Word: auctioning
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Even people who can contemplate dropping, say, $25 million on a painting occasionally need a little help. And in recent years, as art prices steamed ever higher, Sotheby's, the international auction house, has been happy to oblige. When a particularly coveted painting came on the block, Sotheby's told favored customers that it would loan them up to half of whatever they bid and let the painting itself serve as collateral. With terms like those, skeptics mused, is it any wonder that art prices (and Sotheby's commissions) soared? "The auction houses turned the art market into a financial...
Last week Sotheby's did not quite remove one hat, but it grudgingly hung its head. CEO Michael Ainslie announced that, in view of widespread criticism of the practice, the auction house will no longer offer loans using the work of art as collateral. Sotheby's will, however, continue to make other, secured loans. It will also continue "guaranteeing" minimum prices to sellers, a practice that many dealers and collectors charge makes the auction house in effect an interim buyer and compromises its standing as a disinterested agent...
...only two years ago that Sotheby's auctioned Irises to Australian plutocrat Alan Bond for a record $53.9 million. The timing was critical. Coming as it did one month after the 1987 stock-market crash, the sale allowed Sotheby's to claim that works of art held their value through financial crises. But last October it was revealed that to enable Bond to make the purchase, Sotheby's had lent him $27 million. "Whatever the arrangement, it helped to raise the inflationary value of that particular picture," asserts Christopher Burge, president of Sotheby's starchy rival, Christie's. Like most...