (and certainly not earmarked for future acquisitions…)
Art Market Watch – London Contemporary Auctions (Artnet.com)
