Even assuming the auction by Sotheby’s goes through as planned, it includes only 1260 works out of an inventoried total of 15,936. That leaves 14,676 still in the hands of the court-appointed trustee, John R. Stoebner, for disposition. So we need to turn some of our attention to alerting suitable repositories to the desirability and ongoing availability of the bulk of the collection, which remains a unique anthology of twentieth-century visual culture. In short, we need to help the trustee find this collection — complete as is, or minus the auction selection but otherwise intact — a good new home. […]
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Neither the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne nor the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris purchased the works deposited with them by Polaroid in the ’90s. Nor did Polaroid do so with the proviso that the institutions then needed to go find funds with which to acquire them. This adds to the accumulating evidence that, in the ’90s, Polaroid sought to find appropriate repositories for chunks of the collections as donations. […] 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. […] 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. […] |
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Polaroid Collection: Update 17
Continuing her detailed coverage of the crisis of the Polaroid Collection, Charlotte Burns in the April issue of The Art Newspaper reports that a considerable number of artists and photographers with work in the collection stand ready to participate in a legal effort to intervene in its imminent dismantling. In her article titled “Polaroid row hots up,” she specifically identifies Chuck Close as having committed himself to fighting the planned June 21-22 auction of the cream of the collection at Sotheby’s in New York. […]