Visual Art The “Billion” Dollars of Art
posted by on June 9 at 11:02 AM
In writing about the departure of Seattle Art Museum director Mimi Gates last week, I had cause once again to refer to the famed billion-dollar gift of art to SAM that was announced last March.
I added a caveat to it (“the museum announced what it called a billion dollars’ worth of gifts of art from private collectors”), but that wasn’t enough. I’m going to stop using the number altogether.
Here’s why: In an unrelated interview, Seattle-based American collector Barney Ebsworth let slip to me one day that he was the one who came up with the billion-dollar figure for the public announcement.
Not to minimize the gifts, which are substantial, but I seriously doubt the figure we all threw out at the time of the announcement (which came from Christie’s auction house) has much factual value. It’s probably time we all stopped using it.
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I think comment #1 nailed my thoughts on this post.
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The accurate measure of the donations' value would be the allowed deductions the donors achieved on their taxes - which were due soon after the announcement. Talk about hard to verify.
I find it pathetic that SAM would trumpet the $$$ value of their donations versus the works' intrinsic worth as best-in-class and/or groundbreaking for the genre/times/whatever.
The easy "penis size" yardstick of $$$ worth is, as Jen makes all too clear in so many of the Currently Hanging posts, meaningless in these times when some schlub can slap a plastic bucket to a fence post, call it "UNTITLED (Memories of my parents and how they used to fight every night about which news program to watch)," and charge $50,000 for it.
And then, to find out it was just some # they pulled out of their ass only makes it more cringe worthy.
Jen, I understand why -- and even admire the fact -- you flog the local museum(s), their leadership and their wares...it's your beat...but we really do have some two-bit shit going on around here.
Because of all this -- and because I'm all about solutions versus problems -- I am pleased to announce that the Cornball Davidson will be going to SAM as a gift in memoriam to Mr. Poe when he's finally run down by a keshmeshi-driven AMC Pacer.
That ought to get the value of SAM's recent donations over $1B, for realz.
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