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Polaroid Collection: Update 13

As a belated Christmas gift, George H. Singer, Esq., of the Minneapolis law firm Lindqvist & Vennum, legal counsel to John R. Stoebner, the court-appointed Chapter 7 Trustee in the PBE Corporation bankruptcy proceeding, sent me a “Notice and Demand” letter dated December 30, 2009, indicating his unhappiness, and his client’s, with some of the reportage and commentary posted here. I responded, and he replied, and I replied in turn, in a full and frank exchange of views. You’ll find our collected correspondence here. […]

Polaroid Collection: Update 12

The proposed sell-off of the historic Polaroid Collection has moved a step closer to reality with the announcement by Sotheby’s of dates for the auction: June 21-22, 2010. If the sale does go through as planned and on schedule, it will take place well after the spring art-market season has come and gone and the art and photo worlds have closed up shop for the summer — not to mention in the midst of a deep global recession that has hit the art market hard and the photo market especially hard, with no immediate improvement on the event horizon. […]

Bring On the Tweens

This blog’s subscriber base has grown slowly but steadily since my first post of June 1, 2009. I’m grateful for the willingness of subscribers to stick with me as I develop my own approach to blogging, which falls somewhere between cultural journalism and critical essay-writing, a far cry from casual blogging and tweeting. […]

Polaroid Collection: Update 11

I think it is incumbent on the Polaroid Corporation to answer some increasingly urgent questions. To wit: How does the Polaroid Corporation account for the discrepancy between the repeated estimate of 22,000-24,000 prints in the collection, given out by the Polaroid Corporation as recently as summer 2009, and the official inventory of 16,000 presented to the Minnesota court in spring 2009? Can the Polaroid Corporation verify its actual acquisition and legal ownership of all the works it claims as its outright property in the Polaroid Collection, above and beyond authorization from the courts to sell them? […]

Polaroid Collection: Update 9

In effect, if not by intent, several iterations of the corporate entity known as the Polaroid Corporation have used the bankruptcy courts of Delaware and Minnesota to launder the world-famous Polaroid Collection by legally severing it in toto from any binding, enduring contractual relationships with the picture-makers whose work it contains. In so doing, the court has endorsed the seller’s effective breach of contract in relation to thousands of artworks by hundreds of artists. As precedent, this decision will have ramifications and resonances that the court clearly has failed to envision. . . . […]