Colin Gleadell announces that the Artist Pension Trust is opening half of its holdings to sales. APT is a cross between an art fund and a 401(k) for artists who donate their work in the hopes that future gains will provide retirement savings (presumably with similar tax benefits.) The works will be offered privately, not at auction, which raises the question of whether the artists—individually and collectively—will see the greatest benefit.
Adam Cvijanovic (whose work from APT is pictured above) has had work sell at auction for $40,000.
The Artist Pension Trust, the largest contemporary art collection in the world with over 10,000 works by 1,600 artists from 75 different countries and worth an estimated 100 million dollars plus, is seeking to sell about 5,000 works starting this autumn. The collection began 10 years ago when artists were invited to donate works to the Trust as a form of pension investment. No sales have been made to date, but the terms have always been that 40 per cent will go the artist, 32 per cent into a general pool for all the other artists, and the remainder will go towards managing the trust and the artworks in its care.
