Who Owns Art?
Introduction
1. Leonardo Da Vinci, The Mona Lisa
2. Jackson Pollock, Number 8
3. Van Gogh, Starry Night
4. Pablo Picasso, The Kiss
5. Gustav Klimt, The Kiss
- Three Main Questions
o Who decides something is art?
o Who decides its value?
o Who owns art?
1. Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (1917)
Art as a Commodity
- Art is a leading source of income and considered a luxury commodity.
- Paintings, sculptures, and other forms of art are sold for millions of dollars.
- Income is also generated from the display of art at shows or in museums such as the Louvre.
- But how much?
- The Card Players by Paul Cézanne
Sold for over $250 million in 2011.
Peers, Alexandra (January 2012). "Qatar Purchases Cézanne’s The Card Players for More Than $250 Million, Highest Price Ever for a Work of Art". QuatarSale.
- No° 5 by Jackson Pollock
Sold for $140 million in 2006.
Carol Vogel, A Pollock Is Sold, Possibly for a Record Price, New York Times, November 2, 2006
- Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens
Sold for $76.2 million in 2002
Art Gallery of Ontario
What does this have to do with tourism?!
- Art isn’t just paintings or sculptures.
- Art is a real tourism industry.
- Every year an average of 8 million people visit the Louvre.
"Le Louvre a accueilli 8,8 millions de visiteurs en 2011". Radio-Canada with Agence France-Presse. 3 January 2012.
The average price of admission at the Louvre is 11€, therefore on admission alone the Louvre could gain €88 million in one year!
Egypt Case Study
Egypt’s Lost Treasures
- Nefertiti’s Bust in Berlin
- The Rosetta Stone at the British Museum
- Egytian artifacts are spread all over the world.
- Idea of finders-keepers archaeology in the past.
- France did give back many pieces under Mitterand.
Most of the artifacts however that are given back are not the main attention grabbing ones. It is unlikely that something as big as the Rosetta Stone will be returned unless organizations such as UNESCO get involved.
Greece Case Study
- The lost Parthenon treasures.
- Today, many Greek antiquities are held in Museums outside of Greece.
Most notably at the British Museum and the Louvre in Paris.
- In the 1800 Lord Elgin, a British lord was given permission by the ruling Ottoman Empire to take the statues for his personal use.
- At this time Greece was in a major and violent war and Lord Elgin feared for the safety of the treasures.
- Lord Elgin would give the sculptures to the British Museum where they are now on display free of charge.
- Now Greece is calling for the return of the Parthenon statues and friezes.
- The Greek government believes that the art was not legally acquired because it was not the Greeks who gave permission.
- The Greeks would like to place the art in a museum at the Acropolis.
Greece
- The Marbles were not acquired “legally.”
- They are part of Greece’s history.
- The will generate tourism for Greece.
- They have a new museum to go to.
British Museum
- They were acquired in agreement with the ruler at the time.
- They are on display for free.
- More people have access to them in the UK than in Greece.
- It would create a slippery slope of emptying museums.
The Art of the Steal
February 26, 2010
Don Argott
IFC Films
Very celebrated documentary at the Toronto International Film Festival.
- A documentary film about the biggest art heist in modern history.
- The complete works of the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania was taken against the will testimony of the foundation and put into the Philadelphia Museum.
- The Collection of Albert C. Barnes was valued at over $25 billion.
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