25 minute read
Art Theft In Lockdown
By Gail Bosch
It has been a common misperception historically that only electronics and jewellery are stolen in South Africa, but art theft, even though not as common, is happening.
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We have no intention of downplaying the risk of theft of high valued jewellery, and the increased levels of theft in this category.
As levels of desperation among the population increase with the impact of the COVID-19 virus and resultant lockdown on the income of so many, so too do the levels of crime.
We have been in lockdown for about a year now, that sounds incredible to put in writing, but it’s been a year in which high numbers of people no longer earn a living. Putting bread on the tables has become a much more difficult task.
The reasons are many, they may be justified, but the fact remains that many people are hungry.
This is perhaps, not the ideal time to wear your best jewellery to the grocery store. Not only because you need to go through the process of claiming from your insurance, but also because it is dangerous.
No insurer wants to tell their clients that they should rather not take the risk, but we live in extraordinary times.
Quite frankly, insurance will earn higher premiums for Jewellery and watches that are worn regularly when compared to cover whilst in a bank vault or home safe only. It will protect your financial investment in your collection, but nothing can replace the irreplaceable when it comes to sentimental value. Even more important, there is nothing that is worth the safety of you and your family.
Jeffrey Jason, Karootoneel, Oil On Canvas, 900 x 1200mm
Adriaan Boshoff, My Gypsy Dream, Oil On Canvas, 810 x 1225mm
Danie Smith, Restauranttoneel, Oil On Canvas, 900 x 1200mm
Art Theft a growing trend:
The privacy of every one of our clients is sacrosanct. We do not divulge personal information, nor the details pertaining to individual claims. We can however, comment on the trends that we are seeing.
Since the start of Lockdown in March 2020, iTOO Artinsure has paid out approximately R6 million in claims for the theft of Art and Collectables - and these are only our own claims.
Examples include jewellery stolen from safes, Chinese ceramics, Oil paintings and sculptures.
Owners should take extra measures to secure their collections by reviewing their existing security measures to ensure that all systems are functioning properly and perhaps consider moving vulnerable collections to specialist fine art storage facilities or bank vaults.
Marie Vermeulen-BreedtMymering – Toneel In ‘N Klassieke Interieur, Oil On Canvas, 900 x 1200mm
Danie Smith, Verposing, Oil On Canvas, 810 x 1000mm
Of course, expert insurance of your precious collections will allow you to rest easy, knowing that your financial investment is protected.
In our ongoing efforts to recover stolen artworks, we maintain an Art Theft Register, which is freely available to everyone, at no cost, to notify authorities and commercial art dealers of items that may not be legally sold.
The faster we are notified, the better the chances of recovery. Items of this nature and value are moved quickly and rather frighteningly professionally. We are not just talking about an opportunist snatching an unattended cell phone.
Those items can be replaced. Art cannot.
Auctions STEPHAN WELZ & CO.
Premier Online Auction 2021
www.swelco.co.za
Following the success of the Stephan Welz & Co. Cape Town Premier sale, our staff and specialists are hard at work preparing for the upcoming Premier Online Auction, taking place on the 23rd and 24th March.
The March sale features pieces from soughtafter artists which our collectors have come to expect from Stephan Welz & Co., while remaining accessible to the average auctiongoer and appealing to a more diverse collector base. Whether you are looking for a contemporary piece, or a work by an old master, we are proud to be presenting works by artists from Norman Catherine to Helen Sebidi and J.H. Pierneef. We are looking forward to providing clients with an auction experience which combines a long-standing reputation with forward-thinking online bidding solutions.
Stephan Welz & Co. has seen an unprecedented increase in sales of contemporary works on our auctions, with many hammer prices surging above their high estimates. This represents a shift in the current market, not only towards a more contemporary aesthetic, but also indicates the diversification of buying pools, with younger collectors starting to make their mark on the auction world. We are looking forward to working closely with contemporary collectors, artists and exhibitors to take this art category from strength to strength, particularly as participation in online transactions increases and matures.
Despite the continued challenges associated with Covid-19, Stephan Welz & Co. has embraced our new circumstances, continuing with hybrid auction models and ensuring that consignment, valuation and buying on auction is convenient, safe and accessible from the comfort of your home. With over fifty years of experience, Stephan Welz & Co. maintains our commitment to knowledge, transparency and discretion.
Jacob Hendrik Pierneef, Rehoboth, SWA, watercolour over pencil on paper, R25 000—R35 000 Helen Sebidi, Women Carrying Washing, oil on board, R15 000—R20 000
Norman Clive Catherine, DS 3-02, from the Performance Set, giclee print, R18 000—R24 000
Our expertise spans multiple categories, and our specialists are excited to find new ways to interact with loyal and prospective clients throughout the year, starting with the launch of our cross-country valuation sweeps, where we will be hosting various valuation days in major cities across South Africa.
Whether you have a collection of old masters, a portfolio of contemporary works, would like expert advice on procuring or selling investment pieces, or if you are simply curious about the value of your items, contact us on support@swelco.co.za to find out when we will be nearest to you. In addition to our valuation sweeps, both our Johannesburg and Cape Town branches are actively consigning for upcoming auctions. Contact us on ct@swelco.co.za or info@ swelco.co.za or phone +27 11 880 3125/ +27 21 794 6461 if you are interested in consulting with our specialists.
ART MARKET NEWS
As Dealers Look to Reinvent Their Businesses, German Gallerist Johann König Is Hiring an Auctions Expert to Steer His In-House Fair Model
First published on news.artnet.com by Kate Brown, February 12, 2021
In a sign of further hybridization of the art market, Galerie König in Berlin has announced a revamped 2021 edition of the in-house art fair that it piloted last year. To oversee the weeklong sale of primary and secondary market works, the gallery has appointed an auctions expert to the helm.
Lena Winter has now joined the gallery as the director of the event, dubbed Messe in St. Agnes (“messe” is both the word for fair and church service in German). Her expertise flows from the German auction world, where she served as head of the contemporary art department at Ketterer Kunst in Munich, one of Germany’s leading auction houses. She previously worked at Lempertz and Grisebach auction houses.
The 2021 fair will run May 2 through 9 this spring at a converted brutalist church that the gallery operates as an exhibition space (hence the pun). The dates overlap with Gallery Weekend Berlin, which takes place as a two-part even this year, with its first chapter running from April 29 to May 2 this year (the second event will take place in September focused on more emerging and underrepresented positions).
“In auction houses, prices are more transparent and so there is less anxiety around for new clients entering the art market,” Winter told Artnet News. “We want to take this approach, and have transparency be one of the main aspects of the fair in St. Agnes. We want things to be democratic.”
This year’s edition of the fair will be a tidied up version of the salon-style concept that it debuted last year, in May and September. This time around, works will be curated into different thematic sections: abstract expressionism, figuration, and “young contemporary” are a few placeholder ideas that are in the making. Winter said the gallery is creating a specialized architecture to better accommodate the viewing experience.
When Messe St. Agnes was first launched last spring, it was met was a mix of both gratitude by some and friction with other dealers in the city. “It’s always difficult for people to adapt to new formats and the mix of primary and secondary markets,” said König. “But we need to all find new niches in our own regions.”
Both Winter and König share the conviction that the art market needs to hybridize its various sectors, the gallery and auction worlds, and continue to innovate. “You have to open the borders between the primary and secondary market, because they need each other,” said Winter. “The one market is not anything without the other.”
2020 Messe in St. Agnes. by Roman Maerz.
She adds that the relationship between the primary and secondary markets was marked by “misunderstanding” for a long time, as well as a fear of that primary dealers had of auctions due to the transparency of sales.
The gallery may be the first in Germany to fully embrace such a path. Still, this blurring of categories is also occurring online this month with VEZA, an online selling event organized by Goodman Gallery that focuses on highlighting selected works by dealers in the Global South. And auction houses, for their part, have been leaning more on private sales, while also trying out new concepts, such as Christie’s primary market sale “Say It Out Loud,” which was organized by dynamo curator Destinee Ross-Sutton.
“The pandemic sped up a process that was already necessarily transforming,” said Winter. “It is not possible for a gallery to simply grow by only having their 20 or so artists anymore.”
INTERNATIONAL ART NEWS
Keep problematic monuments and ‘explain them’, UK government to tell cultural leaders
First published on www.theartnewspaper.com By Gareth Harris 15th February 2021
The UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden will stoke the debate raging over controversial historic monuments by telling museum and heritage leaders later this month that they “must defend our culture and history from the noisy minority of activists constantly trying to do Britain down”.
According to the Daily Telegraph, Dowden is due to tell the leaders of the National Trust, Historic England, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Arts Council England, the British Museum and the Imperial War Museum at a roundtable meeting how to put into practice the government’s “retain and explain” approach towards heritage. A source close to the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) confirmed that the meeting is scheduled to take place on 23 February. Last month, the UK government announced new laws aimed at safeguarding historic monuments across England. The legislation, if approved by Parliament, will require individuals to have listed building consent or planning permission before removing any historic statue. The law would come into effect from March and apply to England’s 12,000 statues. “Our view will be set out in law, that such monuments are almost always best explained and contextualised,” said Robert Jenrick, the communities secretary.
But the government’s strategy has drawn criticism from some artists. “The government does not understand how monuments function as visual cues; they are not inert but uphold and reinforce incredibly objectionable ideas: racism, chauvinism, sexism, homophobia,” says the sculptor Nick Hornby.
“It is simply a matter of understanding visual literacy—the public ‘read’ the landscape they inhabit—and a statue is no different to a zebra crossing. We know what it means and we respond. Conserving public monuments is to conserve their values,” Hornby argues. So is recontextualising contentious monuments the answer? “In terms of recontextualising a statue, a simple small-scale label won’t suffice. How can a tiny plaque compete with a monument?” he says.
“The point I want to raise about scale and proportion of interpretation is that the viewing distances for public monuments are typically from quite far away, and that a small plaque isn’t noticeable. Walking past the Albert memorial [in London] on the other side of the road, you typically don’t read that small text label. An explanatory panel, a QR code—this is not how public
spaces and streets are used. People are busy, people walk fast— they see these things every day in their periphery—and these sculptures unconsciously reinforce ideas that are problematic.”
The artist Bob and Roberta Smith, a Royal Academician, also tells The Art Newspaper: “The British establishment is obsessed with continuity in order to maintain the power of UK institutions. They don’t realise that keeping faith with lots of awful men who committed numerous atrocities during Britain’s empire, in the face of inevitable growing new awareness of different histories, undermines all of us.”
The Public Statues and Sculpture Association (PSSA) believes the government’s action is justified though. “If such statues are removed this will leave an historic vacuum of ignorance. We will have manipulated history in the same way these statues have been accused of doing by misrepresenting it. There will be nothing for later generations to learn from. If on the other hand, statues are retained and given full, inclusive and honest didactic labels this can help mitigate some of the cruel, barbaric acts of the past,” say the association cochairs Joanna Barnes and Holly Trusted.
The PSSA believes there should be national and local consultation about contested works, with newly established committees comprising art historians able to comment on the historic significance of disputed works. “The monument to William Beckford in the Guildhall Great Hall is an excellent example of the need for this sort of expertise when these works are reviewed,” say Barnes and Trusted, referring to the City of London Corporation’s decision to remove statues of William Beckford and John Cass. “It is a rare example of an 18th-century monument still in the civic setting for which it was designed; this highly important historical fact only featured in arguments to retain the work once the PSSA had pointed this out,” they say. Jenrick waded into the debate again last week by sending a letter to the City of London Corporation which warned that removing the statues of Beckford and Cass puts the city’s “rich history” at risk.
A City of London Corporation spokesman tells The Art Newspaper that a working group has been set up that will now consider the next steps regarding the two statues which currently stand in Guildhall. He says: “As Guildhall is a Grade I-listed building, we will need to seek planning permissions and we will of course comply with any new legislation that might be brought in.”
Last year, Dowden implied in a letter to cultural institutions sent on 22 September that they could lose government funding if they fail to toe the government line on contested heritage. “The significant support that you receive from the taxpayer is an acknowledgement of the important cultural role you play for the entire country. It is imperative that you continue to act impartially, in line with your publicly funded status, and not in a way that brings this into question,” Dowden wrote.
The move prompted Sharon Heal, the director of the advocacy body Museums Association, to respond: “We feel that this contravenes the long-established principle that national museums and other bodies operate at arm’s length from government and are responsible primarily to their trustees.” DCMS declined to comment.
BUSINESS ART
Christie’s Auction House Will Now Accept Cryptocurrency
First published on www.bloomberg.com By James Tarmy, February 18, 2021
Last October, the digital artist Mike Winkelmann, who goes by Beeple, put a digital artwork in an edition of 100 up for sale. Each work cost $1, and the entire set sold out in less than one second. Today the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) representing the digital artworks are trading on Nifty Gateway, an NFT marketplace run by the Winklevoss twins, for “well over $50,000,” Winkelmann says. (The site lists the average resale price as $6,559, but the artist says that number is misleading, as it includes early, low-priced sales.)
In December, Beeple held an auction, in which he offered an open edition of three works, priced at $969 apiece. In five minutes 601 sold, totaling $582,369. The same auction included 20 unique digital artworks, which made a total of $2.2 million. The final lot in the sale was a single artwork containing all 20 images, which sold, after protracted bidding, for $777,778. All told, $3.5 million of Beeple’s art sold in just a few days.
“It’s been a lot to take in,” says Winkelmann, who has 1.8 million Instagram followers and until a few months ago had a day job making visuals for brands including Apple and Louis Vuitton, and artists such as Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande. “The rabbit hole of possibilities that this is going to bring to the art world—I don’t think people are fully recognizing that this is going to be a massive, massive shift,” he says.
Fueling this shift is the network called Ethereum, which supports cryptocurrency Ether, currently trading at about $1,800 per token.
Everyone collecting Beeple’s artwork— almost all of the people who’ve bought, sold, and even fractionalized ownership of his images—were using Ether to pay for it, effortlessly shifting dollars and cents into the cryptocurrency via Coinbase, Gemini, and other platforms.
“Ethereum is like Bitcoin, but you can program rules on top of it that govern how these things work. ‘Smart money’ is the easiest sort of analogy for people,” Winkelmann says. “There’s a bunch of advantages that [cryptocurrency] affords. It’s super interesting and adds a ton of value.”
These advantages are not lost on the more traditional branches of the art market. On Tuesday, Christie’s announced it would auction a work by Beeple, Everydays: The First 5000 Days, in a standalone sale, which runs from Feb. 25 to March 11.
Now the auction house has revealed to Bloomberg that it will accept Ether as payment for the artwork’s principal price. The premium, which is a polite word for saying the fee an auction house tacks on to the price, will have to be paid in dollars.
Everydays: The First 5000 Days by Beeple, which was minted on Feb. 16, 2021. Source: Christie’s
“We’re at this precipice where crypto is going to be such a more established and mainstream mode of conducting business,” says Noah Davis, the Christie’s specialist who’s organized the auction. “With this [sale], I think it’s the perfect way to dip our toes in and give this a shot.”
That Christie’s is willing to accept cryptocurrency for the first time, Davis continues, says more about the auction house’s attempt to break into new audiences than it does about a shift in the traditional art market.
Ideally, Davis says, a heretofore uninterested demographic of people could also realize that the auction market is, well, fun. “I’m thinking of Reddit, and GameStop, and the low bar for entry on platforms like Robinhood,” he says. “This artwork is the perfect way into the Christie’s universe.”
“There are 1.8 million people who follow this guy on Instagram and for whom a $100 starting bid, up to a few thousand dollars, is accessible,” Davis says. “We want people to play the game and see that bidding is not this impossible-to-do, sort of velvet rope way to engage in popular culture.”
Davis first heard about Beeple from a junior colleague who told him about the wildly successful sales on Nifty Gateway.
He contacted Winkelmann and had an initial discussion that Davis describes as “abstract.” Winkelmann, in turn, offered a work for Christie’s to sell that Davis describes as “a complete nonstarter for us.” It was, he says, after searching for the right word, “challenging.”
The work in question, which anyone can view on the Beeple Instagram account, features several figures including a nude, lactating Buzz Lightyear; a pregnant, cyborg Michael Jackson; and what appears to be a bloody, muscle-bound Mickey Mouse. Donald Trump lurks in the background. “Honestly,” Winkelmann says, “I’m super thankful Christie’s said no to it.”
His second idea was to create a massive mosaic of all 5,000 of his works, which he calls Everydays because he’s made a new artwork every day for the past 13 years. “It becomes this more complete gesamtkunstwerk,” Davis says. “It really illustrates how epic his project is.” (Not to worry—the work that Christie’s initially turned down is included in the larger piece.) The opening bid is set at $100, in an attempt, Davis says, to demonstrate that “a Christie’s auction can be accessible.”
Should this auction prove a success, and should the successful buyer pay in Ether, it will represent a milestone in the secondary art market.
To date, there’s been a series of efforts to introduce blockchain to the art world; none have quite stuck, though the most successful efforts, such as the company Artory, have been primarily for cataloging purposes. By creating a permanent, unalterable line of provenance for an artwork, blockchain can render questions of authenticity moot.
“We want to have it both ways,” Davis says. “We want to [use cryptocurrency] when it makes sense, but this is not necessarily the new rule of thumb, where every auction we’ll be taking crypto.”
BUSINESS ART
Museums Are Selling Virtual Classes and Tours to Boost Revenue During the Pandemic. Here’s What They’ve Learned About What Works
First published on news.artnet.com by Naomi Rea, February 17, 2021
Since the pandemic first forced museums into lockdown last spring, a growing number of institutions have been trying to supplement lost income by selling tickets to experience their exhibitions online. If successful, the business model could provide a new source of revenue in the future and support further digital investment.
But, let’s face it—it’s a hard sell. To audiences used to experiencing museum objects in full IRL splendor, a wander around the Google Street View version of the Temple of Dendur is unlikely to measure up. And it’s equally tough to imagine an audience that isn’t your typical museum-going public ponying up $10 to watch a video of a curator walking through an exhibition when there are more sophisticated offers competing for their attention (and their dollars) online. Nevertheless, the exceptional circumstances have forced museums to plumb the depths of their revenue-generating capacity. With millions of people bored and stuck indoors—last March, visitors to the Louvre’s website increased more than tenfold, while visitors to the British Museum’s website were up 137 percent—many have looked to capitalize on the increased online traffic.
In the UK, where most museums rely on at least some degree of government support, institutions have had an extra incentive to experiment with new business models. In a leaked letter from the culture secretary to museums last August, Oliver Dowden warned that if institutions did not show that they were “pursuing every opportunity to maximize alternative sources of income,” the government would perhaps reconsider further financial support to the sector.
So far, the experiments have had mixed results. London’s Design Museum has managed to sell more than 5,000 tickets for its online programs since the first lockdown in March. Today, online visitors can access a virtual walkthrough of its electronic music exhibition for £7, and for £5 can immerse themselves in a 360-degree digital version of the museum and “walk around” its “Designs of the Year” exhibit. The museum is also offering tickets (usually priced around £5) to its program of talks and other live events.
The strategy has generated “much needed income to support the museum during closure,” a spokesperson for the museum tells Artnet News.
Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Museum in New York has found some success with a program of paid virtual tours it launched in June. The 60-minute group tours include live discussions around a collection-based topic or special exhibition, and cost $300 per group of up to 40 people ($200 for students). Between July and December, the museum served some 116 groups with this option, generating between $23,000 and $34,000. In the same time period, it ran 156 of its 45-minute tours for younger school groups, which cost $200 per class (and was free for New York public schools).
It’s unclear whether other museums’ virtual tours are getting the same traction. Despite saying it was “popular” and “doing well,” a spokesman for London’s National Gallery declined to share numbers for the uptake on its £8 online tour of its Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition that launched in December. And it’s hard to see these virtual tours holding the same allure once people return to museums in person.
Cashing in on Expertise
As the pandemic wears on and virtual learning becomes a growing part of everyday life, museums are also seeing potential in monetizing their educational expertise through their online offerings. The Met saw an additional boost in income last year by offering paid online classes for children and adults, and its latest round of studio workshop and art history courses sold out in days.
Elsewhere, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia rushed to move its in-person adult education classes in art and art history online at the onset of the pandemic. The live online classes proved incredibly popular, and have raised more than $600,000 since their launch last March—more than double the revenue that in-person classes generated in 2019.
The institution’s chief of business strategy and analytics, Will Cary, tells Artnet News that the Barnes was “surprised” at the interest in online classes, which, aside from making up for lost revenue from admissions and events, helped it connect with more students than ever. Between April and
December, more than 2,600 students from 39 states and six countries took classes, and 60 percent of that enrollment was from students who had never taken a Barnes class before.
Encouraged by these results, the Barnes will continue to offer online classes even once the in-person classes resume. Cary does not expect enrollment to decline significantly. “We expect there will be many students who will continue taking online classes—perhaps they live in a different state or country and wouldn’t have been able to attend in person,” he says, adding that the online classes can accommodate more numbers than the in-person classes.
Get With the Gamers
The forced online migration last year was an opportunity for institutions and audiences to test out the digital waters, and their experiments have shown some potential. But if they want to cement their digital content as a source of income in future, they need to be thinking strategically about how to keep their visitors coming back (and attracting new audiences). While the phrase “virtual museum tours” was among the most Google searched of 2020, the interest peaked sharply in March, perhaps as the novelty of clicking around a virtual gallery wore off. It’s worth noting, however, that search interest in “virtual learning” did not see as sharp of a drop off, indicating that there is more potential for sustained interest in online learning.
But museums need to be thinking outside the box if they hope to continue engaging consumers to invest in their online content. “There certainly is potential for digital experiences as alternative revenue streams for museums, but they need to get better,” Erinrose Sullivan, head of museums and cultural heritage at SO REAL, a tech company that offers 3D scanning and conversion services, tells Artnet News.
Museums might do well to take cues from other industries. “Gaming is a prime example,” Sullivan says, pointing out that three of the most popular video game franchises–Assassin’s Creed, Tomb Raider, and Uncharted—have core history-driven storylines that engage and excite consumers enough to keep playing.
Assassin’s Creed even offers something close to what museums are trying to do now in its “Discovery Tours,” which allow the user to travel the game’s virtual world and experience culturally important sites.
Museums could also create digital experiences that go beyond imitating the inperson museum experience online. Some have already been experimenting with this idea, including the Uffizi Galleries, which unveiled a murder-mystery video game set at the Pitti Palace Museum in 2019.
Sullivan cites the game Avakin Life, a type of Second Life virtual universe where you can pick out clothes and furnishings for your space, including artwork. “I own two Paul Klee pieces in there, something simply not possible in the real world,” Sullivan says. “Artwork could be incorporated into a game that can enrich a player’s online life and even play an integral role in the experience itself, an incredibly exciting way to bring in a new generation of art lovers.”
And if museums are thinking about the digital as a way to generate additional revenue, they could also be looking beyond the pockets of their visitors for returns. Sullivan’s company uses technology to create “digital twins” of the items in museum collections, which could then be licensed to third parties such as the gaming or movie industries.
That approach could “harness a whole new set of funding, while at the same time raising awareness of collections to new audiences,” Sullivan says. “As the world becomes more digital, there are lots of financial opportunities. Museums just need to look at how they harness that in new ways.”
