notes

Keith and I attended the memorial mass on Friday of one of our oldest and possibly best friends, Father Richard Bevenour. Sparsely attended, this according to family members who spoke by Dick’s own wish, his effect on innumerable lives, and certainly upon ours, was nevertheless enormous.

An Iowa native, he was on leave from the Diocese of Davenport, Iowa. By Dick’s telling, his leave taking was the result of a crisis of faith that, in his last meeting with his bishop, was impelling him to leave the priesthood. His bishop, though, told Dick not to leave, but take time away to sort his own self out, which then brought Dick to California, and Fresno eventually, and initially with work for Catholic Charities. It was a few years after this that I became acquainted with Dick when, through mutual friends, I attended a Dignity mass and potluck at the Newman Center at Fresno State. Sadly now moribund locally, Dignity is a national organization of gay Catholics, and Dick was very much involved. His partner Gordon Young was, as well- a convert to Catholicism the result of his relationship with Dick.

Unfortunately, Gordon was the forgotten man at Dick’s memorial mass, with not a mention of him, and not a hint of what Dick himself would doubtless describe as the most important relationship of his life. They had made a home together for nearly 25 years before Gordon died of lung cancer, now nearly 30 years ago. Where Dick was quiet and self effacing, Gordon was loud and boisterous. Gordon was a wire services editor at the Fresno Bee and a prolific, though not very focused writer, Dick nevertheless would heartily endorse Gordon as the intellectual torch bearer in their home. Not true- Dick was deeply introspective, and what he thought of his faith and his God was movingly discussed in well-considered exegeses published monthly in the Dignity newsletter. They were so erudite I thought they were essays cribbed from someone the likes of theologian Henri Nouwen, and the author’s name- Theordore Ursus- did nothing to enlighten me, until Keith McCullar pointed this out as a nom de plume- Dick had Latinized Gordon’s own pet name for him, ‘Teddy Bear.’ Their strong intellects, though, did find a mutual outlet when they opened Gordick’s Books that for its time, was the closest thing Fresno had to San Francisco’s City Lights. We were pleased to meet Armistead Maupin, Randy Shilts, and a number of others at booksignings at Gordick’s.

Years pass, and our departure from Fresno 20 years ago limited our contacts with Dick, and I am sorry that while he struggled with the Parkinson’s disease that killed him we were not able to carve time out from our own struggles with aging parents to be a better friend to him. Keith and I will though be forever grateful to Dick for his friendship, support, and example setting compassion that now, 35 years into our own relationship, we daily acknowledge. God bless him, as certainly God blessed us with Dick.

So said Sotheby’s CFO upon departing the end of last week, adding his name to the chorus of Sotheby’s employees, 5% of its workforce, cashiered out in the last few days to allow them to pursue ‘other opportunities.’ This year, the jollity of their traditional holiday greeting has been modified by an added intensifier, the gerund form of the slang term that begins with the letter ‘f’.

With all that, I do feel slightly wistful about the prospects of the venerable house. Over the years I had established some fine professional relationships with select members of their staff- none of whom, I might add, are employed there any longer.

Will Sotheby’s survive? It will be interesting to see what becomes of its beleaguered stock price following the last round of sales of the collection of its late chairman, Alfred Taubman. Supported by a guarantee of something just to the north of $500million, Sotheby’s current chairman Tad Smith now admits the hammer might just allow the house to break even on the guarantee. Hmmm… Perhaps he, too, may wish early in the new year to brace himself for the consideration of other opportunities.

Arguably the most buzz during this buzz-filled couple of weeks in the art world has been about the initial round of sales of works from the estate of late shopping center and auction house magnate Alfred Taubman. With $377million premium inclusive racked up at Sotheby’s-  the saleroom he purchased, took public, chaired, and then spent 10 months in prison for- there is still a long way to go to cover the $500 million net of premium guaranteed by Sotheby’s to Taubman’s estate. Will that guarantee be reached? This must come under the waiting with baited breath category, as the works sold to date did not sell all that well, yielding slightly more than the cumulative low auction estimate. One wonders to what extent Sotheby’s, whose loss on the quarter just concluded totaled nearly $18million can weather a charge for an unrealized guarantee.

It is interesting to note that Sotheby’s loss was less than the $28 million in red ink engendered in the same quarter last year, moderated, it seems, by the earnings booked in its finance unit. In fact, interest income is growing and commission revenue is declining. As I had written a few blog entries ago, if the objective was to achieve revenue enhancement in its core auction business by freeing up cash for potential additional purchases with the hypothecation of clients’ owned artworks, that strategy hasn’t worked.

However, if as it appears the objective was, with the addition of accrued but unrealized finance revenue the dilution of the operating loss, this hasn’t worked too well either.  Skate’s has accurately characterized Sotheby’s strategy of a huge and liberal guarantee and ostensibly liberal credit extension in its finance wing as ‘all-in’, and ponders the scrutiny the company’s board audit and risk management committees are giving this. Other people are apparently concerned as well- Sotheby’s stock declined nearly 7% in yesterday’s trading.

This month’s Apollo contains an article by Alistair Brown discussing the enormous amount of artwork held by public institutions that goes unseen. That this is a situation well known to anyone in the art and heritage industries is without question, but for those who seek to serve the wider public, this phenomenon is sinfully akin to hoarding treasure that, if sold, could generate revenue for other ill defined but generally considered more worthy, and more immediate, public uses.

During the recent troubles of the Detroit Institute of Arts, with tremendous pressure to sell off its collections to pay mostly for the city’s unfunded public pensions, I had written that, in light of the city’s shrinking population and the now limited numbers of those who darken the museum’s threshold, a sale of its collections didn’t seem a bad idea. Moreover, nothing like this is historically precedent setting, as what most public collections hold was gathered from somewhere else, and usually that somewhere else contained a provenance of some previous, and now long-defunct, collection.

Something that’s certain, though, is the reason much of the fine and decorative art objects public collections hold in storage and deign not to put on display is because, face it, the pieces are not worthy of display. And herein lies the tale- public collections are burgeoning because items are often taken in willy-nilly with no particular accession plan or objective. In my experience, what’s acquired is often a function of who’s offering it, rather than what is offered. Far be it from any museum director or curator or accessions committee chair to risk offending a local grandee who seeks a tax deduction in exchange for a selection of quilts or matchbook covers.

No question, public institutions are often treated by the great and the not so good as their personal artistic fiefdoms. One of our local institutions, on the ropes financially for many years, nonetheless was inveigled by one of its so-called benefactors to enter into an arrangement of patronage with an artist who was a pet of the benefactor. That he sought to ensure a living for an artist was laudable; that the benefactor used the museum as means to store and display the artist’s work- in which the benefactor held a large stake and with the objective of using the museum as a shill for the making of a market for the artist’s work – was at the very least reprehensible.

Still, this happens time and time again, and it is with death that public collections are able to offload donations they really didn’t want in the first place. Several years ago, I was invited to look at an overlarge piece of furniture acquired by a well-known museum using funds contained in the bequest of a deceased estate, the testator a Hollywood celebrity equally well known. Displayed for a few years as something from the workshop of Thomas Chippendale, it was taken from view by a subsequent curator who had doubts about the piece, which doubts were profoundly underscored by me. The piece was soon thereafter deaccessioned and sold- for I might add fractionally its cost of acquisition just a few years before.

For those public institutions that can afford to- Tate Britain and Tate Modern are notable examples- items from their permanent collections are rotated frequently, a bit frustrating in the case of the Tate galleries, as one might have made a special trip to see something to find its been taken down, but for the institution, an expensive proposition involving staff time to move, remove, store, adjust lighting, and all often for just a few days’ showing.

For very many public collections, much of what might be on display isn’t- and never will be. Given that narrow criterion, it might be argued that for those pieces held in store, arguably the preponderance of most public collections, a better use would be for them to be deaccessioned. However, this too cannot be considered wholesale. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Metropolitan Museum sold through Christie’s a large selection of English furniture from its collections, to the great delight, I must say, of private collectors. Many of these pieces had notable provenance, were featured in the literature, and had in years past been prominently on display. Perhaps in the years since the Met were given them better examples were acquired, but one also wonders, though, with a perception that period material both in the fine and decorative arts is slightly out of fashion if that didn’t inform this disbursal. A public institution, while it must certainly be discreet in its acquisitions, must never the less let the solecism of following fashion interfere with connoisseurship in the management of its collections.

In looking at Magnus Resch’s shall we say interesting notions of how galleries can succeed, it is also worthwhile to consider, two years after launch, his website ‘Larry’s List’. With the objective of becoming the Dunn & Bradstreet of prominent collectors of all stripes, it seeks to provide galleries and dealers a compendious resource to allow for focused marketing.

Hmmm… I wonder who and to what extent dealers have been taken in by any idea that direct marketing to the highest of the high end can be successful? In our experience, nearly all of the exclusive collectors are also the most elusive, and they like it that way. If it were any different, if their collecting interests were widely known, this would also provide significant insight into their own net worth, and every Tom, Dick, and Harry would be keen to market everything including car flocking directly to them.

Mind you, there are a few flash types whose high profile spats with auction houses, or those with names on the side of public galleries make it apparent to anyone with eyes to see that they are, on and off, buyers. But these people are, despite some well-publicized exceptions, also on matey terms with salerooms, the artists’ themselves, and a very few dealers whose transactions with them are highly confidential and typically involve a thin margin of profit for the selling party. Trust me on this- in an age of litigiousness, the high profile executives in the financial markets, the backbone of the buying cadre, do not wish to have their compensation packages called into question when they are seen to be splashing out in the 7, 8, or occasionally 9 figures on a work of art.