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. . . . […]
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Given that a single Steichen print went for close to $3 million just a few years back, and a single Gursky sold for over $3 million shortly thereafter, the notion that no one in what Maneker calls “the photography market” can afford to buy the Polaroid Collection is laughable on its face. If price is no object, then what is? This brings me to the logical conclusion that every potential buyer has discovered in examining the collection’s documentation that the bulk of it is contractually encumbered in ways that prohibit (or at least problematize) its sale, thus also making perilous its purchase as a whole. . . . […] I don’t know if something’s rotten in the state of Denmark, but something’s definitely off in the state of Minnesota. Evidence accumulates that Polaroid has known all along that it never owned most of the work in its collection outright, yet the contents of that collection now move toward the auction block with the approval of the Minnesota Bankruptcy Court. . . . […] |
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Polaroid Collection: Update 10
Sometime between January 2003 and April 2009, somewhere between 6000-8000 works vanished from the Polaroid Collection. And no one seems to care — not the Minnesota Bankruptcy Court, which in August ’09 authorized the sale of the remainder of the collection at auction; not Sotheby’s, designated as the auction house of choice for the procedure; not the art/photo press, which to date has shown no interest in any aspect of the dissolution of this great collection; and not even the current possessors of the collection. . . . […]