Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

Art Capital Group Expects 150% Rise in Loans

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Kelly Crow reveals the growing size of the art loan market in the Wall Street Journal:

Art Capital Group expects to dole out as much as $300 million worth of new art-backed loans this year, up from $120 million last year and $60 million five years ago. Citi Private Bank said its top clients also increased their borrowing against their collections to as much as $100 million last year, up from a typical maximum loan of $20 million a decade earlier.

The Art World’s Gordon Gekko (Wall Street Journal)

Executioner's Song: Leibovitz's Woes Continue

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Things are bad when you let Lawrence Schiller into your life. Just ask O.J. Simpson. Now Annie Leibovitz has Schiller hanging around, lending a hand marketing her “master set” of prints. The New York Times‘s Allen Salkin explains:

Through James Danziger, a gallery owner who had represented Ms. Leibovitz from 1990 to 2000, she has begun selling a limited-edition “Master Set” of 157 of her photographs. Only 10 sets are planned, and they are being offered for up to $3.5 million a set, although the prepublication price is lower, said Mr. Danziger in a phone interview from Miami. […] Lawrence Schiller, a writer, publisher and television producer who helped produce Ms. Leibovitz’s first book of photography in 1974, is also helping to market the master sets. He said three had already been sold. Mr. Schiller would not reveal what buyers paid, but said some of the prepublication sets were being offered for $2.5 million. Mr. Schiller said he had been helping Ms. Leibovitz take stock of her archives to determine how to use it to pay her debts, but in a measured fashion that would not suggest desperation.

Worse than having Schiller involved is the financial advice Leibovitz is receiving. The resolution of her deadline with Art Capital seems to have come at great cost by adding more debt to the already substantial pile:Continue Reading

Art Capital Group Negotiates with Goldman Sachs Through Bloomberg

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Katya Kazakina follows up on Andrew Goldman’s revelations in New York that Goldman Sachs wants out of its portion of the Annie Leibovitz loan that Art Capital Group holds. The Bloomberg reporter has ACG spokesman Montieth Illingworth on the record laying out terms for the deep-pocketed firm

“If Goldman Sachs wishes to purchase our interests in this loan, we invite a bid and wish them well in their future relationship with this borrower,” said Illingworth.Continue Reading

Aggressive Art Capital Group

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There don’t seem to be many heroes or innocent victim’s in the L’Affaire Leibovitz. New York Magazine story catalogues Art Capital Group’s own troubles with its hair-trigger legal strategy. In this case, the publicity involved seems to have spooked Goldman Sachs, the backer of the ACG’s loans:

Art Capital has treated borrowers aggressively in the past. In 2003, the company loaned $1.5 million to a wealthy young widow named Melanie Gill—who had inherited a large collection of museum-quality furniture—so she could buy a hotel and spa in New Orleans. After Gill missed one interest payment, Art Capital consigned her antiques to Christie’s and foreclosed on and sold her apartment. […]Continue Reading

NPR on Leibovitz Finance Troubles

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[intro]“She has risked something worth quite a lot of money–her entire artistic legacy–in order to get a loan.”[/intro]

A couple of days ago, NPR waded into the Annie Leibovitz financial car wreck with this story using the New York Times’s Allen Salkin as the expert and voice of the story. Salkin says the expenses of running her studio “seems to have run out of control.”

NPR on Leibovitz

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