New figures show the number of people visiting Britain's national museums has doubled since entry charges were dropped. Thousands have flocked to see collections at the Imperial War Museum, the V&A and the Natural History Museum and others since charges were scrapped on December 1. Some museums have seen visitor numbers quadruple. National museums campaigned long and hard for the scrapping of admission charges. They were finally abolished after Chancellor Gordon Brown plugged a loophole in the VAT laws which had prevented the change. The V&A saw the biggest increase with 174,249 visitors in December 2001 compared with 42,623 for the same period last year. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said: "These figures show what a spectacular success the scrapping of admission charges to our great national collections has been." http://www.itv.com/
Sotheby's may face its own sale of the century
By Joshua Chaffin - Jan 07 2002 21:44:25
Sotheby's has managed to sell just about everything over the years, from an original print of the Declaration of Independence to the fossilised skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. But its most challenging sale may be its own. It is widely expected that the 257-year-old auction house will go on the block following the conviction on December 5 of Alfred Taubman, the former chairman and controlling shareholder, on price-fixing charges. The speculation heightened on December 12 when Sotheby's board ordered the company's executive committee to meet "promptly" with Mr Taubman's representatives to discuss a possible sale. Mr Taubman has agreed to the meeting, and may be willing to part with his stake in the company. But a more difficult task may be persuading another wealthy investor to raise their paddle and bid. Even though Sotheby's share price has tumbled from more than $40 before the scandal erupted nearly two years ago to just $16.99 on Monday, many still regard it as an expensive trophy. The problem is that - even in the best of times - the eight-figure sums fetched by Monets and Renoirs are gobbled up by the enormous overhead to collect, catalogue and promote a slew of small-ticket items like baseball cards. The near-$2bn in goods Sotheby's sold at auction in 1998 - at the height of its conspiracy with rival Christie's - yielded a profit of only $54m. After taking a $203m charge last year to pay its legal bills, Sotheby's is again struggling this year. The company has lost $41.3m through the third quarter as it faces the prospect of recession. It is also burdened by a loss-making website. "These guys have no profitability," one art dealer said. "The last few years of collusion looked okay, but now you have to go back to cut-throat competition and zero return on your in vestment." Mr Taubman's trial offered a less than flattering advertisement for his business. Diana Brooks, the former chief executive, testified that she and Mr Taubman resorted to price fixing after Sotheby's was getting "killed on the bottom line" from a series of unprofitable concessions it granted to customers to win business. Michael Ainslie, who preceded Mrs Brooks, depicted an unpredictable environment where so much of the property that comes up for sale derives from death, divorce, or taxes. "Some years there are a lot of deaths and a lot of property comes on the market," Mr Ainslie told the jury. "Other years, it's a mild winter and it doesn't really happen." Not surprisingly, no candidates have publicly shouted their interest in Sotheby's. The most frequently mentioned possibilities are Bernard Arnault, the French luxury goods mogul, and eBay, the online auctioneer. The thinking is that Sotheby's would rest comfortably in Mr Arnault's stable of high-end brands, which includes Louis Vuitton, Moet & Chandon and Thomas Pink. Mr Arnault met Mr Taubman to discuss his interest in Sotheby's in 1999 before settling for Phillips, a distant third in the business. Ron Baron, whose mutual fund group is Sotheby's largest outside shareholder, told investors in a recent note that Mr Arnault could acquire Sotheby's for less money than he is losing on Phillips. Despite that logic, Mr Arnault has stridently denied interest, and there are good reasons to believe him. For one, his core businesses are suffering now that the economy has slowed. eBay also has a history with Sotheby's - not to mention a formidable $18.3bn market capitalisation. The companies previously discussed an online joint venture that would give eBay acc ess to the upper echelons of the auction market while allowing Sotheby's to use the internet to sell its lower-priced items. But eBay, which declined to comment, may also shy away from Sotheby's. Its experiment at selling fine artworks over the internet, known as "eBay Premier", has been a disappointment . The deal would also represent a culture clash. Sotheby's experts would find themselves at the mercy of a company that made its name by making markets in items like Beanie Baby collect ible dolls. It would be hard to imagine the companies' executives agreeing on a lunch menu, let alone sharing the same corporate cafeteria. Ultimately, some art figures believe that Sotheby's will go to someone like Mr Taubman, who would value it more for its cachet than its operating margins. "Some rich guy who wants to buy class," as one dealer put it. But given Sotheby's current straits, it is unclear how much even a vanity investor would pay.
THE Courtauld Institute Gallery in London and Birmingham University are facing renewed calls from Poland and Ukraine to return Albrecht Dürer masterpieces that the Nazis looted in the Second World War. They are among 12 leading public collections worldwide that are determined to hold on to 24 Dürer drawings which they bought in good faith. The drawings were taken from the Lubomirski Museum in Lvov, which moved from Poland to Ukraine after a border change. The museums that now own the Dürers are for the first time facing competing claims from both countries. The drawings were passed on to Hitler, who risked their destruction by having them taken to the Eastern Front. At the end of the war they were found by US troops in an Austrian salt mine. The Americans handed them in 1950 to a descendant of the Lubomirski family, one of the six great noble families of Poland, rather than to Lvov, and they were then sold. Directors of the 12 museums with the drawings have met at the Metropolitan Museum in New York to scour American documents that have been declassified recently and to discuss their legal position. Adolf Juzwenko, director of the Ossolinski Institute in Wroclaw, Poland, says that claims have been filed with each of the museums and that similar claims have been submitted by the Stefanyk Scientific Library in Lvov. Parts of the Lubomirski and Ossolinski collections were legitimately transferred to Wroclaw after the war when Poland’s border changed, while the Stefanyk library was set up by the Soviet Union after the original Lubomirski-Ossolinski museum was dissolved in 1939. At the Metropolitan the museum directors debated whether the US authorities should have abandoned their policy of handing over war loot to governments rather than individuals. Although an 1866 agreement specified that if the museum was disbanded, its contents should return to the Lubomirskis, the Poles point to a clause which says that, if the museum was re- established within 50 years, the contents should be returned by the family. Other museums with Lubomirski Dürers include the Cleveland Museum of Art, which has two drawings, and the Metropolitan Museum, which has three. The Barber Institute at Birmingham University acquired Dürer’s Man with Oar in 1954 from the London dealer Colnaghi for about £2,000. Paul Spencer-Longhurst, the institute’s senior curator, said: “There was no Lubomirski museum left at the end of war to which these could have been returned.” John Murdoch, director of the Courtauld, said that its Dürer was purchased entirely in good faith. “What appears to be clear is that, from what we know at present, we have complete and irreproachable title,” he said. “We are remaining alongside the rest of our colleagues in responding with sympathy and understanding to the Polish and Ukrainian case.” The Courtauld’s Dürer will be part of an exhibition at the British Museum at the end of the year. The British Museum thought it had a Dürer, The Rape of Europa, from the Lubomirski Museum, but it has now been reattributed to a contemporary of the artist, Hans Baldung, and the museum has not received a claim.
LONDON. In London, the hunt is on for the next director of the National Gallery. In Paris, the Musée d’Orsay has had to modify its statutes to allow Serge Lemoine, a university professor and curator in chief at the Musée de Grenoble, to become director. While in Spain, the Prado has its youngest ever director, Miguel Zugaza, 37, formerly director of the Museo de Bellas Artes of Bilbao. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=8536
COSTS OF AFGHAN WAR MAY THREATEN FUNDING TO THE HERMITAGE
ST PETERSBURG. The Russian government is blocking payments to the Hermitage for completing the museum’s ambitious Open Storage Facility, which is intended to be accessible to visitors. The fear now is that with the conflict in Afghanistan extra money may go to the military budget. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=8535
GO AHEAD FOR VENICE LAGOON BARRIERS
ROME. The Italian government, led by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, has decided to give the definitive go ahead to the scheme for mobile barriers at the three openings from the Adriatic into the lagoon of Venice. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=8534
GAMBLE HARDER!
LONDON. The British Lottery operator Camelot recorded a 5% drop in sales during the past six months, compared with same period last year. This means that money for Good Causes fell to £668 million for the half year, down from £708 million. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=8533
MY EVENING WITH KALASHNIKOVS AND THE BEGRAM IVORIES
LONDON. In 1996, art dealer and scholar Johnny Eskenazi was taken secretly to the house of a Pakistani politician where he saw one of the greatest treasures from the Kabul Museum http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=8530