Art Games

Big Art has taken over:

Most art enthusiasts are ignorant of the corrupt business practices among major players in the art establishment, who have colluded over recent decades to form cartels, which industry critics have labeled "Big Art." At an art panel discussion two weeks ago. I met with Tod Volpe, a 50-year veteran of the industry, his colleague, Wendy Fritz, a member of the Getty family, the art critic, Anthony Haden-Guest, and Douglas Dechert, a former reporter at the New York Post and investigative journalist at various art publications who has covered the corruption and criminality in the art world. The art sector has been manipulated for years in favor of well-connected billionaires, to the detriment of non-connected outsiders, who are often charged exorbitant fees by "experts" and auction houses to sell their art on the market. "The players in Big Art are an 'establishment' which includes the management and boards of thousands of massively endowed museums, auction houses, major galleries, powerful brokers and art publications that conduct the trillion dollar international art market," said Dechert. "The major auction houses are nominally competitors, but they function as a cartel with a history of price fixing scandals between them and they participate in systemic collusion with their cronies in the extortionist 'authentication' rackets," he added.

The business of art is cronyism...