Tom Petters mug shot, October 2008
The Hits Just Keep On Coming Dept.: While awaiting the outcome of the sale/auction of the remaining portions of the Polaroid Collection, we need to keep the dismantling of the collection in perspective by remembering that it’s comparable to concern over the artworks lost when the Titanic went down. Whatever its significance to our field, this now-dispersed collection represents just one little segment of a vast financial house of cards whose collapse affected thousands of people in direct financial ways, actually ruining a number of lives.
It’ll take someone with way more financial acumen and insight into corporate high crimes and misdemeanors than I can claim to untangle the convolutions of the Tom Petters Ponzi scheme that resulted in the destruction of the Polaroid Collection as collateral damage. But if I read Dan Browning’s December 29 story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune aright, JPMorgan Chase & Co. had more than a little to do with it.
Browning’s report, “J.P. Morgan Chase sued for $25M in Petters case,” begins by stating that court-appointed Receiver Doug Kelley, who is “rounding up assets from Tom Petters’ $3.8 billion Ponzi scheme” in order to compensate the creditors of the bankrupt Petters International, “filed a federal lawsuit in Minneapolis Wednesday in an attempt to force J.P. Morgan Chase to return $25 million in cash and securities the bank confiscated from Petters’ personal investment accounts as federal investigators swept in to shut down the fraud two years ago.”
Kelley, as receiver, filed other suits in the same bankruptcy court in October 2010 to recover $285 million that JPMorgan Chase received in adviser fees and sale proceeds from Petters when he bought Polaroid from the bank in 2005. Polaroid Corp. was majority owned by JPMorgan’s private-equity arm, One Equity Partners, at the time Petters acquired it. (See David Benoit, “J. P. Morgan Chase Sued Over Petters Ponzi,” Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2010.) That brings Kelley’s total claims against JPMorgan to roughly $310 million.
Portrait of J. P. Morgan by Edward Steichen, 1903
This pertains directly to the lamentable fate of the Polaroid Collection because, as Browning goes on to indicate, “Kelley alleges that J.P. Morgan and its affiliates turned a blind eye to ‘numerous red flags’ as they conducted due diligence related to the $426 million sale of Polaroid Corp. to Petters in 2005.” He explains, “The bank and its affiliates were conflicted, the suit alleges, because they collected more than $240 million on the sale and from related charges as they facilitated a leveraged buyout that saddled Polaroid with debts it could never repay.”
In short, Kelley has accused JPMorgan of profiting exorbitantly from collaborating with Petters in the engineering of a deal that doomed the Polaroid Corporation to its subsequent bankruptcy from the outset ― which conspiratorial malfeasance, in turn, left the Minnesota Bankruptcy Court no option but to put the Polaroid Collection, among other assets, up for sale.
So the plot thickens. And sickens. And I find myself wondering if the malevolent ghost of J. P. Morgan himself, still furious with Edward Steichen for making that iconic 1903 portrait, lurked around JPMorgan Chase & Co. headquarters while this deal went down in order to exact revenge on the entire medium through which his murderous inner child had been evoked for all to see.
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Speaking of the Polaroid Collection’s dismemberment, a bout of depression after the auction of much of the cream thereof at Sotheby’s on June 21-22, combined with the absence of urgent relevant news over the next months, led me to let slide any recap or follow-up. (Also, as regular readers of this blog know, I got caught up in tracking the Norsigian-Adams contretemps.)
Nonetheless, I did keep an eye on my colleagues’ coverage of Sotheby’s highly successful auction of selections from the Polaroid Collection, which reportage proved predictably diverse. (You’ll find the lot-by-lot results here.) No one did it better ― in more detail or depth ― than Stephen Perloff in his series of five Guest Posts for this blog, but some did a respectable job and even added to the narrative. For some of the more substantive samples, see:
- “Curator of photography at Carnegie Museum outbid at auction,” by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette art critic Mary Thomas, June 30, 2010. Looked at the auction through the eyes of Linda Benedict-Jones, former curator of the Polaroid Collection and now photography curator at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.
- “Polaroid Auction Commences with $7.2M in Instant Gratification for Creditors,” at Lindsay Pollock’s blog Art Market Views, June 22, 2010. (“The sale came on the heels of protest and hand-wringing from some members of the photography community who objected to the dispersal of the historic collection,” Pollock wrote toward the beginning of her piece, inexplicably deciding not to connect that with her concluding statement that “Prior to the sale, nine lots were withdrawn from sale. . . . Artists with works removed from the sale include Mary Ellen Mark, Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, Laurie Simmons, Joel Meyerowitz, Aaron Siskind, William Wegman and Danny Lyons [sic].”)
- “Auction Results: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection, June 21 and 22, 2010 @Sotheby’s,” at DLK Collection, photo collector Loring Knoblaunch’s blog, June 23, 2010. Some hard analysis of the prices achieved. See also Knoblauch’s pre-auction commentary, “Auction: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection, June 21 and 22, 2010 @Sotheby’s.” An excerpt: “The whole sordid story, with its corporate buyers, Ponzi schemes, legal wranglings, bankruptcy proceedings, and angry artists has been faithfully investigated and recorded by esteemed critic A. D. Coleman in the past year and a half on his blog, Photocritic International. While the rest of the media generally ignored the Polaroid story, Coleman has produced 19 meticulously researched posts covering its many facets, with particular attention paid to tracking down where all the pictures have gone. It’s well worth the time to read through the entire series to see how this drama has unfolded over the past months.” (Click here for those posts, and more.)
- “At Sotheby’s for the Auction of the Polaroid Collection,” from flâneur Teri Tynes’s blog “Walking Off the Big Apple,” June 22, 2010. Enjoyable, detailed first-person view of and response to the auction by a member of the general audience for photography ― an unusual perspective, and a most useful and welcome one.
- “What’s A Picture Worth? Polaroid Auctions Photos,” the text version of Margot Adler’s June 19, 2010 “Weekend Edition” audio piece for NPR. (You’ll find a link there to this audio piece.) She left the last word to John Reuter of the 20×24 Studio: “Having been through the dissolution of the company,” he says, “not only is my work in the collection and I can’t get it, and a lot of it was my best work, at certain periods of my life, but I also saw people who were incredible people who made this film and made Polaroid a great company, lose their jobs for no good reason really. So the auction is almost the funeral in a way, because it is the last act in the dissolution of Polaroid.”
- “Polaroid’s subtle glow fades away,” by Peter Conrad, New Zealand Herald, June 5, 2010. An eccentric pre-auction take on the auction, the events leading up thereto, and Polaroid as a picture-making technology. Conrad called Polaroid’s mastermind Edwin Land a “crackpot,” referred to his cameras as “contraptions,” and exercised the droit du seigneur all university-educated Brit types apparently feel to be snottily dismissive of everything. (He’s a Rhodes Scholar, Oxford ― probably took much ragging there for his origins in Australia, a former Brit penal colony ― and teaches at Christ Church, Oxford.) Still, it’s an extensive and interesting meditation on the Polaroid phenomenon.
At the same time, the bulk of that coverage — especially when coming from the mainstream press — mostly proved shallow, rather than deep. “Records abound at NYC Polaroid photo auction,” the Associated Press version by Ula Ilnytzky, June 22, 2010, typified this standard report. (The link will take you to the version that appeared in the Washington Post.) Just mention of the total, the records set, etc. It’s interchangeable with Chris Michaud’s story with the same dateline for Reuters, “Polaroid photographs raise $12.5 million at NY auction.” The best I’ve seen so far, “Sotheby’s Photo Sales Take in $12.5 Million,” came from Lauren Fedor at the Wall Street Journal on June 22.
What these have in common: No curiosity about the market’s apparently endless appetite for Ansel Adams landscapes and what Robert Frank once described as the “dumb dog photos” of William Wegman, and what that tells us about public perception of photography. No analysis of the noteworthy phenomenon of an auction of photographs doing so well in the midst of a recession that some now dare to call a depression. No weighing of whether the one-of-a-kind nature of much of the work sold played any role in the sale’s success. For starters.
Then of course there’s the sloppy journalism of Agence France Presse/AFP, whose widely syndicated anonymous June 18 report, “Famous Polaroid photo collection goes under hammer,” concludes, “Polaroid was bought up in 2009 by The Impossible Project group, which is trying to revive the market for the fabled instant camera and has named eccentric pop-singer Lady Gaga as its artistic director.” Not. Totally not. You’ll therefore find this confusing, incorrect, irresponsible nonsense in the Kuwait Times, Dawn.com (Pakistan), The Taipei Times (China), The Free Library, and elsewhere, now gone viral . . .
None of these journalists and publications have seen fit to mention, much less cover, the current proceedings that will scatter the almost 15,000 works left after the auction in three separate chunks. With rare exceptions, my colleagues in the art and photo and mainstream press continue to disappoint me with their tacit trivialization of this story. To the best of my knowledge, no collection of equal significance has received such cavalier treatment when threatened with or undergoing radical deaccessioning.
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Polaroid Collection auction catalogue
Footnote to the sale: The copy of the catalogue for the Polaroid sale that I ordered from Sotheby’s (and for which I paid $50) came with its corners badly dinged, simply stuck unprotected into a standard manila mailing envelope. Others who ordered the catalogue at my recommendation complained to me about their copies arriving in even worse condition. This isn’t a pamphlet; it’s a 480-page paperback on glossy stock. No respectable publisher would just stick such a heavy, expensive book into a plain, unpadded paper envelope for shipping to a purchaser, but that’s exactly what Sotheby’s does — presumably to save money on packaging. One correspondent told me that Sotheby’s sent a replacement copy when he complained, but packaged it in the same inappropriate, unprotected way, so that it still arrived less than intact. Sotheby’s should ponder the effect of this chintziness on the high-end image they work so hard to project.
The good news: If you want a free pdf file of this catalogue, click here.
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This post supported by a donation from editor, historian, and author Lance Speer.
•
For an index of links to all previous posts related to this story, click here.
SPJ Research Award 2014
Polaroid Collection: Update 23
Tom Petters mug shot, October 2008
The Hits Just Keep On Coming Dept.: While awaiting the outcome of the sale/auction of the remaining portions of the Polaroid Collection, we need to keep the dismantling of the collection in perspective by remembering that it’s comparable to concern over the artworks lost when the Titanic went down. Whatever its significance to our field, this now-dispersed collection represents just one little segment of a vast financial house of cards whose collapse affected thousands of people in direct financial ways, actually ruining a number of lives.
It’ll take someone with way more financial acumen and insight into corporate high crimes and misdemeanors than I can claim to untangle the convolutions of the Tom Petters Ponzi scheme that resulted in the destruction of the Polaroid Collection as collateral damage. But if I read Dan Browning’s December 29 story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune aright, JPMorgan Chase & Co. had more than a little to do with it.
Kelley, as receiver, filed other suits in the same bankruptcy court in October 2010 to recover $285 million that JPMorgan Chase received in adviser fees and sale proceeds from Petters when he bought Polaroid from the bank in 2005. Polaroid Corp. was majority owned by JPMorgan’s private-equity arm, One Equity Partners, at the time Petters acquired it. (See David Benoit, “J. P. Morgan Chase Sued Over Petters Ponzi,” Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2010.) That brings Kelley’s total claims against JPMorgan to roughly $310 million.
Portrait of J. P. Morgan by Edward Steichen, 1903
This pertains directly to the lamentable fate of the Polaroid Collection because, as Browning goes on to indicate, “Kelley alleges that J.P. Morgan and its affiliates turned a blind eye to ‘numerous red flags’ as they conducted due diligence related to the $426 million sale of Polaroid Corp. to Petters in 2005.” He explains, “The bank and its affiliates were conflicted, the suit alleges, because they collected more than $240 million on the sale and from related charges as they facilitated a leveraged buyout that saddled Polaroid with debts it could never repay.”
In short, Kelley has accused JPMorgan of profiting exorbitantly from collaborating with Petters in the engineering of a deal that doomed the Polaroid Corporation to its subsequent bankruptcy from the outset ― which conspiratorial malfeasance, in turn, left the Minnesota Bankruptcy Court no option but to put the Polaroid Collection, among other assets, up for sale.
So the plot thickens. And sickens. And I find myself wondering if the malevolent ghost of J. P. Morgan himself, still furious with Edward Steichen for making that iconic 1903 portrait, lurked around JPMorgan Chase & Co. headquarters while this deal went down in order to exact revenge on the entire medium through which his murderous inner child had been evoked for all to see.
•
Nonetheless, I did keep an eye on my colleagues’ coverage of Sotheby’s highly successful auction of selections from the Polaroid Collection, which reportage proved predictably diverse. (You’ll find the lot-by-lot results here.) No one did it better ― in more detail or depth ― than Stephen Perloff in his series of five Guest Posts for this blog, but some did a respectable job and even added to the narrative. For some of the more substantive samples, see:
At the same time, the bulk of that coverage — especially when coming from the mainstream press — mostly proved shallow, rather than deep. “Records abound at NYC Polaroid photo auction,” the Associated Press version by Ula Ilnytzky, June 22, 2010, typified this standard report. (The link will take you to the version that appeared in the Washington Post.) Just mention of the total, the records set, etc. It’s interchangeable with Chris Michaud’s story with the same dateline for Reuters, “Polaroid photographs raise $12.5 million at NY auction.” The best I’ve seen so far, “Sotheby’s Photo Sales Take in $12.5 Million,” came from Lauren Fedor at the Wall Street Journal on June 22.
What these have in common: No curiosity about the market’s apparently endless appetite for Ansel Adams landscapes and what Robert Frank once described as the “dumb dog photos” of William Wegman, and what that tells us about public perception of photography. No analysis of the noteworthy phenomenon of an auction of photographs doing so well in the midst of a recession that some now dare to call a depression. No weighing of whether the one-of-a-kind nature of much of the work sold played any role in the sale’s success. For starters.
Then of course there’s the sloppy journalism of Agence France Presse/AFP, whose widely syndicated anonymous June 18 report, “Famous Polaroid photo collection goes under hammer,” concludes, “Polaroid was bought up in 2009 by The Impossible Project group, which is trying to revive the market for the fabled instant camera and has named eccentric pop-singer Lady Gaga as its artistic director.” Not. Totally not. You’ll therefore find this confusing, incorrect, irresponsible nonsense in the Kuwait Times, Dawn.com (Pakistan), The Taipei Times (China), The Free Library, and elsewhere, now gone viral . . .
None of these journalists and publications have seen fit to mention, much less cover, the current proceedings that will scatter the almost 15,000 works left after the auction in three separate chunks. With rare exceptions, my colleagues in the art and photo and mainstream press continue to disappoint me with their tacit trivialization of this story. To the best of my knowledge, no collection of equal significance has received such cavalier treatment when threatened with or undergoing radical deaccessioning.
•
Polaroid Collection auction catalogue
Footnote to the sale: The copy of the catalogue for the Polaroid sale that I ordered from Sotheby’s (and for which I paid $50) came with its corners badly dinged, simply stuck unprotected into a standard manila mailing envelope. Others who ordered the catalogue at my recommendation complained to me about their copies arriving in even worse condition. This isn’t a pamphlet; it’s a 480-page paperback on glossy stock. No respectable publisher would just stick such a heavy, expensive book into a plain, unpadded paper envelope for shipping to a purchaser, but that’s exactly what Sotheby’s does — presumably to save money on packaging. One correspondent told me that Sotheby’s sent a replacement copy when he complained, but packaged it in the same inappropriate, unprotected way, so that it still arrived less than intact. Sotheby’s should ponder the effect of this chintziness on the high-end image they work so hard to project.
The good news: If you want a free pdf file of this catalogue, click here.
•
This post supported by a donation from editor, historian, and author Lance Speer.
•
For an index of links to all previous posts related to this story, click here.