Displaying items by tag: art collection

As a small-town Midwestern boy in the 1940s, Robert Duncan saved souvenir license plates from cereal boxes, not knowing that he was igniting a passion for collecting painting and sculpture.

"The stakes are just higher in contemporary art," says Mr. Duncan, now 72, "and the game is more fun."

Mr. Duncan and his wife, Karen, have spent decades building a collection of contemporary art that former museum director George Neubert ranks among the 50 best in the country. It encompasses nearly 2,000 works by such artists as Louise Bourgeois, Bruce Nauman, Yinka Shonibare and Kiki Smith.

The couple live in Lincoln, Neb., but maintain strong ties with their hometown of Clarinda, Iowa, where they went on their first date as junior-high students. The Duncans are turning the 1908 Carnegie library there into the Clarinda Carnegie Art Museum.

Tucked into concert halls and hidden in plain sight across the Lincoln Center campus is a modern-art collection worthy of a museum.

But many visitors walk right past these gems. The collection includes 41 paintings and sculptures by modern masters such as Jasper Johns and Alexander Calder.

Eleven underwent conservation during the recently completed $1.2 billion renovation of the performing-arts institution's 16-acre campus.

A handful of business are pledging almost $27 million toward the Detroit Institute of Arts’ commitment to raise $100 million as part of a “grand bargain” that will help the city emerge from bankruptcy, support pensioners and protect the museum’s art collection for the public.

The $26.8 million comprises $10 million from Roger S. Penske and Penske Corporation, $5 million from DTE Energy, $5 million from Quicken Loans and the Rock Ventures Family of Companies, $2.5 million from BCBSM, $1 million from Meijer, $1 million from Comerica Bank, $1 million from JPMorgan Chase, $800,000 from Consumers Energy and $500,000 from Delta Air Lines Foundation.

The wealth, land and art collections of Richard Mellon Scaife, the late owner of the Tribune-Review, will be distributed among two foundations, a trust, an art museum and a conservancy, according to his will.

The will does not specify any individuals as benefactors, and lists only one sum, $15 million, which will go to the Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art for maintenance and management of a conservancy Scaife built on the grounds of his childhood home.

Scaife, an heir to the Scaife and Mellon fortunes, died on July 4, a day after his 82nd birthday.

In a world of technology that grows at break-neck speed, our everyday life is constantly being altered. Everything from phones and cameras to sneakers, watches, air conditioners and even dog collars are “smarter” than us. As an art appraiser, my clients are prominent art collectors – predominantly high-net worth, sophisticated and tech-savvy. As such, they are often the first to try out the latest technological marvel. Except, as it turns out, when it comes to their art collection.

Considering that every week there is inevitably at least one news story relating to a high-value artwork theft, damage, fraud or authentication scandal, there is certainly a need for technologies to prevent such calamities. Those are only the stories that make the news, usually high profile works of art worth tens and even hundreds of millions dollars. As an appraiser, I am frequently called by clients who have had a theft, or even simply misplaced art, silver and decorative objects. The values are not comparatively impressive, but still worth a considerable investment in preventative technology.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), which stood by Steven A. Cohen last year as his SAC Capital Advisors LP bore the brunt of a massive insider trading probe, has come to the billionaire’s aid again.

The top prime broker to the former hedge-fund firm, Goldman Sachs is making a personal loan to Cohen for the first time, according to a regulatory filing, joining the list of banks that have provided SAC’s founder with credit lines backed by his $1 billion art collection. Like Citigroup Inc. (C), JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp., New York-based Goldman Sachs is making the loan through its private bank as part of an effort to expand its business catering to ultra-wealthy individuals.

The German government has released some details about the astounding art collection found in a dilapidated Munich apartment. Authorities released a written statement saying that about 590 of the 1,400 artworks could have been stolen by Nazis and identified 25 of the pieces on the website www.lostart.de. Among the paintings listed on the site were Otto Dix’s The Woman in the Theater Box, Otto Griebel’s Child at the Table and Max Liebermann’s Rider on the Beach. The trove also includes works by Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso.

The masterpieces were found in the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of the art dealer Hildebrandt Gurlitt, who reportedly acquired the works in the late 1930s and 1940s. Gurlitt’s father had been put in charge of selling the stolen artworks abroad by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, but secretly hoarded many of them and later claimed that they were destroyed in the bombing of Dresden. Gurlitt, an unemployed recluse, sold a number of the paintings over the years and lived off of the profits. 200 of the pieces have outstanding return requests from the original owners’ heirs.

The German government has assembled a task force of six experts to research the provenance of each recently discovered artwork. To date, it has been determined that one painting by Matisse was stolen by the Nazis from a French bank in 1942.  

German officials will update the Lost Art website regularly as the investigation progresses.

When the Spanish cotton baron Julio Muñoz Ramonet died in 1991, he left his illustrious art collection to the city of Barcelona. In 1995, to comply with the terms of his will, Barcelona’s city council established the Julio Muñoz Ramonet foundation, which oversees Ramonet’s properties and art collection.

However, Ramonet’s will and collection has been mired in legal controversy after his four daughters asked that their late father’s requests be annulled. The Spanish Supreme Court recently ruled in Barcelona’s favor, allowing the city to maintain control of Ramonet’s collection. Following the case, authorities visited Ramonet’s villa only to find that the most significant works in his collection had been removed. Authorities are now seeking masterpieces by Rembrandt, E Greco, Diego Velázquez, Sandro Botticelli and Francisco de Goya that were once displayed in Ramonet’s private residence.

While Ramonet’s daughters are not suspected of wrongdoing, a full inventory of Ramonet’s collection is being conducted.

After filing for bankruptcy last month, the city of Detroit has hired the international auction house Christie’s to appraise a portion of its city-owned art collection, which is housed in the Detroit Institute of Arts. City officials have not yet decided if they will sell any works in an attempt to quell creditors.

Rumors about the fate of the D.I.A.’s illustrious collection circulated quickly after representatives from Christie's visited the museum this past June. The auction house confirmed on Monday, August 5, 2013 that they have been hired to appraise the D.I.A.’s holding but did not specify which portion of the collection they would be evaluating. The auction house said in a statement, “Christie’s was asked to assist due to our expertise in this area across all fine art categories and eras. We understand that a valuation of all the City’s assets (extending well beyond the art) is one of many steps that will be necessary for the legal system to reach a conclusion about the best long term solution for the citizens of Detroit.”

The office of Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr will pay for the appraisal, which will cost $200,000 and is expected to wrap up in October. Christie’s will only appraise works of art that are city-owned and are not subject to donor restrictions that could prevent a possible sale.

A multimillion-dollar art collection built by poet T.S. Eliot’s widow, Valerie, will be sold at Christie’s London on November 20, 2013. The collection includes works by Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Lucian Freud (1922-2011), and J.M.W. Turner (1775-19851). Ms. Eliot, who passed away in November at the age of 86, amassed her collection using royalties from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music Cats, which was based on her husband’s whimsical poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Ms. Eliot’s collection, which resided in the London home she shared with her husband, is expected to garner around $7.6 million.

Highlights from the collection include drawings and watercolors by 18^th and 19^th century British artists including Turner, Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), and John Constable (1776-1837); a sculpture by Henry Moore (1898-1986); and a lush landscape titled The Cathedral, Hackwood Park by Winston Churchill (1874-1965). There will also be portrait miniatures from the 16^th through the 19^th centuries, furniture, and jewelry for sale.

Proceeds from the Christie’s auction will benefit the Old Possum’s Practical Trust, an arts charity created by Ms. Eliot.