[MSN] Art boom creates fertile climate for fakery

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Art boom creates fertile climate for fakery

The market for contemporary art is thriving, but the art boom has 
created an environment that is ripe for forgery and corruption in the 
public and private sphere, a visiting German curator warned this week.

Dr Anne Marie Freybourg, a freelance arts adviser, critic and resident 
of Berlin, said "the production of contemporary art has increased to a 
level we have never seen before, there has been an expansion of 
galleries, and many more people involved . . . this opens the art world 
up to much more forgery and corruption". Freybourg was the guest speaker 
at RMIT Gallery's forum on the ethics of public museums, private 
collectors, donors, curators and dealers.

As the alleged conflict-of-interest case involving the National Gallery 
of Victoria's curator, Geoffrey Smith, plays out, RMIT was guaranteed a 
strong turnout for the forum. More than 100 people attended, including 
the wife of late artist John Brack, Helen Maudsley, the former director 
of Sherman Galleries, William Wright, and the former director of the 
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Warwick Reeder.

RMIT Gallery's director, Suzanne Davies, told the audience, "We planned 
it 12 months ago; it's serendipitous that events have developed the way 
they have," alluding to the Smith case. While Freybourg could not 
comment on that particular case, she raised concerns about the 
increasing connections between private collectors and public museums.

In Germany, private art collections are increasingly being donated or 
loaned to public museums. A lack of funding and thus buying-power has 
obliged public museums to take these private collections on. "This has 
caused a serious crisis for public museums, because more and more public 
collectors push their collections on to museums and place outrageous 
conditions on the museums, while using their services," Freybourg said.

In the long run, the main beneficiaries of such arrangements are the 
private collectors, who gain the imprimatur of public museums and whose 
collections inevitably rise in value.

"The art market was never innocent, and this crisis is the chance for 
museums to wake up and look at their naivety," Freybourg said.

The values of public museums and private collectors were vastly 
different, she said. The aim of museum collections was to tell the story 
of art history, while private collectors were generally motivated by 
financial considerations.

Another speaker, journalist Stephen Feneley, called for greater 
transparency in the curatorial decisions made by public museums and the 
relationships between public galleries and private art collectors.

In a later discussion with The Age, Feneley raised the issue of 
businessman Steve Vizard loaning the Vizard Foundation Art Collection to 
the Ian Potter Museum of Art.

"If Vizard wanted to make a big man of himself, maybe he should make a 
magnanimous gesture and give that work to the Potter, because the Potter 
has put a lot of work into boosting the integrity of that work," Feneley 
said.

Feneley and Freybourg agreed that a conspiracy of silence surrounds 
public museums, with people reticent to speak publicly about 
questionable dealings.

Freybourg added that there was a "desperate need" for a discussion about 
aesthetic qualities of contemporary art.

"Postmodernism has confused the discussion about the aesthetic value and 
the quality of art, and anything goes," she said.

http://www.theage.com.au/