Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

Library Loses in Interest in Hassam Sale

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A town in Erie, Pennsylvania has a Childe Hassam painting in its local library. When the work was appraised at $5 million, folks were itching to sell. But a funny thing happened on the way to a de-accessioning:

Insiders now doubt that number. A comparable Hassam recently sold for just $700,000. Another was pulled from auction when the bidding stalled at $300,000.

“The early estimates of its value appear to be exaggerated,” said William Garvey, the president of the Jefferson Educational Society. He heads the library study group, which was formed by Erie County Executive Barry Grossman. The group has met twice. Members already have dismissed talk of selling the art, Garvey said.

“The collection does have substantial value,” he said. “But I don’t know that it’s high enough at this point to warrant a sale.”

Group not likely to recommend sale of Erie library paintings (Go Erie)

 

Ohio College Makes $1.4m from Storage

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The Cleveland Plain-Dealer reports on the local liberal arts college that decided to sell paintings and prints held in storage as much for the sake of the works of art and ended up making $1.4 million:

“We were one sewer backup from having the collection destroyed,” said spokesman George Richard. “It would be irresponsible for us to do not do something.”

The items — including a Roy Lichtenstein lithograph and works by James A.M. Whistler — were donated to the college by numerous benefactors decades ago, but few people saw them, officials said.

“They were quality pieces, but we had trouble preserving and maintaining them,” said Richard. “We had obligations to protect it.”

The college consigned the pieces to the Rachel Davis Fine Arts in Cleveland. “The Popcorn Man,” a 1930 oil painting by Clevelander Carl Gaertner, sold in 2009 for $230,690, including the buyer’s premium, according to the Maine Antique Digest, which reported on the auctions.

A two-day auction last March of prints and drawings, including “Crying Girl,” a 1963 Lichtenstein lithograph that sold for $30,680, brought in a total of $1.23 million, the digest reported.

All told, 1,761 items were sold by the gallery between August 2009 and July 2010, Richard said.

Baldwin-Wallace College nets $1.4 million from auction of art collection (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

National Academy Museum Out of the Penalty Box . . . Sort Of

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The New York Times, which has an odd obsession with the State legislature’s attempts to make law out of the Association of Art Museum Director’s sanctions against selling works for operating expenses, announces that the National Academy Museum is now only on double secret probation after having sold some paintings for the banned purpose:

On Oct. 4 the association’s board voted unanimously to suspend its sanctions in recognition of the academy’s actions over the last 20 months toward better financial planning and management.

“We’ve decided the National Academy has put all the steps in place that we wanted to see for it to be a healthy organization that would not contemplate deaccessioning for operating purposes in the future,” said Kaywin Feldman, president of the Association of Art Museum Directors and president of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.Continue Reading

Museum Quality on the Cheap

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The New York Times features Paul Dean and his entire collection of deaccessioned museum works that often come at a surprising bargain:

For Mr. Dean and other collectors, however, a museum’s decision to sell off an item is an opportunity to acquire a stamp of quality as well as a certain aura. “By buying stuff that’s deaccessioned,” he said, “at least you get a feeling for what has been deemed acceptable by curators over the years.” Noting that there was only so much storage space in museums, he said, “I bought one painting by a very well-known New Haven painter just because it was too big for the museum.” Continue Reading

The Case for the Deaccessioning Hardline

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The Tate is throwing its weight around a little bit in the case of the city of Southampton’s desire to deaccession some works from its collections to fund a Titanic museum for tourism, according to the Guardian. Meanwhile, Jonathan Jones takes a hard line on all deaccessioning. Here’s the other side of the coin from some of the more celebrated American cases were art sales were used to save institutions:

The council plans to sell off works from the excellent collection of Southampton City Art Gallery. This has some surprising gems, including a picture by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the surreal Renaissance master who composed faces of fruit and vegetables. But it also has a policy of buying modern art, including paintings by Bridget Riley and Chris Ofili. It displays its collection of about 3,500 works in rotation, and uses it to create imaginative exhibitions that mingle past and present. I have seen some outstanding shows here, including I Love Melancholy, an exhibition that juxtaposed Renaissance, Romantic and contemporary art.

It seems to be the collection’s very liveliness that has opened it to attack. First the Riley acquisition was pilloried in the city newspaper; now the council has decided the collection is fair game. Continue Reading

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