The Most Revealing Art Auction Investigations – artmarketblog.com Over the years many very interesting and revealing investigations into the inner workings of art auction houses have been conducted by journalists.
News-Antique.com - Jan 16,2011 - Over the years many very interesting and revealing investigations into the inner workings of art auction houses have been conducted by journalists. Having read most of the results of these investigations myself, I thought that it would be useful to provide a list of what I believe are the most informative and educational investigations to have been published in recent times. If you are wondering at this point whether I hold some sort of grudge against art auction house then I can assure you that I don’t. Most of the problems that have arisen with the art auction sector have originated from either one person or a small number of people who think that they are invincible and take things too far.
1. Halsey Minor, an internet tycoon and art collector, recently contacted me regarding a post I wrote on the sins committed by art auction houses. Minor contacted me to inform me that he had recently launched an appeal against the summary judgement ruling in favor of Sotheby’s in their breach of contract action against him. As well as informing me of the appeal, Halsey also provided me with a copy of the now publically available appellate brief for this case which you can view here:
Although I cannot comment on the appeal as it is still being processed, I would urge everyone to read both sides of the case and make up their own mind.
2. In 2008 an Australian television program called Four Corners conducted an investigation into the actions of several major Australian auction houses. Below is a link to a very interesting interview with Paul Sumner, the owner of Australian art auction house Mossgreen:
3. The biggest scandal to hit the art auction world was the commission fixing scandal involving Sotheby’s and Christie’s that surfaced in 2000. See a particularly revealing investigation by the NY Times here:
6. The Economist published a particularly insightful article in November that investigated several issues with the November 2010 Phillips De Pury ‘Carte Blanche’ sale:
http://www.economist.com/node/17551930
**Nicholas Forrest is an art market analyst, art critic and journalist based in Sydney, Australia. He is the founder of http://www.artmarketblog.com, writes the art column for the magazine Antiques and Collectibles for Pleasure and Profit and contributes to many other publications
