Public choice in the tertiary art market

InMaking the Mummies Dance, Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, articulates a blistering defense of his, admittedly minority, view; namely, that trading directly with dealers when selling deaccessioned works of art or adding to museum collections is preferable to buying and selling in the open auction market (Hoving, 1992). Hoving has been severely criticized for his trades during his tenure at the Metropolitan, as well as for his assessment of the market for fine arts, which runs counter to the prevailing views held by many American public officials, professional art critics and museum boards. We shall present a theoretical model in support of Hoving's argument that trades made at auctions may not serve the public interest. We shall also statistically investigate the stochastic processes which characterize the tertiary art market.     

From Van Gogh's museum to the temple at bassae: heidegger's truth of art and schapiro's art history

This essay revisits Meyer Schapiro's critique of Heidegger's interpretation of Van Gogh's painting of a pair of shoes in order to raise the question of the dispute between art history and philosophy as a contest increasingly ceded to the claim of the expert and the hegemony of the museum as culture and as cult or coded signifier. Following a discussion of museum culture, I offer a hermeneutic and phenomenological reading of Heidegger's ‘Origin of the Work of Art’ and conclude by taking Heidegger's discussion of the strife between earth and world to the site of the ancient temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae as an example of the insistent foreclosure of the ancient work of art and the conflicts of the pervasive efforts of modern conservation.     

Bidding and prices for online art auctions: sofa art or investment

The article uses auction data collected from the eBay internet site to examine the effect of various parameters on number of bids and selling price of art. The article further uses an insight from the auction literature to gather evidence about whether art on eBay is purchased for consumption or investment purposes. The article argues that the evidence found of a positive relationship between the number of bids and the final price suggests that art sold on eBay is not, in general, investment art.      

An analytical study of polypropylene as a support for paint layers. From concept to material in contemporary art

The artist Jordi Teixidor is one of the leading exponents of twentieth century Spanish abstract art. In recent years, he has used a synthetic polymer as a support for his art work, namely polypropylene. The behaviour of this material in combination with layers of oil paint has not been studied until now. One of the objectives of this study was to chemically characterise the material present in Jordi Teixidor's work, using FT-IR spectroscopy, in order to be able to examine the behaviour of this set of materials after undergoing cycles of accelerated aging. After subjecting the samples to temperature and relative humidity cycles and ultraviolet radiation, their physico-mechanical behaviour was determined via tensile and bend tests, with the results being processed further by means of spectroscopic techniques and colour measurements. It was found that the possible migration of the additives present in the PP support and the gradual degradation of the materials could affect the adherence between the paint layers in the future.     

Private Issues in Public Spaces: Regimes of Engagement at a Citizen Conference

Minerva - The ‘participatory turn’ in science and technology governance has resulted in the growth of initiatives designed to engage lay people in consultation and decision-making on...     

Failure to meet the reserve price: the impact on returns to art

This article presents an empirical study of paintings that have failed to meet their reserve price at auction. In the art trade, it is often claimed that when an advertised item goes unsold at auction, it will sell for less in the future. We have constructed a new dataset specifically for the purpose of testing this proposition. To preview our results, we find that paintings which come to auction and failed return significantly less when they are eventually sold than those paintings that have not been advertised at auction between sales. These lower returns may occur because of common value effects, idiosyncratic downward trends in tastes, or changes in the seller’s reserve price.

Estimating the real growth effects of blockbuster art exhibits: A time series approach

This paper addresses the evaluation of real growth forecasts made by impact studies. Intervention analysis is used to estimate the ex post impact of blockbuster exhibits on economic growth in Jackson, Mississippi (chosen because state and local governments provide regular subsidies to finance the exhibitions). Non-farm employment measures real economic growth and dummy variables capture the occurrence of the exhibitions. Univariate time series techniques identify and estimate a stationary process after filtering the data for seasonal and cyclical effects. The analysis estimates the short run impact on Jackson’s filtered employment series due to the blockbuster exhibitions as approximately 700 jobs.     

Towards a Research Policy for the New Europe: Changes and Challenges for Public and Private Funders

Since the late 1980s, Europe has witnesseddramatic changes in the political landscape andin daily life. Many of these changes are drivenby new developments in science and technology.At the same time, research choices are beingmade in the anticipation of economic benefits.In this context, the European Commission andprivate foundations in Europe are rethinkingtheir approaches and priorities. This paperconsiders some of the changes taking place inresearch policy, and reflects upon somereconfigurations currently underway.     

Air power and governmental support for scientific research: The approach to the Second World War

Conclusion The development of radar, jet propulsion, ballistic missiles and the atomic bomb during the Second World War established and made visible to an unprecedented degree governmentally supported and directed research and development. National survival was now seen to depend on the mobilisation of a country's talents and resources in science and technology for military purposes.Prior to the Second World War, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had established its own role in research. It also established the legitimacy of governmental patronage for scientific research far beyond aeronautics. It was during that period that American politicians and the organs of public opinion became convinced and persuaded the electorate to think that science was indispensable for national security and well-being. A very great deal has been accomplished since then, but the credit for a pioneering role in the conduct of research with the financial support of the federal government must be given to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.     

Investment in early American art: the impact of transaction costs and no-sales on returns

Art, along with other “treasure assets,” has become a central object for investment opportunities. Investment return studies using hedonic and resale price regressions on different artistic periods and styles produce estimates of varying rates of return, predominately low rates with high standard deviations. The present study employs a new sample of American art sold at auction between 1987 and 2011—art created before 1950 by 33 artists born prior to 1900. Our study, unlike those that preceded it, considers works that are no-sales (those “bought-in” for failing to sell at auction at or above a predetermined and negotiated minimum price), in addition to full transaction costs—buyers and sellers premia on hammer prices. We conclude that investment return calculations are biased upward and may be negative when these factors are considered and that the “consumption utility” of art may be higher than previously thought. However, using a variant of the capital asset pricing model, we find that investment in early American art may still be desirable in a diversified portfolio of assets for when the price of stock assets falls, the price of art does not fall in the same proportion.