Ban Major Art Auctions?

The Washington Post ran an Outlook section on Sunday called Spring Cleaning and asked 10 writers to list something that should be done away with or that people would be better off without.  Hard to believe, but one was art auctions, specifically Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillps.

The complaint by the author appears to be that given the number of wealthy buyers now collecting and investing in art, prices have soared and with that priced public museums and cultural institutions out of the market. The writer notes in the past many major museum collections came from the wealthy, such as Andrew Mellon, but fails to mention that many of these wealthy individuals do loan and many do eventually donate to a museum or set up and fund/endow private museums.

The Washington Post reports

Art sales, which barely hit a speed bump after the financial collapse of 2008, have now gone into hyperdrive. A circuslike atmosphere reigns at mega-galleries, museums and art fairs of serious stock, with the likes of James Franco as center-ring performers. I'm American; I believe in making money and doing what you need to do in the name of art. But one precinct of this cattle call must be shut down and sent to hell: the auctions of art at Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips.

These auction houses promote super-expensive works by verified modern masters, pieces that should be in museums. Wealthy bidders pack the house. Prices soar into the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, and the room erupts in applause. What they're applauding is art that is now out of reach for museums, which can't begin to compete at these prices. The ultra-wealthy Getty Museum was able to snag an Edouard Manet for $65.1 million at auction in 2014, but even the Getty had no chance of acquiring the Paul Gauguin that sold this year for $300 million, reportedly to someone from Qatar. Annual acquisition budgets at many museums are relatively modest — the Seattle Art Museum had a reported budget of $7.8 million for buying art in 2012; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo. puts the value of its 2014 acquisitions at $5.3 million, which includes art it was given. Most institutions can't stretch to buy even a second-level work by Francis Bacon or Gerhard Richter, let alone a Matisse.

Money and art have always been linked. The wealthy have been responsible for stocking many of the country's best museums with works to be enjoyed by the public indefinitely — witness the collection of Andrew W. Mellon at the National Gallery, Robert Lehman's gift to the Met and many others. But now the wealthy compete with museums on the trading floors, where speculation and spin turn masterpieces into trophies. Art auctions are vile pieces of work. A pox on all their houses.

Source: The Washington Post