Freeman’s in Philadelphia Scores with $4.9m Dorrance Hamilton Collection: The lead lot, Paul Cézanne’s La Vie des Champs made $1.45m or nearly a third of sale’s total:
- Freeman’s April 29 auction of The Collection of Dorrance ‘Dodo’ H. Hamilton was a resounding success with 99% of the works sold, and six auction records. Freeman’s first-floor gallery was standing room only; the sale drew international interest from collectors who competed in the room, on the phone and over the internet for works, with many of the lots doubling and tripling their estimates. Of the 139 lots offe red, 84% sold at or above the estimate. The auction lasted nearly four hours and totaled $4.9 million, including buyer’s premium. …
The Financial Services Business Is Now the Humanities Business: Forbes talked to Sherry Paul, wealth advisor at UBS, about how the firm’s art collection is a tool for their advisors:
- “The artwork is valuable because it allows us to step into a different conversation than we might have had, had we walked into a room with blank walls. There’s nothing planned about how someone may respond to a piece of art. The compulsive reaction is revealing, and it connects you to people in a very unique and special and intimate and even vulnerable way. […] I think the financial services business is now the humanities business. The most valuable skill set we bring to the table as private wealth advisors is a sense of emotional intelligence. ” …
Kenny Schachter Makes a Very Good Point About Art Fairs: It’s a little embarrassing to take anything Jerry Saltz says very seriously but it’s a good thing Kenny Schachter did in his defense of art fairs because Schachter brings up an excellent point about what one sees in the booths at the vast majority of fairs. Namely, because of the cost of attending and the type of clients who will be there, dealers don’t bring their very best work art fairs. They bring work that will sell and know that the best work can be sold from the gallery itself to either their customer base or a new client they meet at a fair. A walk around most fairs will confirm what Schachter says here in response to Jerry Saltz’s jeremiad:
- “Like America, [fairs] also benefit those at the very top more than anyone else, and this gap is only growing… This art-fair industrial complex makes it next to impossible for any medium/small gallery to take a chance on bringing unknown or lower-priced artists to art fairs without risking major financial losses.” But Frieze was chockablock with just such art that was new to me, priced (relatively) cheaply, and appeared to be selling, some of it at a fast clip. …
Bonus Swipe: The one fair that galleries do bring their best work to, if they are lucky enough to be included, is Art Basel (in Basel.) That doesn’t stop Schachter from taking a poke at Art Basel’s global director, Marc Spiegler whom he quotes as saying, “Fairs drive people to galleries and rejuvenate the collector base. If they didn’t exist, gallery attendance wouldn’t get any better, and the auctions would just pick up the slack.”
- Kenny’s response: “Yeah, right. Ignoring such nonsense, I’ll just say that, if not for the pull of fairs, I would not have visited loads of galleries worldwide.” …
Hubert Neumann Doesn’t Get His Injunction: A judge is allowing the Basquiat sale at Sotheby’s to continue.
