Words of Warning for the Prospective Art Purchaser
Here is a link to a recent New York Times artciel describing two recent alleged attempts to separate motivated art purchasers from their dollars.
In the first, the article describes a recent attempt to sell 65 photograph negatives claimed to be the work of the late Ansel Adams. According to the article, David W. Streets, is trying to sell a the negatives — found ten years ago at a garage sale in Fresno, Calif. — as the long lost work of the landscape photographer Ansel Adams. Streets, who according to The Times was “convicted of passing bad checks, fraud and petty theft over a seven-year period,” and the man who bought the negatives in 2000, Rick Norsigian, insist that they are Adams’s work “beyond a reasonable doubt” and are collectively worth $200 million. The two men are selling prints made from the negatives at between $1,500 and $7,500 each.
The second is the recent discovery of a group of 74 plasters allegedly made from wax and clay sculptures crafted by Edgar Degas. The plasters, in turn, are being used to cast a set of bronzes that are being marketed and sold for around $20 million even though, according to the article, Degas is thought to have only displayed one wax sculpture in his life.
