There is no question that art has investment value. Over the summer, Richard Fuld, the chairman of the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers, and his wife Kathy, a trustee of New York's Museum of Modern Art, consigned 16 works on paper to Christie's. Presciently, they secured a guarantee in the region of $20 million regardless of the sale's outcome. Even if their consignment's top lot, a 1951 de Kooning drawing, doesn't achieve its low estimate of $3 million when it goes on the block in November, it will always be worth something - which is more than you can say about a share in Lehman Brothers. For months now, art dealers have been gleefully exclaiming, "Art is the new gold!" Certainly, it's a reassuringly tangible object when so many markets are scarily virtual. And it is more emotionally and intellectually rewarding than a gold bar. telegraph.co.uk
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Art is the New Gold
There is no question that art has investment value. Over the summer, Richard Fuld, the chairman of the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers, and his wife Kathy, a trustee of New York's Museum of Modern Art, consigned 16 works on paper to Christie's. Presciently, they secured a guarantee in the region of $20 million regardless of the sale's outcome. Even if their consignment's top lot, a 1951 de Kooning drawing, doesn't achieve its low estimate of $3 million when it goes on the block in November, it will always be worth something - which is more than you can say about a share in Lehman Brothers. For months now, art dealers have been gleefully exclaiming, "Art is the new gold!" Certainly, it's a reassuringly tangible object when so many markets are scarily virtual. And it is more emotionally and intellectually rewarding than a gold bar. telegraph.co.uk
