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Can you trust Art Dealers?


Image:Getty Images Diane Arbus circa 1968: A group of her early photographs was the subject of a lawsuit brought by the seller.

Interesting article over at The Wall Street Journal about the difficulties in trusting art dealers and the prices they charge

Art buyers have long been wary of the prices dealers charge in a notoriously opaque market. Sellers of art also are increasingly becoming suspicious.

Art sellers have filed a flurry of lawsuits over the past few years after selling pieces for relatively modest amounts, only to see the buyers quickly sell them again for much more.

In 2008, the estate of a Canadian woman, Lorette Jolles Shefner, filed a lawsuit in U.S. district court in New York against Maurice Tuchman and Esti Dunow, two experts on the French painter Chaim Soutine, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The estate claimed the experts had misled Ms. Shefner into selling them a 1923 Soutine painting, titled “Piece of Beef,” for $1 million in 2004, and then resold it to the museum a few months later for $2 million. As part of a settlement, the National Gallery sold the painting back to the now-deceased woman’s estate, and the two experts paid the estate $210,000 without admitting wrongdoing.

Last year, the auction house Phillips de Pury canceled a sale of a group of prints by the photographer Diane Arbus, which were expected to bring several hundred thousand dollars, after a lawsuit was filed against a Philadelphia art dealer in federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y., by a memorabilia collector who claimed he had been led to sell the photographs for $3,500 in 2003 to the dealer. The suit was settled out of court without an admission of wrongdoing.

Yet another lawsuit, this one filed in New York State Supreme Court in 2008 by the Daughters of Mary Mother of Our Savior, an order of nuns in Round Top, N.Y., alleges collusion between a local art appraiser and a Santa Fe, N.M., dealer in the sale of an 1889 painting by William Adolphe Bouguereau titled “Notre Dame D’Anges” for $450,000.

Continue reading the article here

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