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International News Digest
MISSING WORKS FROM HERMITAGE
“Hundreds” of artworks are missing from the permanent collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, according to the museum’s director, Michail Piotrovski. Citing a report from the APA and the Associated Press, Der Standard reports that Piotrovski cannot provide a complete list of the works, but the director notes that many have been missing since World War II. An investigative survey completed by the order of the Russian government recently showed that more than fifty thousand objects are missing from museums across the Russian Federation. Former president Vladimir Putin called for the investigation after hundreds of stolen artworks, which originally belonged to the Hermitage, were discovered two years ago. In related news, the Russian government has created a commission to address improper Soviet-era sales of artworks, as Artforum.com reported here.
ASSESSING ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH
Art Basel Miami Beach has received slightly better than expected marks in the European press. While the Miami Herald reported an up to 30 percent drop in sales at the stands, Le Monde’s Harry Bellet insists that the city honored the seventh edition of the fair. If the financial crisis were not enough to dampen spirits, Bellet notes that the fair’s principal sponsor, UBS, reported a loss of fifty billion dollars this year and is facing an investigation by the IRS. Nevertheless, a UBS representative announced that the firm will continue its support of the fair. Miami mayor Matti Bower had similar good news: The contract between the city’s convention center and the fair has been renewed for another three years. ABMB and a host of concurrent events bring an estimated forty thousand guests to the city each December. The Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Jörg Häntzschel paints a bleaker picture. “When the galleries had paid for their stands in April, the world was still a different one,” he writes, adding that the costs for the stand, trip, and transport can rise to over sixty thousand dollars. Since October’s stock-market crash, the art market has faced two crucial tests: the New York auctions and the Frieze Art Fair in London. “And twice it failed,” writes Häntzschel. “Since then, the situation has become even gloomier. The disaster at Citigroup, the American automobile industry facing its end, the unemployment figures, the stock market. What would be left from Miami, the mad fair that had become a symbol of precisely that culture of hype since its debut in 2002?” Häntzschel also cites the renewal of the fair’s contract with the convention center for another three years, but he views this renewal with some reservations. “The Swiss fair company MCH, the organizer of Art Basel Miami Beach, jointly manages the hall close to the beach anyway with an American company.”
GETTY IMAGES MUST PAY PHOTOGRAPHER
Getty Images has been ordered by French courts to pay damages to an independent photographer for marketing some of his photographs without his permission. As Agence France-Presse reports, photographer Alain Ernoult initially had a contract with the Advertising Educational Foundation (AEF) to market his photographs from 1993 to 1999. In 1995, Ernoult, who was also a major shareholder in AEF, gave up his shares to the Image Bank France, which was subsequently purchased by Getty Images. In 2001, the photographer took AEF to court for marketing his photographs after the contract had run out, among other charges. In 2002, the Paris judge agreed and decided that damages should be calculated, photograph by photograph, by an expert. The sum reached was over $1.29 million, with almost $600,000 to be paid by Getty Images for “marketing some of his photographs for advertising ends—ads for Toshiba, Peugeot, or Air France—in violation of the agreement signed with him.” Moreover, the magistrates decided that such use of the photographs for advertising damaged Ernoult’s “heritage rights,” “banalized his work,” and prevented him from profiting himself from the works. Getty Images, which was bought at the beginning of 2008 by the investment fund Hellman & Friedman, sells images to the advertising and publishing sectors.
UNITED NATIONS BENEFIT AUCTION AT THE PALAIS DE TOKYO
To celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the United Nations, Amnesty International is organizing a series of events throughout France. As Le Monde reports, this week the Palais de Tokyo will host a benefit auction, which will be run by Artcurial. Thirty artists have donated works, which begin at $1,290. Artists include Maurice Renoma, Christian Lacroix, the Gao brothers, Michael Kenna, Alécio De Andrade, and Daniel Askill, among others. Each work comes with a statement by its creator. Yann Arthus-Bertrand donated a color photograph of fishing nets at the Hak Dong Beach in Korea. “I hope that my photographs are links,” said Arthus-Bertrand, “that they carry the message that I have received through all these years to the most people possible: The future of humanity is inseparable from that of the living earth.”
RAU COLLECTION TO BENEFIT UNITED NATIONS
The United Nations can look forward to another contribution: the impressive collection of the late doctor Gustav Rau. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, the decades-long legal dispute over the inheritance of the collection has finally come to an end. The UN childrens’ fund, UNICEF, received the certificate of inheritance for the estate last week. Representatives from various other organizations to which Rau had bequeathed part of his collection had contested the collector’s last will and testament, which named UNICEF as the beneficiary. The estate includes more than one hundred artworks, which Rau wanted be sold to benefit UNICEF. The charity now owns more than 740 works, including paintings by Fra Angelico, El Greco, Canaletto, Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro; the collection’s estimated worth is $647 million.
ICONIC FISCHLI & WEISS FILM SOLD TO PRIVATE COLLECTION
Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go)—a classic film from 1987 by the Swiss duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss—now belongs to a private collector. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, the thirty-minute film, which follows an unmanned chain reaction of destruction in a studio, was sold last week for $860,000 at an auction held at the Zurich branch of Christie’s. While the film has been widely copied and distributed, the unnamed collector purchased the original film reel along with a series of relics from the film set. Proceeds from the sale will go to the foundation of the previous owner, Alfred Richterich, who had loaned the film to the Kunsthaus Zürich and had surprised the institution by auctioning the work.