Holy Giacometti!

Today we hear from guest poster Brian T. Allen, the Addison Gallery's Mary Stripp & R. Crosby Kemper Director, regarding the current state of the art market:

Although Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) was not an American artist, I could hardly not notice the sale of one of his life-size bronzes for £65,000,000, the most expensive work ever sold at auction (see left). The sale, which took place on February 3 at Sotheby’s in London, speaks much about the chaotic state of the art market in the depths of a terrible economy.

I follow the art market closely, both the auction art market and the dealer-based market and want to share a few observations about the state of the market in light of the Sotheby’s auction. The market is in a curious place now. Buyers have lost many, many billions of dollars during the course of the financial crisis. This has had two fundamental effects. Capacity has dropped, and we see this in the steep declines in totals generated in almost every auction. Sometimes sales totals are down by more than half the take for the same sale in 2008. Consignments have shriveled as well, with anyone having any discretion on whether or not to sell deciding to keep their art until the economy improves. But consignments still happen. Death, divorce, and debt still drive sellers to Christie’s and Sotheby’s, but if a collector is not a Madoff victim, chances are he or she is waiting for an overall financial uptick before selling art.

In the face of reduced supply, there are still many people with both enormous wealth and a voracious will to collect. They are competing for art in a market where the supply of great things has been reduced by this new hesitation to sell. So, despite the overall decline in auction sales totals, records are still broken in most sales. The prices of objects of the very highest quality have not dropped but, indeed, have continued to increase, whether the object is a painting by Rembrandt or van Dyke, a drawing by Raphael, or an extraordinarily rare bottle of wine. If a high quality object has been in a private collection for many years, its freshness to the marketplace makes it even more appealing.

I would not call the Giacometti art of the very highest quality. Rather, I would place it in the general category occupied by Andy Warhol’s painting, 200 One Dollar Bills, which sold for almost $44 million late last year. Although the Warhol is historically a more important work than the Giacometti, both are flashy “name” artists and immediately recognizable brands whose presence on a Manhattan or London wall bespeaks their owner’s cultural and financial firepower.

Surprisingly, then, given continued demand and reduced supply, now is probably a good time to sell at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. On the dealer side, overall my dealer friends tell me the market is improving very gradually after a deep freeze that lasted most of 2009. A wobbly stock market will not help to keep things moving in that direction. I will report more after I visit the major art shows in New York in early March.


Posted by:

Brian T. Allen
The Mary Stripp & R. Crosby Kemper Director

Carroll Dunham Prints: A Survey opening at University Art Museum at SUNY-Albany

The Addison may be closed for renovation, but there is still an opportunity to see artwork from our collection!

Our traveling exhibition Carroll Dunham Prints: A Survey, will be opening at its third and final venue on Tuesday, February 2nd at the University Art Museum at SUNY-Albany, NY. The show is comprised of over one hundred prints from the Addison's collection of the artist's work spanning the 1980s until the present.

I was fortunate enough to travel to Albany a couple of weeks ago to help with the unpacking and condition checking of the objects. The University Art Museum's elegant exhibition space is considerably different from the Addison's galleries in that you can stand in the middle of it and view almost the entire show from one viewpoint. You can compare objects of different types and periods easily and it makes quite an impact on the viewer.

This is a venue that is certainly worth visiting! We, and the staff at the University Art Museum, hope to see you there!


Posted by:

James M. Sousa
Associate Registrar for Collections and Archives

Mining the Archives

I recently watched the movie Angels and Demons. As one of my duties here is being the Addison's "archivist," I was fascinated by the way the movie (and the book) depicted the Vatican's archives. A sleek, modern, and highly-secured space deep below ground, the Vatican's archival treasures were neatly arranged in hermetically-sealed chambers designed to keep humidity levels unnaturally low to preserve their ancient texts. Whether anything like this actually exists at the Vatican (or anywhere in the world) is questionable, but it made me think about the Addison's archives, and where they will be going in our new building addition.

The Addison's archives include files associated with the art and artists of our collection, the museum's administration, and every one of our exhibitions (nearly 1400 of them since we opened in 1931). We have thousands of slides and photographs documenting our exhibition installations, and various archives from the museum's special projects including our ship model collection, our 1993 HVAC installation (see left), the creation of our David Ireland Artist Apartment, and all the work and research that went into the making of our 1996 65 Years catalogue. I've always found it fun browsing through our archives: reading letters from our past directors, finding old photographs of our museum, and figuring out how objects came into our collection.

Up to now, the archives have been stored in various areas throughout the museum and off site. It's been very difficult to track down certain things and keep it all organized and catalogued. Thankfully, in the Addison's new addition, the archives will all be housed on site, and in a space conveniently located adjacent to our offices (see right). A large compact storage shelving system will keep everything together, in order, accessible, and with plenty of space for expansion. With each new acquisition and exhibition, the archives continue to grow!

Granted, our archive won't be hermetically sealed like it is in Angels and Demons, but it will be kept at our standard museum climate of 70' F and 50% relative humidity, and it will be secure, orderly, and ready for any of the Robert Langdon-like symbologists of the world to make an appointment to peruse.



Posted by
James M. Sousa
Associate Registrar for Collections and Archives