by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Apr 28, 2017 |
Christie’s offered the rare opportunity to own “an iconic work of art from the 3rd millennium BC.” The auction house describes the truly exceptional object as follows:
Standing 9 inches high, the Guennol Stargazer is one of the finest and largest preserved Anatolian marble female idols of Kiliya type — and will be offered in the Exceptional Sale on 28 April at Christie’s in New York. The Guennol Stargazer is from the Chalcolithic period, between 3000 and 2200 BC, and is considered to be one of the most impressive of its type known to exist. It is further distinguished by its exhibition history, having been on loan at The Metropolitan Museum of Art at various periods from 1966 to 2007.
The Guennol Stargazer garnered a great deal of attention, with the sale estimated to bring in about £2million. However, today’s sale exceeded all expectations with the hammer price being $12,700,000. Although auction results often exceed estimates, this sale was particularly surprising because the work’s legal title is in dispute. Turkey claims that the work was looted and that it should have never been placed up for auction.
Then today, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey posted an open letter in the NY Times (see the image below to read the text) calling for the return of objects looted from Turkey. The letter praises institutions and collectors who have shown good faith and repatriated looted works to their origin nation. The letter does not mention the Guennol Stargazer (although the silhouette of the object appears on the top of the page), but the meaning of this letter is not lost to anyone in the antiquities field.
As the legal title of this object is in dispute, a U.S. court ruled that Christie’s cannot release the work to the purchaser until a final determination on its legality is made.
by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Apr 19, 2017 |
I spend a great deal of my academic research, writing, and lecturing focused on the illicit market for looted antiquities. What often shocks me is the lack of due diligence by private buyers, and sometimes even public institutions. What’s more, insufficient diligence often reflects the lack of good faith on the part of the buyer. And even more than that, it’s shocking that buyers proceed with their purchases when common sense considerations suggest that a purchase is imprudent. Case in point: collectors who continue purchasing items from art dealers with poor reputations and histories of legal improprieties.
I understand that errors are made, misinformation is circulated on the market, and the art trade is difficult to navigate. However, there are a few names that continue appearing in the press due to unethical practices. One of those names is Phoenix Ancient Art. I’m not the first to note the gallery’s missteps. The art dealers have been scrutinized by journalists, art historians, writers, and attorneys. I first wrote about the dealers in 2009 in this short
paper. The text mentions the gallery’s connection to famous antiquities looter, Giacomo Medici. It also discusses criminal charges against Ali Aboutaam after dealing in looted objects from Egypt, including the Ka Nefer Nefer mask that the Phoenix Ancient Art sold to the St. Louis Art Museum. (The mask was properly excavated in Egypt in 1955, but subsequently went missing for decades.)
The gallery faced a civil legal matter when they attempted to sell a Roman torso to the Kimbell Art Museum in 2001. Then Hicham Aboutaam faced a misdemeanor charge after making false claims on a customs declaration in 2003 after smuggling an Iranian rhyton into the US. Rather than correctly stating its origin as Iranian (or Persian), he claimed that it originated from Syria. Yet, the gallery owners have been involved in other legal disputes since then. In 2014, the art gallery was in possession of a looted Roman sarcophagus lid smuggled out of Italy and sold to convicted antiquities trafficker Gianfranco Becchina. The Aboutaams exhibited the piece at the Park Avenue Armory in 2013, and it was eventually seized by US authorities and returned to Italy the following year.
Then yesterday, it was announced that the Cleveland Museum of Art returned a Roman bust acquired from Phoenix Ancient Art. It was proven that the marble was
looted from an archaeological museum in Sessa Aurunca, in southern Italy, during World War II.
Researchers and academics, such as David Gill, had objected to the museum’s acquisition at the time of its announcement. Yet this wasn’t the brothers’ first sale of suspicious property to the Cleveland Museum. In 2004, Phoenix Ancient Art sold a statue to the museum believed to be by Praxiteles. The provenance of the piece is so suspect that other museums won’t display the piece on loan, although it is one of the few known surviving pieces by the artist. Perhaps that statue will one day be restituted.
by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Apr 7, 2017 |
A recently recovered painting by Van Gogh
Leila’s curation of the exhibition Art Crime: Looters, Forgers, Thieves & Vandals was featured this week in NYU News’ “A Rogues’ Gallery of Art Crime.” The article discusses Leila’s seminar “Art Crime and the Law,” the first course of its type offered by NYU’s Department of Art History. Like the exhibition, the article examines some of the famous art crimes through history, including illicit activities directed toward fine art, antiquities, and collectibles. The article also reminds the reader that art crimes are usually not committed by dashing Clooney-like thieves (as incorrectly portrayed by Hollywood’s glamorizing of crime), but by gang members, violent criminals, and opportunists.
The histories of the featured works are intriguing (the selected works include some of the world’s most famous art), and the crimes against them are explored in the display, done in collaboration with research completed by students at NYU. The preparation of the exhibition was a great learning tool that now serves as an engaging exploration of art crime for a general audience. The show was slated to close on March 1, but its run has been extended until the end of the semester, due to it popularity. If you are interested in visiting the exhibition, it is now on display on the second floor of the Global Center at NYU (238 Thompson St, New York, NY 10012).
by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Mar 14, 2017 |
Armory Show Panel: Art Market Remains Unpredictable
On March 3, 2017, the Armory Show in New York held a panel called Conversation on Collecting: Hypotheses on the Future of the Art Market. The talk, presented by Athena Art Finance Corp and moderated by art market reporter Kelly Crow of the Wall Street Journal, encompassed expert panelists in the market: auctioneer Simon de Pury, gallerist Dominique Lévy, collector Alain Servais, Todd Levin, director of the Levin Art Group, and Athena Art Finance CEO, Andrea Danese.
The panelists’ predictions on the art market’s future recapped the longstanding debate about the motivations of collectors—whether the purchase of art is driven by personal and artistic tastes or the artwork’s investment potential. Some argue that collectors should not be focused on the monetary value of the work when purchasing artworks, finding the notion offensive. Rather, panelist Dominique Lévy encourages art collectors to focus on the intangible and emotional aspects of art—rather than letting the market drive their decision-making.
But still, with one Deloitte report finding that 72% of collectors purchase art as a hobby “with an investment view,” a perspective emphasized throughout the panel and in much public discourse about current collecting habits. Armory panelist Simon de Pury acknowledged the even those collectors who purchase out of love still want to know that they are not wasting their money when purchasing an artwork.
The panel also reinforced the oft-repeated warning that the art market is unpredictable: relying on past performances and numbers is very risky in a market where tastes habitually change daily and the slightest misstep of one artwork at auction can affect an entire artist’s oeuvre. And the modern and contemporary art market is particularly that way, due to many factors including the changing tastes of collectors and the speculative nature of investing in emerging, still-living artists. In fact, some experts have speculated Christie’s recent employment cutbacks and shutdown of its South Kensington location indicates a dangerously shortsighted emphasis on notoriously volatile modern and contemporary art.
The recent record-setting auction at Sotheby’s London also underscores the fickle nature of the art market: On March 1st at Sotheby’s Impressionist, Modern, and Surrealist Art sale, a Gustav Klimt painting for $59 million, the third most expensive artwork sold in Europe for a total combined results estimate of $241 million—the highest amount ever fetched at any London Auction. The results also came after the release of Sotheby’s Fourth Quarter earnings in late February, which indicated a significant increase in the company’s share price, which has doubled over the past year.
But for Sotheby’s and many others, the recent increased confidence in the art market was a welcome change to the art market, which experienced a significant slowdown in 2016. In spite of its recent successes, Sotheby’s itself had reported less than stellar earnings throughout 2016, including one auction in May where one-third of its lots went unsold. According to one gallerist, the overall art market saw a 30 to 40 percent decline in 2016, with many external economic factors that affect major buyers of artwork have been attributed to the art market slowdown.
Factors such as anxiety about the Chinese market and the falling oil prices, that have significantly impacted Russian and Saudi collectors have increased uncertainty in the future of the art market. Recently, it was reported that in a recent Christie’s auction, four of the top lots came from the collection of Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. Rybolovlev’s own recent legal battles revealed that he had likely paid much higher prices for the paintings than their estimates at auction.
Of course, to counteract the market’s unpredictability, financial experts have attempted to quantify art market data to predict market trends. Still, the Armory panelists contend that the abundance of graphs, charts, and quantitative information now available on the Internet, will do little to replace the traditional connoisseurship, personal experience and knowledge to predict valuable art investments. And these experts reiterated one of the key challenges of the current art market: the lack of public information about art market transactions makes it difficult to truly quantify and monitor movements in the art market.
But experts agree that that the art market will likely continue to flourish so long as there is the United States retains its tremendous wealth gap, and current executive policies in the United States indicate that nothing will drastically change the wealth distribution time soon. And with more money pouring into the art market, especially from collectors who have a background in finance, panelist Danese noted that data might become more reliable and efficient, as investment savvy collectors demand a more quantitative analysis of their potential art market investments.
But then again, another change could counteract this trend—Todd Levin, a panelist at the Armory show talk, noted in 2016 that collectors are likely turning to more private forums, like galleries to sell high valued artworks, rather than selling at auction. This would deprive the market of data about what tastemakers are buying and selling and whether this will actually be true in light of the recent success at auction is, of course, unpredictable.
by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Feb 21, 2017 |
On Sunday, the New York Times published an insightful article, “Has the Art Market Become an Unwitting Partner in Crime?,” examining how anonymity and shell companies have affected the commercial art market.
Mr. Bowley’s and Mr. Rashbaum’s piece provide an overview of how anonymity in art transactions have facilitated scandals including the forgery scheme that took down the Knoedler Gallery, the ongoing dispute between Russian billionaire collector Dmitry E. Rybolovlev and his one-time buyer Yves Bouvier, and the United States’ recent allegations that Malaysian government officials have allegedly embezzled more than $1 billion in public funds (and allegedly spent $130 billion of those laundered funds purchasing artwork at auction).
Of course, anonymity in the art market can provide buyers and sellers of artworks with privacy and security from theft. But as all these recent cases indicate that the same anonymity of offshore accounts and shell companies can also facilitate tax evasion and hiding assets both from the government and occasionally spouses, as was allegedly in the Dmitry Rybolovlev case.
Much of the increased scrutiny on the anonymous purchase and laundering of major artworks was catalyzed by last year’s release of the “Panama Papers,” a collection of more than 11 million files that were leaked by a German newspaper in April 2016. The documents, so-named for the Panamanian law firm that held the documents, exposed how offshore shell companies have been popularly utilized to conceal art ownership and facilitate tax evasion and money laundering. The Times article reiterates some of the same issues I have previously discussed about the use of shell companies to launder artworks when the Panama Papers story first broke.
The Times article provided a few examples of recent efforts to increase transparency such as the Treasury Department’s new initiatives in finance and real estate to more closely monitor the identity of holders of high-net worth property and shell companies. Christie’s has also announced that it will now require agents seeking to sell artworks through the auction house to disclose the owner’s identity. It will be interesting to see whether Sotheby’s and other commercial auction houses will follow Christie’s lead. Such changes could potentially have a significant impact on the use of artworks in international money laundering schemes.
Read the New York Times article here.
