Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

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

Senator Orrin Hatch Has Been Looking at Private Museums

January 24, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Update: As several readers have pointed out, this story is from January, 2017. As yet, there is still no information on a response from the IRS on Senator Hatch’s concerns.

Michael Schnayerson’s Town & Country story on private art museums focuses on Mitchell and Emily Rales’s Glenstone but the story covers a lot of other ground. Most notably, Schnayerson points out that Senator Orrin Hatch has begun to look at the 43 private art museums in the United States:

Private museums get whopping tax breaks, which gives a taxpayer the right to ask: Is this a fair exchange? The U.S. Senate Finance Committee, under chairman Orrin Hatch, wondered the same thing. Last summer it concluded an investigation of 11 private museums, including Glenstone. The senator’s staffers seem more perplexed than when they started. […]

As for Hatch, he has passed along his findings to the IRS commissioner, clearly less than reassured. “Tax-exempt private museums have a duty to provide a benefit for not just their benefactors and the well connected but the public as a whole,” he tells Town & Country. Without naming which ones, he adds that some of the 11 museums he investigated “appear to have the ability to exploit gray areas of the tax code to overly benefit their founders.”

Inside the Private Museums of Billionaire Art Collectors (Town & Country)

More from Art Market Monitor

  • Art Chennai: India's Southern SummitArt Chennai: India's Southern Summit
  • Beneath the Big Names in American Art Lurk Extraordinary BargainsBeneath the Big Names in American Art Lurk Extraordinary Bargains
  • Protesters Target Sotheby’s Mid-Season SaleProtesters Target Sotheby’s Mid-Season Sale
  • Vernissage TV: Dubuffet at Fondation BeyelerVernissage TV: Dubuffet at Fondation Beyeler
  • Houston, We Have ProblemHouston, We Have Problem
  • Christie’s to Offer $25m Clyfford Still in MayChristie’s to Offer $25m Clyfford Still in May

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

  • After Pandemic’s Rapid Change, Sotheby’s Has 8 Predictions for 2021
  • A Season of Improvisation: Fall 2020 New York Modern and Contemporary Art Auction Analysis
  • Tony Podesta's Secret Art Buying
  • Keith Haring’s 1989 Retrospect Comes to Sotheby’s London Prints Sale
  • 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?
  • Roy Lichtenstein’s Top Ten Auction Prices
  • Basquiat's Last Girlfriend
  • How to Chant Like an Auctioneer
  • Phillips Includes $2.5m Norman Rockwell Painting in November 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