Word: loan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...inflated market is also eroding the other main function of museums: the loan exhibition. Without a doubt, the past 15 years in America have been the golden age of the museum retrospective, bringing a series of great and (for this generation of museums and their public) definitive exhibitions, done at the highest pitch of scholarship and curatorial skill: late and early Cezanne, Picasso, Manet, Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, Watteau, Velazquez, Poussin, up to MOMA's current show of Picasso's and Braque's Cubist years and, perhaps, Seurat to come...
...beauty of the loan system, from the point of view of the auctioneer, is twofold. It inflates prices whether the borrower wins the painting or not: like a gambler with chips on house credit, he will bid it up. Prefinancing by the auction house artificially creates a floor, whereas a dealer who states a price sets a ceiling. And then, if the borrower defaults, the lender gets back the painting, writes off the unpaid part of the loan against tax, and can resell the work at its new inflated price...
Criticism of auction-house guarantees and loans has been particularly widespread in the past few weeks, ever since it was disclosed that Sotheby's had lent Australian entrepreneur Alan Bond $27 million in 1987 to buy what became the most expensive painting of all time, Van Gogh's Irises. But Sotheby's defends its policy as right, proper and indeed inevitable. Guarantees are given "very sparingly," CEO Ainslie said last week. "It is unusual for more than one or two paintings in a sale to be guaranteed." Ainslie rejects any comparison to margin trading. "We do not make...
...result was a dragged-out battle between the auctioneers and consumer affairs. The auctioneers won that round, but Aponte is getting set for another. Stiffer rules are pending, including those governing loans. The current consumer affairs code says that "if an auctioneer makes loans or advances money to consignors and/or prospective purchasers, this fact must be conspicuously disclosed in the auctioneer's catalog." But did this mean that Sotheby's put a note in the catalog of its November 1987 sale saying it had given one Alan Bond a loan of half the hammer price, repayment terms to be negotiated...
...there a case for setting up an independent regulator -- an art- industry Securities and Exchange Commission? Not before hell freezes over, say the auction houses (although Christie's may be wavering a little on the point, since it has no guarantee and loan system to defend). Probably not, say many dealers. But others think the idea is worth serious thought, though none believe it likely to happen while Washington still clings to the conservative catchword of deregulation. Besides, says Eugene Thaw, the doyen of U.S. private dealers, Sotheby's in particular may have enough political clout in New York...