"Salzburg art stash 'more important than Munich" @BBC

Salzburg art stash 'more important than Munich'

Contemplative Woman by the German artist Fritz Maskos seized from Cornelius Gurlitts collection in Munich Contemplative Woman, by the German artist Fritz Maskos (1896-1967), was seized from Cornelius Gurlitt's collection in Munich

Paintings found at the Austrian home of art collector Cornelius Gurlitt are even more significant than those found at his Munich flat, his lawyer says.

Works by Renoir, Monet and other French impressionists are among the 60 or so pieces, Hannes Hartung told BBC News.

Last year it was revealed that hundreds of artworks had been kept at Mr Gurlitt's home in Munich, many believed to have been looted by the Nazis.

He denies the works were looted but Jewish groups want further details.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

A wonderful Seine scene by Pissarro, a wonderful bridge picture by Monet and a sailing boat sea scape by Manet”

End Quote Hannes Hartung Cornelius Gurlitt's lawyer, describing some of the newly found works

No decision has been taken yet about publishing photos of the newly found works and giving further details about them.

Jewish groups have called for a list of the works to be published, to assist identification of any works stolen or extorted from victims of Nazi persecution.

Mr Gurlitt, 81, is the son of the Nazi-approved art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, who died in 1956.

Hildebrand Gurlitt was described by the Claims Conference, a Holocaust restitution organisation, as "one of the four art dealers commissioned by Hitler to handle stolen art".

"Therefore the origins of his inheritance should be checked," it said in a statement.

'Many Renoirs'

The discovery of the pictures at Mr Gurlitt's Salzburg home was announced on Monday.

"They are very prominent works," said Mr Hartung.

Cornelius Gurlitts Salzburg home Cornelius Gurlitt's Salzburg home has been secured against potential break-in and theft, reports say

Nameplate on Cornelius Gurlitts Salzburg home file pic Mr Gurlitt's spokesman said initial assessment suggested the works had not been stolen

Two paintings previously unknown by German artist Otto Dix 5 November 2013 These previously unknown works by German artist Otto Dix were found in the Munich flat

"A wonderful Seine scene by Pissarro, a wonderful bridge picture by Monet and a sailing boat sea scape by Manet.

"Then there are also many other works by Renoir, and by Liebermann. They are in general artistically outstandingly good pieces, which are of more significance than the collection from Schwabing [a district of Munich]."

More than 1,400 long-lost or unknown art works, estimated to be worth $1.35bn (£846m; 989m euros), were discovered in Mr Gurlitt's apartment in Munich in March 2012.

They included pieces by Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Otto Dix.

Hildebrand Gurlitt c1925 Hildebrand Gurlitt was accused of working with the Nazis to acquire looted art

The cousin of Cornelius Gurlitt's father, Wolfgang Gurlitt, was also an art collector, who dealt with "degenerate art" during the Nazi era.

Wolfgang went to live in Austria during the war and gave his significant art collection to a museum in Linz.

The Linz Lentos museum has had to restitute a number of paintings from his collection in recent years as it was established they were stolen during the Nazi era.

In November, the director of the Linz museum said there were no indications of a connection between the two cousins but art historians are less certain, the BBC's Bethany Bell reports from Vienna.

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George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann "Christie's Pulls Auction of Joan Miró Art After Uproar" @wsj by Patricia Kowsmann

George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann "Christie's Pulls Auction of Joan Miró Art After Uproar" @wsj by Patricia Kowsmann

George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann "Christie's Pulls Auction of Joan Miró Art After Uproar" @wsj by Patricia Kowsmann

Portuguese railway workers block the rail track at the Santa Apolonia station in Lisbon on Tuesday during a protest against austerity measures. Zuma Press

Christie's has withdrawn 85 artworks by Spanish surrealist Joan Miró from its auctions in London this week, after an uproar in Portugal over the government's move to sell the works in an attempt to cut its debt.

The decision, announced on Tuesday just hours before the Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist evening sale, represents a blow to Portugal's coffers—as well as an embarrassment for one of the world's largest auction houses during the most important time of year for the London art market.

While the planned auction would shave off only a tiny fraction of Portugal's more than €200 billion in debt, the flap surrounding it underscores the challenges Europe's most fragile economies continue to face in curing debt hangovers.

Southern European countries have for the past two years slashed spending and raised taxes to lower their budget deficits and ease fears of debt defaults. Austerity drives that have cut social benefits have proven immensely unpopular, as have efforts to shed cultural assets, such as Greece's bid to sell islands, palaces and other icons. In the U.S., a similar outcry has erupted in Detroit as the bankrupt city sought a valuation on a collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Christie's withdrew the sale of art by Joan Miró, including 'Femmes et Oiseaux' from 1968, amid outcry over Portugal's plans. National News/Zuma Press

In Portugal, many have seen the government's move as disrespectful toward its art heritage, particularly because revenue from the sale would have been insignificant. A government official on Tuesday said that Portugal needed the money to balance its finances and would have to find it somewhere, if not from the sale.

The 85 Miró works, valued around $49 million in total, range in estimated value from $16,300 to $11.4 million. They became state property after a failing bank, Banco Português de Negócios, was nationalized in 2008.

After receiving a $105 billion international bailout in 2011, debt-stricken Portugal vowed to cut spending and sell assets. While the privatization of several state-owned companies went smoothly, though, the planned sale of the Miró works raised anger among Portuguese opposition parties and cultural institutions.

Last month, the main opposition Socialist Party took the issue to court, requesting the sale be suspended. The country's prosecutor's office agreed, and on Monday it requested a high court in Lisbon to cancel the consignment. Early Tuesday, the court ruled against the request but added that the actual transfer of the pieces to London wasn't done with proper authorization.

The art is currently being stored by Christie's in London, and Portugal has made no requests to have the works shipped back, according to a person familiar with the matter. Until now, the dealings between Christie's and Portuguese officials have been routine, and the court proceedings caught the house off guard, this person said.

"Christie's is clearly being more reasonable than the government itself," said Socialist lawmaker Inês de Medeiros.

Jorge Barreto Xavier, Portugal's state secretary of culture, said the government wasn't responsible for shipping the art, and it is unclear whether the works will be auctioned at Christie's next set of Impressionist and Modern sales, held in New York in May.

Christie's announced it was withdrawing the works only hours before its evening sale at its King Street rooms, which opened London's auction season.

"We received high, great interest in the Mirós so it is quite regrettable," said Christie's specialist Giovanna Bertazzoni after the truncated sale.

Christie's drew controversy last year for its role in the valuation of works at the Detroit Institute of Arts owned by the bankrupt city, including van Gogh's "Self Portrait" and Bruegel's "The Wedding Dance." The auction house estimated the value of the city-purchased portion of the world-class collection between $454 million and $867 million. But the valuation was criticized by some of the city's creditors who argued the process left out millions of dollars worth of other artwork at the institute.

The city under an emergency manager said all of the city's assets including its art could be sold to settle $18 billion in long-term obligations. But in recent weeks, private foundations and the state of Michigan have pledged over $800 million in an attempt to preserve the art in the museum and move control of the collection to a new nonprofit organization.

Most of the Mirós from Portugal were works on paper and would have been sold in Christie's less prestigious day sales throughout the week. But 24 works, including the major 1968 oil "Women and Birds," estimated at $6.5 million to $11.4 million, and 1953's gargantuan "Painting," valued at $4.1 million to $5.7 million, would have made up a sizable portion of Tuesday's sale.

"It certainly wasn't the most exceptional collection, but it was respectable. There were some nice paintings there," said David Nahmad, a multibillionaire dealer in town from Monaco for the sale.

Christie's evening auction on Tuesday totaled $288 million, inside its pre-sale estimate of $223 million to $324 million before the withdrawal of the Mirós. The Portuguese uproar is significant because a successful sale of the works by Miró, a major surrealist artist who heavily influenced Pablo Picasso, would have been a boon to Christie's department of surrealist art, which it has aggressively expanded in recent months.

"It's quite a blow for Christie's," said New York-based dealer David Nash before the sale.

The Miró collection, which BPN—the nationalized Portuguese bank—bought from a Japanese collector in 2006 for an undisclosed amount, was never shown in Portugal.

Opposition political parties and cultural entities hailed Christie's decision.

"The Portuguese people should have the right to keep and enjoy what is now theirs," said Pedro Lapa, art director of the Berardo Museum in Lisbon.

—Matthew Dolan contributed to this article.

Write to Mary M. Lane at mary.lane@wsj.com and Patricia Kowsmann at patricia.kowsmann@wsj.com

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George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "Homing In on a Couple’s Basquiat Drawings" @nytimes by CAROL VOGEL

George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "Homing In on a Couple’s Basquiat Drawings" @nytimes by CAROL VOGEL

                              
“Portrait of Herb and Lenore,” a 1983 acrylic on paper by Jean-Michel Basquiat depicting the couple who own it. Schorr Family Collection, Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/ADAGP, Paris — Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2014
 
Longtime collectors like Herbert and Lenore Schorr are luckier than most. In 1981, while visiting the Annina Nosei Gallery, which was then on Prince Street in SoHo, the couple met Jean-Michel Basquiat, fell in love with his work and bought one of his paintings. That purchase was quickly followed by others — drawings as well as canvases — and, over the years, the Schorrs amassed one of the most important Basquiat collections in the country. The Schorrs also became friends with the artist, who died of a drug overdose at 27 in 1988, and occasionally bought a painting or drawing right out of his Manhattan studio.

“Jean-Michel himself was fascinated that we always gravitated toward the complex work,” said Ms. Schorr, who argues that the drawings are “the key to all his work.”

While institutions like the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh have shown Basquiats from the Schorrs’ collection, there has never been an exhibition focusing chiefly on the couple’s works on paper by the artist. Now, however, the Schorrs are lending 22 of their Basquiat drawings for a show running from May 1 through June 13 at the Acquavella Galleries. Eleanor Acquavella, one of the gallery’s directors, said she welcomed the opportunity because “there is a complex side to his drawings that few people are familiar with.”

In addition to the 22 drawings, dense with the artist’s signature graffiti scrawls, words and images, the Schorrs will lend two paintings that incorporate drawing and collage with some of the same imagery.

Fred Hoffman, a dealer turned curator who helped organize a traveling Basquiat exhibition that opened at the Brooklyn Museum in 2005, is also assembling the Acquavella show. “About two and a half years ago, I realized how Basquiat’s works on paper had been overlooked and how important they are,” he said. “In contrast to most artists, Basquiat’s drawings were not a solution to a problem. They were complete works unto themselves.”

As is often the case these days with exhibitions at blue chip galleries, nothing at the Acquavella show will be for sale. “It is strictly educational,” Ms. Schorr said. “We still own all our paintings and drawings by the artist.”

HUGUETTE CLARK’S TROVE

Two weeks ago, Christie’s announced that it had won property from the estate of Huguette Clark, the reclusive copper heiress who died in 2011 at the age of 104. While the auction house said it would be selling some 400 items — art, musical instruments, furniture and rare books — in two sales in Manhattan this spring, it provided few specifics. The overall sales estimate for the property is over $50 million.

This week, some details about the art and objects began to emerge, giving a fuller picture of Mrs. Clark’s taste and that of her parents. French furniture and important Impressionist paintings apparently filled her three apartments at 907 Fifth Avenue, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, as well as sprawling mansions in Santa Barbara, Calif., and New Canaan, Conn.

“It’s a time capsule,” said Conor Jordan, Christie’s deputy chairman of Impressionist and Modern art. “In the New York apartments, we found newspapers lining some of the drawers from the 1930s. There were also French periodicals stretching back to the 19th century.”

Mrs. Clark, who chose to live at a Manhattan hospital during the last two decades of her life, rather than in her homes, has been a focus of fascination since her death. Depicted as a poor little rich girl who loved to paint and collect dolls, she is the subject of a best-selling book (a second book is due out in the spring), and her $300 million estate has been the focus of a highly publicized court battle.

Distant relatives challenged a will filed in probate court by her lawyer and accountant. Under a settlement negotiated last September, a new Bellosguardo Foundation for the arts will take over her $85 million oceanfront property in Santa Barbara, and $34.5 million, after taxes, will go to relatives, among other court-approved allotments.

Mrs. Clark came from a deeply Francophile family. Although her father, Senator William A. Clark, Democrat of Montana, was said to be a hard-nosed businessman whose life was his work, he had a soft spot for all things French (including his second wife, Anna). Anna and Huguette Clark did as well: Both women bought French paintings that will be among the highlights of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern art auction on May 6. The top attraction is one of Monet’s “Nymphéas,” or Water Lilies, from 1907, which has an estimate of $25 million to $35 million. Huguette Clark bought the painting in 1930 from the Durand-Ruel Galleries, and it has not been seen in public since.

Also coming to auction are three paintings by Renoir, including “Jeunes Filles Jouant au Volant” (“Young Women Playing Badminton”), painted toward the end of the 1880s. Mr. Jordan of Christie’s said Mrs. Clark purchased it in 1958 for $125,000, a high price at the time, when the Minneapolis Institute of Arts deaccessioned it; it is now expected to bring $10 million to $15 million. (The painting had been on loan to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, another beneficiary under the settlement of Mrs. Clark’s estate.)

The Clarks also collected American art. On June 18, Christie’s is to auction a 1913 canvas of a girl fishing in the Italian lakes region, by John Singer Sargent, estimated at $3 million to $5 million. More personal is “Prospect Park,” an 1886 painting by William Merritt Chase that is expected to fetch 700,000 to $1 million.

“It is likely that this was a gift from the artist to Senator Clark when Chase was commissioned by him to paint his portrait in 1915,” said Elizabeth Sterling, head of Christie’s American paintings department. “Chase was known to give token presents to his patrons.”

Highlights from the sales of Mrs. Clark’s art are on view through Tuesday at Christie’s in London and will travel to Hong Kong (April 4 through 9), Tokyo (April 10 through 12) and then back to Rockefeller Center later that month. All of the works will be shown at Christie’s New York headquarters just before the sales in May and June.

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George Lindemann Journal By George Lindemann - "Detroit Art Museum Offers Plan to Avoid Sale of Art" by RANDY KENNEDY

George Lindemann Journal By George Lindemann - "Detroit Art Museum Offers Plan to Avoid Sale of Art" by RANDY KENNEDY

A still-life painting by the 17-century Flemish artist Frans Snyders was hung at the Detroit Institute of Arts on Wednesday. Daniel Mears/The Detroit News, via Associated Press

The Detroit Institute of Arts, whose world-class collection has been targeted as a potential source of cash to help dig Detroit out of federal bankruptcy, announced Wednesday that it would raise $100 million to help save itself, joining a group of private foundations that have already pledged $370 million toward the effort.

Officials at the city-owned museum, which, along with Detroit, has struggled financially for many years, had said as recently as two weeks ago that such a huge commitment — money to help the city pay its pensions — would be “completely unfeasible.” But in a statement on Wednesday the museum said that it had reached out to corporate leaders in Detroit and would commit to a multiyear effort that would “stretch our fund-raising abilities to their capacity” as a way to protect its collection.

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“The D.I.A. has consistently met its financial challenges and goals and will meet this challenge with enthusiasm and confidence,” said Eugene A. Gargaro, the chairman of the museum’s board. Like the money committed recently by 10 national and local foundations, the money raised by the museum would be pledged toward the city’s pension obligations, which are believed to be underfunded by as much as $3.5 billion.

As part of the deal, the city would relinquish ownership of the museum, and it would be owned by a nonprofit organization, as most large public museums across the country are. This would relieve the city of any future financial responsibility for the institute while also shielding the institute from future municipal threats.

Gerald E. Rosen, the federal judge who is mediating the bankruptcy case and who devised the plan to try to protect the art by aiding pensioners, said in a statement on Wednesday: “We all recognize the magnitude of this great undertaking and appreciate the depth of the D.I.A.’s commitment to the city of Detroit and its retirees.”

Last week, Michigan’s governor, Rick Snyder, asked the State Legislature to provide $350 million to the overall fund to reduce possible pension cuts and save the art collection. But even if that money comes through — leading to an overall fund of more than $800 million — it remains unclear whether a deal could be struck with creditors in bankruptcy court to prevent the sale of art.

The Detroit emergency manager’s office last year hired Christie’s to appraise a portion of the collection that included many of the museum’s masterpieces. The auction house said that selling this portion would generate $454 million to $867 million, a number that has been criticized by some of the city’s creditors as being inaccurately low for the best of the museum’s collection.

The possibility of selling part of the city’s cultural history to pay its bills has enraged many, who say it would be a betrayal and would hurt Detroit’s chances of being able to revive itself economically. Museum officials have warned that a sale of masterpieces would not just diminish the museum but would lead to its eventual dissolution because donors would cease to give to it and a three-county tax fund that now provides it with crucial operating money would be withdrawn.

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George Lindemann Journal By George Lindemann - "Is collecting art as profitable as it is painted?" @FinancialTimes by By Melanie Gerlis

George Lindemann Journal By George Lindemann - "Is collecting art as profitable as it is painted?" @FinancialTimes by By Melanie Gerlis

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A new book challenges the notion that art is an investment-grade asset
Work by Yayoi Kusama at Art Basel Miami Beach last year©Getty Images

Work by Yayoi Kusama at Art Basel Miami Beach last year

The international art market is having its time in the sun: auction records keep tumbling, living artists have become superstars, and their punchy paintings and shiny sculptures have become the billionaire’s playthings of choice. Amid all this noise, however, it is time to question the much-touted belief that art is also an investment-grade asset.

Most of the related books and headlines of recent years have extolled the potential of art as an investment, not least in comparison to the volatile stock markets and dwindling returns on alternative assets that have characterised the financial markets since the most recent economic downturn. One joke going around the City of London a couple of years ago was that UBS’s art collection had proved more profitable than its investment banking division.

It is understandable that the wider market gloom moved the debate about art as an asset into a new territory. Art, said its proponents, was not only a source of great value, but was also impervious to the world’s economic slings and arrows.

Yet when looked at more carefully as an investment category, art falls short relative to many of the other assets to which it is frequently – and favourably – compared. These include both traditional and alternative investments, whether public and private equity, gold, wine, or residential property. Its lack of correlation to such assets is also questionable.

The combination of the market’s illiquidity, opacity, lumpy supply and asymmetry of information undermines art’s profile as an asset. This is reinforced by the unique qualities of each work – including its history of ownership, trading and display – which create enormous ranges of pricing and valuation, and preclude sensible data aggregation or comparison. The market’s opacity further opens it up to unchecked manipulation.

Price transparency is another huge problem facing those who would map art’s returns on to a Bloomberg screen, alongside their other investments. Only 50 per cent of an already relatively small number of art trades are recorded (auction results are made public, dealers’ prices are not). To put this into perspective, Artnet, a database of auction sales, records that 1.8m works of fine art were offered at auction in 2012. By comparison, there were an average 1.5m trades per day through the London Stock Exchange alone in May 2012.

Even if the limited, patchy and inconsistent available data on art sales could be put into a hypothetical basket of all segments of art, its financial profile is hardly compelling. Most such theoretical analyses of the art market find that the average compound return for works kept for between five and 10 years is around 4 per cent.

Relatively speaking, this is already less than for gold, wine and both public and private equity, and also lower than the residential property market – another market of unique goods, but with more trading volume and available data (as well as an actual and economic utility) than the art market. And this is before considering the so-called risk adjusted return (the profits needed to make up for the peculiarities of any market). One investment professional whom I interviewed for my book* said that, given the risks in the art market, anyone who is content with less than a 50 per cent return on art “needs a lesson in investment”.

Meanwhile, art’s supposed lack of correlation with other markets is not entirely convincing. The price levels for art do not reflect its fundamental characteristics, rather the fortunes of its buyers. The art market as a whole crashed soon after the economic downturn began in earnest in 2008. Thereafter, only the top-priced works recovered as the wealthiest few emerged relatively unscathed from the credit crisis and new wealth was created outside the gloom of Europe and the United States. Many experts also agree that the data frequency to support the correlation claim is much too short to be meaningful, given how relatively infrequently art is sold for a known price. What may seem to be a lack of correlation may in fact just be a lack of information.

This is not to say that art doesn’t offer a different type of return – and even one with some grounding in economic analysis, should this be important. In a 2007 paper, the economists Erdal Atukeren and Aylin Seckin estimated the intangible joy of looking at a work of art – which they define as its “psychic return” – at around 28 per cent. While it would be difficult to persuade a bank to lend money on the back of this estimate (or indeed against most estimates of art’s value), owning and looking at art certainly offer something that a stock certificate or bar of gold do not.

Meanwhile, the social worth of art also cannot be ignored. In recent years, contemporary art in particular has become fashionable. Art fairs such as Frieze and Art Basel – essentially slick trade shows – have transformed themselves into “to be seen at” events around the world, complete with celebrities and VIP events. Participation in today’s art market offers an unparalleled presence in today’s experiential economy: how else could a hedge fund trader find himself sitting next to a film star at an exclusive dinner in a Miami Beach hotel?

For investment purposes, however, while all assets have their risks and peculiarities, art seems to offer none of the saving graces. Like gold, art is a hard asset with no intrinsic worth. But gold, which also divides opinion as an asset, has a daily, fixed, per-ounce price that enables it to be traded as a commodity and certainly a more convincing hedge against inflation. Private equity is a notoriously opaque and often illiquid area of investment, but still offers enough genuine data points from which to create indexes, assess risk and attempt to gauge returns.

Meanwhile, there does not seem to be any impetus to rectify the lack of verifiable and meaningful data in the art market – which underpins most of its profit potential anyway. There is a chance that you make money on your art, and a greater chance that you don’t; the difference is largely luck. Equating a popular asset with a profitable asset is misleading. From an investment point of view, art seems to be a very fragile prospect.

* ‘Art as an Investment? A Survey of Comparative Assets’ by Melanie Gerlis is published by Lund Humphries in the UK (£30) on January 17 and in the US in February ($60)

Melanie Gerlis is the art market editor of The Art Newspaper. She will be taking part in a panel discussion, “Is art really a good investment?”, at the London Art Fair on January 17, londonartfair.co.uk

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George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "Lost in the Gallery-Industrial Complex" @nytimes by HOLLAND COTTER


George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "Lost in the Gallery-Industrial Complex" @nytimes by HOLLAND COTTER

A new year. A new New York mayor. Old problems with art in New York. I have a collection of complaints and a few (very few) ideas for change.

Money — the grotesque amounts spent, the inequitable distribution — has dominated talk about art in the 21st century so far. It’s a basic fact of art history. Emperors, popes and robber barons set the model for the billionaire buyers of today. Of course, it is today that matters to the thousands of artists who live and work in this punitively expensive city, where the art industry is often confused with the art world.

The distinction between the two, though porous, is real. The art industry is the nexus of high-price galleries, auction houses and collectors who control an art market renowned for its funny-money practices. In numbers of personnel, the industry is a mere subset of the circle of artists, teachers, students, writers, curators and middle-range dealers spread out over five boroughs. But in terms of power, the proportions are reversed, to the degree that the art world basically functions as a labor source, supplying the industry with product, services and exotic color but, with the age of apprenticeships long gone, only uncertainly sharing in its wealth.

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The scene at Christie’s during the sale of Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies of Lucian Freud.” Christie's Images, via Associated Press

Do I exaggerate? A bit. The argument can be made that labor is benefiting from its ties to management, in a high-tide-floats-all-boats way. Visit art schools or galleries, and you get the impression that a substantial portion of the art world is content to serve as support staff to a global ruling class.

The reality is that, directly or indirectly, in large ways and small, the current market system is shaping every aspect of art in the city: not just how artists live, but also what kind of art is made, and how art is presented in the media and in museums.

I got tired of money talk a while back. Rather than just sputter with indignation, I figured it would be more useful to turn in another direction, toward art that the industry wasn’t looking at, which is a whole lot of art. But reminders keep pulling you back to the bottom line. With every visit to the gallery-packed Lower East Side, I see fewer of the working-class Latinos who once called the neighborhood home. In what feels like overnight, I’ve watched Dumbo in Brooklyn go from an artist’s refuge to an economically gated community.

Recently, my attention was drawn to a controversy surrounding a large and much praised group exhibition installed at a complex of converted warehouses called Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The show, “Come Together: Surviving Sandy,” was conceived as a benefit for artists who had suffered losses in the 2012 hurricane and was promoted as evidence of art-world solidarity. Yet a widely read blog, Art F City, reported that the owners of the complex, which had for some years provided low-rent studios for artists, were now raising rents dramatically, forcing many artists to vacate. (Landlords say 25 percent of Industry City tenants are artists). The new residents seem to be an upscale clientele drawn by the artsy atmosphere.

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Part of the exhibition “Come Together: Surviving Sandy” at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

Whatever the full facts, money is the winner, and with that comes caution and conservatism. This is almost absurdly obvious on the high-end of the market. Sales of retrograde “masterworks” can be relied on to jack up the auction charts at regular intervals; the most recent record was set last fall by a $142.4 million Francis Bacon painting of Lucian Freud, a monument to two overpraised painters for the price of one. Meanwhile, big, hugely pricey tchotchkes — new whatevers by Jeff Koons, say — roll out of fabrication shops and into personal museums being assembled by members of the international power elite.

Outside auctions, the marketing mechanics buzz on. Roughly since the end of the multicultural, postmodern 1990s, we’ve watched new art being re-Modernized and domesticated, with painting the medium of choice, abstraction the mode of preference. Together they offer significant advantages. Paintings can be assembly-line produced but still carry the aura of being hand-touched. They can be tailored to small spaces, such as fair booths. Abstraction, especially if color is involved, can establish instant eye contact from afar. If, in addition, the work’s graphic impact translates well online, where stock can be moved eBay style, so much the better.

Other traditional forms — drawing, photography, some sculpture — similarly work well in this marketing context. But an enormous range of art does not, beginning with film, performance and installation, and extending into rich realms of creative activity that defy classification as art at all. To note this dynamic is not to dismiss painting or object making, but to point to the restrictive range of art that the market supports, that dealers are encouraged to sell, and that artists are encouraged to make.

The narrowing of the market has been successful in attracting a wave of neophyte buyers who have made art shopping chic. It has also produced an epidemic of copycat collecting. To judge by the amounts of money piled up on a tiny handful of reputations, few of these collectors have the guts, or the eye or the interest, to venture far from blue-chip boilerplate. They let galleries, art advisers and the media do the choosing, and the media doesn’t particularly include art critics. What, after all, does thumbs up, thumbs down matter when winners are preselected before the critical votes are in? In this economy, it can appear that the critic’s job is to broadcast names and contribute to fame.

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The Silent Barn art space in Brooklyn’s thriving Bushwick neighborhood. Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

Conservative art can encourage conservative criticism. We’re seeing a revival — some would say a disinterment — of a describe-the-strokes style of writing popular in the formalist 1950s and again in the 1970s: basically, glorified advertising copy. Evaluative approaches that developed in the 1980s and 1990s, based on the assumption that art inevitably comments on the social and political realities that produce it, tend to be met with disparagement now, in part because they’re often couched in academic jargon, which has become yet another form of sales-speak.

There’s no question that we need — art needs — an influx of new commentators who don’t mistake attitude for ideas, who move easily between cultures and geographies. Regular gigs in mainstream print journalism have all but dried up, but the Internet offers ambitious options in a growing number of blogazines including Art F City (edited by Paddy Johnson) and Hyperallergic (edited by Hrag Vartanian), which combine criticism, reporting, political activism and gossip on an almost-24-hour news cycle.

And although both are based in New York, they include national coverage and in a feisty mix of voices, a welcome alternative to the one-personality blog of yore. That mix would probably be even more varied, and transcultural, if a few forward-thinking, art-minded investors would infuse some serious capital into such enterprises so they could pay writers a living wage and make online freelance writing a viable way of life.

I don’t know what it would take to get a global mix of voices into some of New York’s big, rich art museums. If archaeologists of the future unearthed the Museum of Modern Art as it exists today, they would have to assume that Modernism was a purely European and North American invention. They would be wrong. Modernism was, and is, an international phenomenon, happening in different ways, on different timetables, for different reasons in Africa, Asia, Australia and South America.

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Truong Tan’s “What Do We Want,” part of “No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia” at the Guggenheim Museum. Richard Perry/The New York Times

Why aren’t museums telling that story? Because it doesn’t sell. Why doesn’t it sell? Because it’s unfamiliar. Why is it unfamiliar? Because museums, with their eyes glued to box office, aren’t telling the story.

Yes, MoMA and the Guggenheim have recently organized a few “non-Western” shows. MoMA’s  2012 “Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde,” packed to the ceiling with art we’ve rarely if ever seen, was a revelation. But they need to take actions far more fundamental and committed. International Modernism should be fully integrated into the permanent collection, regularly, consistently.

Their job as public institutions is to change our habits of thinking and seeing. One way to do this is by bringing disparate cultures together in the same room, on the same wall, side by side. This sends two vital, accurate messages: that all these cultures are different but equally valuable; and all these cultures are also alike in essential ways, as becomes clear with exposure.

With its recently announced plans for an expansion, MoMA has an ideal chance to expand its horizons organically. The new spaces, which should certainly be devoted to the permanent collection, won’t be ready for several years, but the museum has no excuse for waiting for its long-overdue integration process to begin.

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“The Shadows Took Shape,” an exhibition of Afrofuturist works at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

And on the subject of integration, why, in one of the most ethnically diverse cities, does the art world continue to be a bastion of whiteness? Why are African-American curators and administrators, and especially directors, all but absent from our big museums? Why are there still so few black — and Latino, and Asian-American — critics and editors?

Not long ago, these questions — of policy but also political and ethical questions — seemed to be out there on institutional tables, demanding discussion. Technically, they may be there still, but museums seem to be most interested in talking about real estate, assiduously courting oligarchs for collections, and anxiously scouting for the next “Rain Room.” Political questions, about which cultures get represented in museums and who gets to make the decisions, and how, are buried.

Political art brings me back to where I started, with artists, and one final, baffled complaint, this one about art schools, which seem, in their present form, designed to accommodate the general art economy and its competitive, caste-system values. Programs are increasingly specialized, jamming students into ever narrower and flakier disciplinary tracks. Tuitions are prodigious, leaving artists indentured to creditors for years.

How experimental can artists be under such circumstances? How confidently can they take risks in an environment that acknowledges only dollar-value success? How can they contemplate sustaining — to me this is crucial to New York’s future as an art center — long and evolving creative careers? The temptation for many artists, after a postgraduate spurt of confidence, is to look around, see what’s selling, and consider riffing on that. We’re seeing a depressing number of such riffs these days.

Again, do I exaggerate? And, again, sure, to some degree. By no means is all the news bad. Start-up galleries are opening; middle-tier galleries are holding their own, or doing better than that. Artist-intensive neighborhoods like Bushwick and Ridgewood are still affordable, companionable and fun.

But when the rents get too high, or the economy fails, or art buying falls out of fashion, and the art industry decides to liquidate its overvalued assets and leave? Artists, the first and last stakeholders, will have themselves to fall back on. They’ll learn to organize and agitate for what they need, to let City Hall know, in no uncertain terms, that they’re there. They’ll learn to share, not just on special occasions, but all the time. They’ll learn that art and politics are inseparable, and both can be anything and everything. They’ll learn to bring art back from the brink of inconsequence.

As someone long on questions and short on answers, let me ask: Why not start now?

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George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "Let Curators Be Curators, MOCA’s New Chief Says" @nytimes by By RANDY KENNEDY and JORI FINKELJAN

George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "Let Curators Be Curators, MOCA’s New Chief Says" @nytimes by By RANDY KENNEDY and JORI FINKELJAN

The New York office of Philippe Vergne, the Dia Art Foundation director, who was named on Wednesday to lead the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, looks out onto a brick vista of Chelsea art galleries. But hanging on the wall next to the windows is a photograph of Walter De Maria’s New Mexico land-art work “The Lightning Field,” showing a vast sweep of Western plateau.

As Mr. Vergne heads to California — the second New York-based director in a row chosen by the Los Angeles museum — he will in one sense be taking over an institution whose possibilities are just as wide-open. Barely more than 30 years old, beloved and fiercely defended by local artists and in possession of one of the best collections of postwar art in the country, the museum is still in the early stages of defining itself in a rapidly growing international art world. And its board, after years of failing to give the museum enough money to meet its ambitions, recently announced that it had raised $100 million toward an endowment that it hoped to increase to $150 million.

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Philippe Vergne will head west to the Museum of Contemporary Art. Robert Caplin for The New York Times

But Mr. Vergne will also take over an institution that, by the standards of most large-city museums, is now little more than a shell. It employs only two full-time curators, after several departures in recent years, most during the tumultuous tenure of the previous director, Jeffrey Deitch, who himself left in 2013, with two years left on a five-year contract. After years of cost-cutting and layoffs, the museum has 42 full-time employees. By contrast the Hammer Museum, across town, has 93 full-time employees, including six curators, even though its collection and exhibition space is much smaller than the Museum of Contemporary Art’s.

In a wide-ranging interview Friday morning, Mr. Vergne said that, unlike Mr. Deitch — who was criticized for running the museum as de facto chief curator, leading to the acrimonious departure of the longtime head of the curatorial staff, Paul Schimmel — he believed in the importance of a chief curator. He said he would make his first priority finding one and recruiting a staff, and then would mostly stand back and help them work.

Mr. Vergne, 47, who was born and educated in France but who has worked for many years in the United States, said that he understood how much work would have to be done to rebuild the museum. And while he is highly respected as a curator, he said, “I don’t think I will curate.”

“The role of the director is to support the curators and let the curators be curators,” said Mr. Vergne, an animated man known for dry wit and a persistently thick Gallic accent.

He added that even with the recent growth of the endowment, he expects much of his job to watch the bottom line and to woo donors. “I know that to do that,” he said, “my time will be consumed with making sure the institution is financially secure.”

His goal, he said, is to have the resources to be able to use the collection as a launching pad to make the museum “the most experimental institution in this country.”

Mr. Vergne’s record as a fund-raiser for Dia is not clear. In 2009 the foundation announced plans to build a new space on West 22nd Street. But construction has not begun and Dia has not commented on the state of its capital campaign. In the interview, Mr. Vergne insisted that progress would be announced soon and that the “proof will be in the pudding.”

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“The role of the director is to support the curators,” said Mr. Vergne, whose predecessor at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles was described by critics as a de facto chief curator. Robert Caplin for The New York Times

“I feel very strong about where Dia is compared to where Dia was when I found it,” he said.

Fred Sands, the new president of the museum’s board, said it chose Mr. Vergne in part because he had solid administrative talents as well as the respect of artists and a deep understanding of the contemporary-art terrain.

“He knows how to run a business,” he said. “A museum is a not-for-profit business, but it is a businesAs for Mr. Deitch, a veteran New York gallery owner whom he described as “sort of a loner,” Mr. Sands said: “He was not focused on running the museum. I love the guy, but that’s not what he was interested in.”

He added: “I think the artists and curators are looking for a good dad and Philippe is that. People have been saying to me, ‘Well, you finally did it.’ ”

A question that has hovered over the appointment is the role of Eli Broad, the billionaire collector who was deeply involved in recruiting Mr. Deitch and who later this year will open a museum featuring his own vast contemporary collection across the street from the Museum of Contemporary Art’s downtown site. Mr. Broad, the museum’s founding chairman, bailed it out in 2008 when it almost went under, but he has also been criticized as a kind of puppet master.

While Mr. Vergne said he met Mr. Broad as “part of one conversation” during his visits, search committee leaders said Mr. Broad was not involved in making the selection.

But Mr. Vergne emphasized that he was open to the idea, when appropriate, of sharing pieces from the museum’s collection with Mr. Broad’s museum. “What makes a collection alive is for a collection to be seen, so I think it would be great if there is a relationship between the two institutions,” he said. “For me it’s almost a no-brainer.”

“I like Modernism,” he added, “but more is more.”

Randy Kennedy reported from New York and Jori Finkel from Los Angeles.

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George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "The (Auction) House Doesn’t Always Win" @nytimes By GRAHAM BOWLEY

George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - George Lindemann

The (Auction) House Doesn’t Always Win - By GRAHAM BOWLEY

Christie’s and Sotheby’s Woo Big Sellers With a Cut

When Christie’s sold Jeff Koons’s “Balloon Dog (Orange)” for $58.4 million in November, it seemed as if the auction house had just earned a pretty penny.

After all, Christie’s, like other auction houses, typically charge commissions to buyers and sellers, which for high-priced works might be an eighth to a quarter of the gavel price.

But the owner of the work, the newsprint magnate Peter M. Brant, said Christie’s certainly made no money from him. To secure his business, the house waived the seller’s commission, he said, and then, as a sweetener, gave him a large share of the buyer’s fees.

“I was not required to give them anything from the buyer’s commission until it reached a certain price — which it did not make,” Mr. Brant said in an interview, rather wistfully, since he was hoping for a higher price.

Factor in Christie’s other costs — buying insurance and newspaper ads, publishing glossy catalogs, moving the towering Balloon Dog to its Rockefeller Center headquarters, where it was parked outside for gawking — and the possibility of making lots of money seems to be limited.

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“Balloon Dog (Orange)” at Christie’s last fall. Its seller says Christie’s made no money from him. Don Emmert/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Christie’s would not comment on this, or any individual, sale. But Mr. Brant is not alone in his bargaining, and far from alone in noting that even as bidding prices go ever higher, the auction houses’ cut is rapidly shrinking.

Caught in a scramble to outmaneuver their competitors for the top works and market share, the major auction houses have increasingly offered all kinds of financial incentives to lure the top consignments — essentially giving away a big share of their commissions for the privilege of selling someone’s art.

“The process of consigning artwork to the major auction houses today is like buying an airplane ticket, and just as opaque,” said Thomas C. Danziger, an art market lawyer. “You never really know how much the guy in the seat next to you at the auction — or on your flight — has paid for the same ride.”

In this game, the biggest collectors receive the best deals, which, several in the industry said, has led to an auction house paradox: The pricier the artwork, the lower the profit margin.

That has not stopped the main houses — including Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips — from doggedly pursuing a small clutch of millionaires and their art collections. The sales fuel splashy headlines and perhaps rope in other sellers. But these companies may also be repeating tactics that got them into trouble five years ago, when an art market bubble collapsed with the financial crisis, analysts and industry experts said.

The auction houses deny that they are trimming profits with givebacks or putting themselves at financial risk. Christie’s may have reaped little from the 10-foot-high “Balloon Dog,” but it made money on the whole night, in part because the sculpture’s presence helped attract other sellers.

“The evening sales are immensely profitable,” said Christie’s chief executive, Steven P. Murphy. “Yes, the margins on the top lots are much thinner than the middle market. But sometimes, volume makes up for that. A thin margin on a $50 million lot is still a profit.”

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Andy Warhol’s “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)” at auction at Sotheby’s in November. It fetched $104.5 million. Andrew Burton/Getty Images

But the activist hedge-fund investor Daniel S. Loeb, who announced last year that he had bought a 9.2 percent stake in Sotheby’s, has called for the ouster of William F. Ruprecht, its longtime chief executive for, among other things, giving up profits.

In a public letter to Mr. Ruprecht, Mr. Loeb wrote, “It has been Sotheby’s who has most aggressively competed on margin, often by rebating all of the seller’s commission and, in certain instances, much of the buyer’s premium to consignors of contested works.”

In an interview, Mr. Ruprecht said it is impossible to compare Sotheby’s, a publicly traded company that releases audited results quarterly, with other houses, which are privately held. Christie’s is owned by François Pinault, the French luxury-goods magnate, while Phillips’s owner is the Russian company Mercury Group. And Mr. Ruprecht told analysts that an increase in the buyer’s fee last year had helped stabilize its business. Some analysts agree that conditions may get easier, if rising prices tempt reluctant sellers off the sidelines even without discounted fees.

The competition is fierce, in part because the number of elite collectors is small. According to Christie’s, about 150 collectors worldwide can buy a painting for more than $20 million.

“It is small but it is growing,” said Mr. Murphy, whose company has been seeking to expand the number of collectors in countries like China and India.

Typically, a seller might pay about 10 percent commission on a $100,000 artwork. A buyer would pay about 25 percent. But for some works of art — commonly those worth $1 million or above — sellers don’t usually pay anything.

And the buyer’s fee, which drops to about 12 percent for works worth more than $2 million, can be split among many parties. For the most expensive works, the sellers can receive 4 percent to 7 percent of that fee on top of the hammer price, a practice called “enhanced hammer,” auction experts said. Some of the buyer’s fee can also go to an outside guarantor, an investor who promises to buy the work for a minimum price. (That investor also typically receives a share of any amount above the minimum price.) What’s left of the fee goes to the house.

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Daniel S. Loeb. Jacob Kepler/Bloomberg News

Mr. Danziger, the art market lawyer, said that one of his clients, selling a postwar painting in November, received a part of the buyer’s fee, prominent placement on the auction website and in the catalog, and paid no commission. The work sold for seven figures.

Michael McGinnis, chief executive of the Phillips auction house, said marketing was a strategic way to promote sales and attract future business.

“You have to give some here to get some there,” he said.

In the case of the “Balloon Dog (Orange),” Christie’s arranged for an outside guarantor, identified several potential buyers, and structured the sale so it would get part of the buyer’s fee only if the price exceeded a certain target, which it failed to reach.

These arrangements cost a lot of money. Sotheby’s annual reports show that in 2011 and 2012, it gave up more than $40 million annually in sellers’ commissions, and analysts said this trend continued last year.

At Sotheby’s the total amount of buyers’ and sellers’ fees as a proportion of gavel prices has been falling steadily since 2009; in 2012, it was 16.3 percent, the lowest since 2008. Analysts expect a slightly lower number in 2013. In 2012, Sotheby’s profits were $108.3 million — up from 2008, but down from 2010 and 2011, when the market began to recover.

The figures for 2013 promise to be slightly better. But in November, the company acknowledged the economic pressures, including the negotiations over sellers’ commissions and buyers’ premiums. “Competition is still affecting our revenue margins,” Mr. Ruprecht said in a call with analysts at the time.

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Sotheby’s chief, William F. Ruprecht. Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Whitney Museum of American Art

Analysts said similar pressures are playing out at Christie’s, though Christie’s may be better placed to weather the competition because it sells more lower-priced artwork, where profit margins are fatter.

Auction houses offer guarantees backed by outside investors, but can also guarantee works themselves. Now Sotheby’s is preparing to offer more such guarantees to the richest sellers. In June, it tripled its borrowing capacity to $300 million.

The level of Christie’s direct guarantees is unknown. But the total value of artwork carrying guarantees has been increasing for the past three years, accounting for 10 percent of Christie’s lots sold in 2012, the company said.

Both houses said their level of risk-taking is well below pre-2008 levels, and they are offloading liability by having outside investors take on some of the new guarantees.

In 2008, both auction houses ratcheted back guarantees after prices fell sharply, leaving them with millions of dollars in unsold works, as well as painful losses. Following that, Mr. Ruprecht said Sotheby’s was abandoning them almost entirely and returning to a simpler model as agents for buyers and sellers.

The auction houses have also expanded into private art sales, becoming dealers in their own right. The transformation can sometimes mean owning the art, with the risks this entails.

“The auction houses are not set up to calculate the financial risk,” said David Kusin, who runs Kusin & Company, a consulting firm in Dallas that specializes in the economics of the art market. “Getting into a business they are unsuited for and unprepared for puts all market participants at risk.”

To some in the industry, it sounds a bit like 2008. Howard Rachofsky, a Dallas collector and former hedge-fund manager, sold his own Koons sculpture, “Balloon Flower (Magenta)” back then for $25.7 million at Christie’s in London.

Christie’s offered him an outside guarantee, too, no seller’s commission and a share of the buyer’s fee.

“They didn’t make a lot, they made a little bit,” he said. “But in terms of visibility, it gives bragging rights.”

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George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "Buyer of $142.4 Million Bacon Triptych Identified as Elaine Wynn" @nytimes By CAROL VOGEL

George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - George Lindemann

Buyer of $142.4 Million Bacon Triptych Identified as Elaine Wynn

By CAROL VOGELJAN. 15, 2014

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    Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” sold for $142.4 million in November. Vincenzo Pinto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
    The mystery began the moment a telephone bidder bought Francis Bacon’s triptych “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” for $142.4 million at Christie’s New York in November.

    The buyer was the subject of months of speculation but was never identified. One of the names that frequently popped up was that of the collector and Las Vegas casino owner Stephen A. Wynn.

    That guess was not far off. Art world sources now say the buyer was his former wife, Elaine Wynn, a co-founder of the Wynn Casino Empire. Ms. Wynn has a net worth that Forbes estimated at $1.9 billion as of September.

    The couple, who divorced in 2010, are both art lovers, opening galleries in some of their casinos. Over the years they have shown paintings by Degas, van Gogh and Matisse.

    The best-known work in the Wynn collection was “Le Rêve,” the 1932 Picasso, after which they named a casino. (In March, Mr. Wynn sold that painting to Steven A. Cohen, the hedge fund billionaire, for $155 million.)

    Ms. Wynn’s office said that she was traveling and could not be reached for comment. But those who know her say Bacon, born in Ireland in 1909, is one of her favorite artists.

    She already owns another painting by him and over the years has expressed interest in buying other triptychs by him as they came on the market.

    This painting, which depicts the artist Lucian Freud, a friend of Bacon’s, sitting on a wooden chair against an orange background, is one of only two existing full-length triptychs of Freud and was included in the Bacon retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1971-72.

    The price was well above the $85 million that Christie’s had estimated it would fetch. Five bidders tried to buy the triptych. Ms. Wynn was determined, however, and could afford it.

    Ms. Wynn’s main home is in Las Vegas, and she has one in New York.

    She has only a few works of art, a dealer familiar with her collection said, and nothing approaching the magnitude of the Bacon triptych.

    Unlike her former husband, she has never been a high-profile presence in the art world. However, she is a member of the board of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which, coincidentally, does not own a Bacon.

    Last month, she anonymously lent the painting to the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, where it is on view through March 30.

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    George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "Detroit Art Boosters Offer $330 Million in Bankruptcy" @bloomberg by Steven Church

    Detroit Art Boosters Offer $330 Million in Bankruptcy

    By Steven Church Jan 13, 2014 6:15 PM ET
     
    Photographer: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

    A man looks at a painting at the Detroit Institute of Arts on September 3, 2013 in Detroit, Michigan.

    A man looks at a painting at the Detroit Institute of Arts on September 3, 2013 in Detroit, Michigan. Close

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    Photographer: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

    A man looks at a painting at the Detroit Institute of Arts on September 3, 2013 in Detroit, Michigan.

    Supporters of the Detroit Institute of Arts pledged to pay $330 million to help resolve the city’s record bankruptcy and save its Picassos and Van Goghs from going on the auction block.

    The donors want the money to go to retirees, whose pensions may be underfunded by as much as $3.5 billion and who have challenged the city’s right to be in bankruptcy. In return, the Detroit Institute of Arts, or DIA, collection would be protected in any bankruptcy settlement, according to a statement e-mailed today by the U.S. District Court in Detroit.

    “All recognize that if these two goals can be accomplished, a third absolutely critical goal of facilitating the revitalization of the city in the aftermath of the bankruptcy will be greatly advanced,” according to the statement.

    Detroit filed the Chapter 9 case in July claiming it can’t pay about $18 billion in debt while providing essential services to the city’s 700,000 residents. Creditors have pressed city officials to consider selling some art, or finding some other way to use the DIA to raise money.

    Last month, New York-based Christie’s Inc. said DIA art that had been purchased with taxpayer money was worth as much as $866 million.

    Charitable Trust

    The DIA has opposed any sale, citing a legal opinion from Michigan’s attorney general in June that concluded the art is held in a charitable trust and can’t be part of any auction to satisfy the city’s debts.

    U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen, who is chief of the federal court in Detroit, is overseeing a group of mediators who are trying to help the city and its creditors negotiate an end to the bankruptcy.

    A committee headed by the presidents of the Ford Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan would oversee efforts to raise money for the bankruptcy, according to the statement.

    The art institute’s operations are funded by a special property tax in three surrounding counties that generate $23 million a year in revenue. Sale of the art collection to pay creditors could result in repeal of the tax, museum officials have said.

    Art Valued

    The collection includes Diego Rivera’s two-story tall murals from 1933 titled “Detroit Industry,” as well as pieces by Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh.

    Kevyn Orr, the city’s emergency financial manager, hired Christie’s to value the art. He hasn’t said whether the city plans to sell any pieces to pay creditors.

    “Today’s announcement offers hope that by working collaboratively, the city, its creditors and labor stakeholders can reach a negotiated solution that will resolve all claims and improve the services that are admittedly and critically necessary,” Orr said in an e-mailed statement.

    The $330 million deal is less than the $500 million Orr told the Associated Press last month he would like to see raised by private donors.

    The proposal was first reported by the Detroit Free Press. Afterward, city art booster Paul Schaap offered an additional $5 million.

    Art Enthusiasts

    Even $500 million may be difficult to sell to creditors as a good deal for them, in light of the appraisal by Christie’s, so celebration among art enthusiasts would be premature, said Michael Bennett, law professor at Northeastern University in Boston specializing in intellectual property and art law. The appraisal pegged 2,800 works at the DIA at between $454 million and $867 million. The appraisal considered only art works purchased for the museum with tax dollars.

    Using donations exclusively to boost pensions may be difficult without support from bondholders and other unsecured creditors, Jim Spiotto, a bankruptcy attorney with Chapman Strategic Advisors LLC, said in an interview.

    That’s because under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code similar debts must be treated the same. The federal judge overseeing the case, Steven Rhodes, has said the pension debt is unsecured and similar to some of Detroit’s bonds.

    Making the donations exclusive to pensions would be easier than trying to force a sale on the DIA, said Spiotto, who has helped museums restructure debt outside of bankruptcy.

    Donations Deal

    “There are lots of ways of trying to structure” a donations deal, Spiotto said. “Clearly what they are doing is far easier than trying to monetize the art through a sale.”

    A group of art foundations said the proposal was intended to be part of a larger plan to adjust the city’s debt. Rhodes has said he would like the city to file that plan in March.

    In addition to the Ford, Knight and Kresge foundations, the group includes the William Davidson Foundation, Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, Hudson-Webber Foundation, the McGregor Fund and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, they said in an e-mailed statement.

    The case is In re City of Detroit, 13-bk-53846, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of Michigan (Detroit).

    To contact the reporter on this story: Steven Church in Wilmington, Delaware at schurch3@bloomberg.net

    To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Dunn at adunn8@bloomberg.net

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