Polaroid Forced to Sell Part of its Collection

The NY Times is reporting a banruptcy court is forcing Polaroid to sell some of its collection of photographs.  Some photos within the collection were taken by the likes of Andy Warhol and Ansel Adams. The Banrucpty attorneys tried to place the collection with several museums but was not able to do so. In order to payoff creditors, Sotheby's will now auction 1,200 photographs from the collection on June 21 & 22 in New York.  The pre sale estimates total between $7.5 and $11.5 million. This is only a small portion of the collection, with over 10,000 additional images in storage.

“It’s an amazing body of work,” Mr. Close said in a telephone interview. “There’s really nothing like it in the history of photography.” But, he added, “to sell it is criminal.”

While he and other artists would have liked the collection kept intact in a museum’s holdings, John R. Stoebner, the court-appointed trustee for Polaroid, said he had talks with several museums, including the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, but was never able to reach a deal.

The collection has its roots in the Artist Support Program, a project Mr. Land started after realizing how important artists’ input was in improving his products. It was a handy arrangement, the collection’s longtime curator, Barbara Hitchcock, explained: Polaroid provided some of the greatest talents around with equipment and film, and they gave the company photographs. “Experimentation was encouraged by Polaroid,” Ms. Hitchcock added. “It was a mantra — experimentation, creativity, innovation, pushing the envelope of photography.”

To read the full NY Times story, click HERE.