Subodh Gupta: Very Hungry God, 2006. Coll.Francois Pinault (Palazzo Grassi, 2007)
Tijdens het 41ste Aica Congres te São Paulo in oktober 2007 sprak Maarten Bertheux als onafhankelijk curator over de huidige invloed van de kunstmarkt op het tentoonstellingbeleid van kunstmusea. Hij pleit ervoor dat musea zich aan deze invloed onttrekken en hun beleid weer richten op educatieve en maatschappelijke taken. Het beleid van Stedelijk Museum directeur Sandberg stelt hij daarbij als voorbeeld.
door Maarten Bertheux
I would like to share with you two articles I read recently in the newspapers. One appeared three weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal, about a new group of art buyers: children under the age of fifteen. In America rich art collector parents are staking their children with large amounts of money annually to buy art. One boy of twelve had made a successful bid of $352,000 for a Jeff Koons sculpture of a silver gnome. The work went well with the rest of his collection that included works by Richard Prince, an airplane drawing by Andy Warhol and works by graffiti artists. A girl of fifteen concentrated on collecting artworks that are colorful. Her parents have been supporting her in her acquisitions since she was eight. The estimated annual budgets of individuals in this new group of young collectors are around $50,000. The parents feel it is important that from an early age their children should be aquatinted with art and the creation of their own art collections. Last Saturday’s International Herald Tribune mentioned that the major auction houses are continuing to sell art at a breakneck pace. In July, Christie’s International announced worldwide sales of $3.25 billion for the first six months of 2007, an increase of 32 percent over the $2.24 billion sales of the same period in 2006. In Christie’s salesrooms around the world, 385 works of art sold more than $1 million apiece, compared with 189 sold during the same period last year.
According to Marc Porter, president of Christie’s Americas, New York will remain the world’s primary sale site – and the sales that are lined up for November both for Impressionist and modern art and for postwar and contemporary art have the highest pre-sale estimates in the auctioneer’s history. Porter also says that he expects that while Europeans and Asians collect American paintings, Americans, in their postwar and contemporary collections, often buy European paintings. “Now more and more are buying Chinese contemporary art,†he says, “which is why we include Asian contemporary art in our sales. Art auctions have become truly global events – and Europeans and Asians very much want to take part in the buyout market here in New Yorkâ€.
Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s head of worldwide contemporary art, points to the continuation of the bull market. He predicts that twentieth and twenty-first century art will continue to sell at a record pace for the foreseeable future. According to Meyer this is simply due to the enormous amount of wealth being created among art collectors in China, India, Russia and the Middle East. Today we don’t have a cyclical market, because now there is an increasing number of individuals from all over the world who buy with a vengeance. As Meyer says: “As far as we can tell this expanding art market hasn’t even properly started yet.â€
I have to say that I used to dislike talking about the relationship between art and money. Most of the time it says more about a sociological situation than about art. Moreover, it serves to amplify the prejudices surrounding art. But today, having worked in the Stedelijk Museum for more then twenty years, I have become acutely aware of the relentlessly mounting pressures of economic and political change. Read more
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