Displaying items by tag: profit

Italy is turning to the private sector to try to increase the profitability of some of its cultural treasures, including the Uffizi gallery in Florence and Borghese gallery in Rome.

Under a new initiative sponsored by the government of the prime minister, Matteo Renzi, Italy’s cultural centers are likely to begin to look more like other great museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, by opening more restaurants, gift shops, ticket booths, guides, and other tourist-friendly additions that can start generating bigger profits.

Pablo Picasso’s Paris studio where he painted the iconic Guernica in 1937 is at the center of a legal battle. The cultural group The National Committee for Artistic Education (CNEA) has been using the historic loft as its headquarters since 2002 but a French court is considering evicting the committee.

Founded in 1966, CNEA promotes arts education in schools and was given the space by Paris’ Chambre des Huissiers de Justice. As property prices in the artsy Saint-Germain-des Prés soar, the Chambre could make a considerable profit from the loft.

Besides being Picasso’s home and studio from 1936 to 1955, No. 7 Rue Grands-Augustins was the setting of a Honore de Balzac short story, the first home of Jean-Louis Barrault’s theatre company and a popular meeting place for Jean-Paul Sartre, George Bataille and Jean Cocteau. CNEA has hosted over 700 events at the loft.

Onetime friends and business partners, powerhouse art dealer Larry Gagosian and billionaire collector Ronald O. Perelman have been involved in a bitter legal battle since September 2012. On January 25, 2013 Gagosian asked a New York judge to dismiss the case, which accuses him of using his high standing in the art world to arrange secret deals and influence art prices; Gagosian claims that the lawsuit is frivolous.

The ongoing clash started last year when Perelman purchased Jeff Koons’ (b. 1955) $4 million Popeye sculpture from Gagosian along with two other works said to be a Cy Twombly (1928-2011) painting and a Richard Serra (b. 1939) sculpture. Perelman paid for Koons’ oversize granite sculpture in full, but decided to cancel the deal when the work took longer than expected to complete. Since the value of Koons’ work is constantly on the rise, Perelman insisted that Gagosian owed him $12 million rather than the $4 million he initially paid for the unfinished work.

In his lawsuit, Perelman claimed that Gagosian had a secret agreement with Koons to redirect most of the profit from Popeye’s resale away from Perelman and towards Koons. The sculpture in question was ultimately sold to an unnamed buyer for $4.5 million and Gagosian gave $4.25 million of that back to Perelman, a fact Gagosian pointed out in court on Friday. Gagosian also claimed that Perelman refused to pay the agreed-upon price for the Twombly and Serra works, insisting that he would compensate for the debt he accumulated by giving Gagosian a number of artworks from his collection that he no longer wanted. Rather than benefitting from the deal as Perelman asserts, Gagosian said that he has lost $1.8 million so far.

While Perelman maintains that Gagosian is dishonest and deceitful in his dealings, Gagosian claims that the lawsuit is simply a way for his former friend to mar his name. Perelman’s side has made subpoenas as the battle continues.  

An ornately decorated 18^th century Chinese porcelain vase sold for a record-setting $83 million in London on November 11, 2010. The vase, which was made for the Qianlong Emperor, soared past its presale estimate and became the highest-selling Asian work of art ever offered at auction. However, the original buyer failed to pay for the vase and the piece is now being sold for less than half its record-setting price.  

The vase’s owners, Tony Johnson, a retired lawyer, and his mother, Gene, have held on to the work for over two years after the original sale without seeing a profit. Johnson and his mother recently found another buyer for the vase, which will sell for an undisclosed amount believed to be between $32.1 million and $40.2 million. The London-based auction house Bonhams helped facilitate the sale.

The recent price tag is much more sensible for the Qing-dynasty vase, which features a reticulated body painted in the famille rose palette. The sale of Chinese art and antiquities peaked in 2010, leading to a number of major sales that were not always realized. The demand for Chinese works of art has since leveled off.