Sobering news about the leading to the the lesser.
Archive for the ‘art inventory leveraging’ Category
whoops
March 28, 2009What to do about the near collapse of global finance
September 25, 2008To everyone frantically diversifying their portfolios – don’t put your money in timber, choose a different wood, like an oil on panel.
Did you know…
June 13, 2008that most of the major art theft occurs because of 2 specific groups of bandits: one called the Balkan Bandits and the other, a ring of Irish thieves. Once the art is lifted from regional museums, galleries and less secure spaces the work is used as leverage in arms and drug deals. Those individuals who track the lost art and help negotiate it’s return are hired by the insurance companies who have underwritten the collection, not the museums.
But in this most recent case, the work probably wasn’t insured like the first time… since these last works were prints and can’t compare to a trophy from Isabella, it’s probably just local thieves who have the work in Brazil. Soon they are going to freak out, leave them in a bathroom stall and the prints will get water damaged and have to be repaired – it happens in France all the time
One of my favorite tales from France is of the Italian glazier who stole the Mona Lisa in 1911 while working at the Louvre fitting protective glass into frames. Though, I feel stoic act of repatriation, when he got the work back to Italy (feeling like a national hero) and tried to resell it 2 years later, everyone was like “Ummmm, Vincenzo, listen. We gotta talk. I kinda don’t have a viable client for this…” (he was arrested and it was later returned.)
More thoughts on Liquid Skies
August 10, 2007In addition to my first commentary on Charlie Finch’s article Liquid Skies, another point I found interesting was his reference to the use of an art inventory’s value as collateral for a gallery. This practice is in fact new and is due to a new generation of lenders who don’t understand how to evaluate levels of risk and can be directly related to the shaky subprime market I spoke in an earlier post. As for the galleries who engage in this borrowing activity, it’s foolish unless they are sure they can repay the loan.
