and for folks who prefer reading there's a great book on that topic as well:
Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum
I don't see what they're trying to hide though, they're paid millions of dollars for "consulting" services. It's not like anything is going to happen to them if they just get more. Why bother doing the art and book deals and things? Or is it to inflate the ego of the ones who actually believe they're talented and interesting?
You need some kind of plausibility behind the payments though. I might want a selfie with POTUS for bragging rights, and I'm rich, but I don't own a business that could reasonably have Hunter consult for. So, I buy his artwork instead, and eventually I get invited to a dinner that Joe happens to be at.
My point is, why does there need to be any air of legitimacy? Those "business" dealings in Ukraine and China etc are already blatantly corrupt bribery schemes to buy political favors as it is. Deniability is already pretty far fetched, so paying a bit more is hardly going to change that.
That's not how it works! You can't just make up a valuation when you donate things, and whatever higher valuation you get, you have now incurred capital gains on which you must pay taxes.
This article seems to be suggesting in Scenario 5 that under certain circumstances a person (in the US) can receive the full (appraised) market value of a donated art work as a tax deduction:
(There's a great deal of art and artifacts in museums and galleries around the world that have been donated "in lieu of taxation")
It also talks about how prices for art can be driven by a cycle of especially wealthy people being willing to pay large amounts of money for art.
> Because each donated work of art has a subjective value that is assessed by an appraiser and then after a period can be put back into the art market by the museum, art can be caught in a cycle of continuous increasing value, moving between private ownership and museums. When you take into consideration the exclusivity of the market and socio-economic factors that make the market highly responsive to high social standing and influence, which encourages selling art to the most high standing individuals and close business associates, we can see several financial and social results. First, we see that charitable deductions taken from art donations disproportionally benefit the wealthy
while providing a benefit of subjective value to the receiving organization.
And that fact that people can donate their art to their own private museums (on their own property), with public access available at certain times of the year, by appointment.
There’s an art dealer where I live who is extremely shady. He steals the work of other artists, copies and mimics their styles, and then mass produces their work as his own so that he doesn’t have to pay them.
He also has an extensive practice that involves cybersquatting on domains and redirecting searches from these artists to his own work. He also trolls for photography online and steals the images from these artists and sells it under their name and pockets the money without paying them.
Eventually, a group of artists found out and ostracized him from the local community. He finally shut down his gallery last week, but I’ve been told this went on for 15 years. Artists need better protection under the law (and new laws to protect them if needed), and more enforcement mechanisms to uphold the law.
> Artists need better protection under the law (and new laws to protect them if needed), and more enforcement mechanisms to uphold the law.
Please no. In the name of protecting artists, copyright law is strangling our culture. Misrepresenting art as being made by someone is already illegal as fraud. We do not need need “style” copyrights for arts. Mimicry and copying and modifying various styles from different artists is an integral part of the arts.
A nuanced and seemingly well-informed article. The part that hit me the hardest:
> When, in 2015, police raided the properties of Ronald Belciano, a Philadelphia drug lord, they found paintings by Renoir, Picasso, and Salvador Dalí, most of them held in a nearby storage locker. The man, it would seem, had little interest in actually looking at the works he’d acquired.
To go to that trouble and then not to bother enjoying your Renoir and Dali paintings... that hurts my heart.
This is typical in the art world - crime lord or otherwise. Art is often kept in freeports - storage facilities that exist outside of the realm of domestic taxation. This allows the artworks to be sold without incurring taxes or customs. Many artworks pass through owners who never actually physically lay eyes on them, and many pass through multiple owners without ever physically moving.
For a lot of people who transact in art, actually looking at the art is not at all the point of the exercise. Speculation on the art is the whole point. These things are effectively fanciful, convoluted, tax-dodging securities instruments, with only the most cursory nod to the appreciation of art.
Which, y'know, is awfully reminiscent of something else in recent memory...
One of my most interesting memories when visiting Geneva as a tourist a few years back was travelling in a public transport bus near the city's freeport, one of the biggest (if not the biggest) in the world. I was asking myself while on that public bus about how many masterpieces might be stored in the anonymous depot-like building I was seeing through the bus's window. A special kind of Louvre or Kunsthistorisches Museum, if you will.
Societies could mandate that works of art that are stored in freeports be publicly accessible. Locking away priceless historic art for speculation purposes should be banned.
Basically, either you wish to enjoy the artwork alone, then you have to pay taxes, or you wish to hide it from taxes, then you have to share it with the general public.
What’s “more free” about a legal loophole that allows million/billionaires to hoard art for speculative gains, while avoiding being taxed on them like everyone else?
All human beings desire freedom to some extent... the expressions may include freedom to stack up artworks in a warehouse, or freedom to post weird comments on an Internet forum.
Or, that art exhibited in museums open free of charge to the general public enjoy the same tax benefits as freeports - putting freeports out of business.
> freeports - storage facilities that exist outside of the realm of domestic taxation
Billions (TV show) depicts how these freeports work as well, exactly like you’ve explained. Absolutely disgusting that these loopholes exist…
Note: I find that when examples like these are used, you always get comments saying “Anyone can use a freeport” and “They have perfectly legal usecases”.
True, but most museums also keep the bulk of their collection -- except of course for the crowd-pleasing hits -- in storage. I think their motives are mostly better but the end effect is often the same: a work of art is rarely, if ever, seen live by humans.
One fun thing about The Broad (pronounced "Brode") in Los Angeles is that you can peek into the storage and restoration area where the staff is often moving pieces of the collection around for cleaning and so on.
The movie Tenet has some fun with the freeport idea:
41 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 91.7 ms ] threadhttps://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/the-hidden-side-of-the-...
Hype for store of value is pretty close to market manipulation and should be treated similarly.
It won't, but it probably should.
After all, Hunter Biden's paintings netted up to ~$500,000 a piece and I can only imagine how good the return on investment was.
Let me buy this painting @ $500k and then donate it with a value of $1m, net $500k tax rebate.
So much of it is just shady shit using Art as a store of value.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=202...
(There's a great deal of art and artifacts in museums and galleries around the world that have been donated "in lieu of taxation")
It also talks about how prices for art can be driven by a cycle of especially wealthy people being willing to pay large amounts of money for art.
> Because each donated work of art has a subjective value that is assessed by an appraiser and then after a period can be put back into the art market by the museum, art can be caught in a cycle of continuous increasing value, moving between private ownership and museums. When you take into consideration the exclusivity of the market and socio-economic factors that make the market highly responsive to high social standing and influence, which encourages selling art to the most high standing individuals and close business associates, we can see several financial and social results. First, we see that charitable deductions taken from art donations disproportionally benefit the wealthy while providing a benefit of subjective value to the receiving organization.
And that fact that people can donate their art to their own private museums (on their own property), with public access available at certain times of the year, by appointment.
He also has an extensive practice that involves cybersquatting on domains and redirecting searches from these artists to his own work. He also trolls for photography online and steals the images from these artists and sells it under their name and pockets the money without paying them.
Eventually, a group of artists found out and ostracized him from the local community. He finally shut down his gallery last week, but I’ve been told this went on for 15 years. Artists need better protection under the law (and new laws to protect them if needed), and more enforcement mechanisms to uphold the law.
Poorly made art gets redefined as a "thought experiment" or "social commentary" all the time by a small closed circle of art snoobs. Think NFTs.
Even forgeries turn into "real" art pieces if enough ppl in that circle can be convinced.
Please no. In the name of protecting artists, copyright law is strangling our culture. Misrepresenting art as being made by someone is already illegal as fraud. We do not need need “style” copyrights for arts. Mimicry and copying and modifying various styles from different artists is an integral part of the arts.
And depending on how mimicing, already covered by copyright law as a "derrivitave work".
> When, in 2015, police raided the properties of Ronald Belciano, a Philadelphia drug lord, they found paintings by Renoir, Picasso, and Salvador Dalí, most of them held in a nearby storage locker. The man, it would seem, had little interest in actually looking at the works he’d acquired.
To go to that trouble and then not to bother enjoying your Renoir and Dali paintings... that hurts my heart.
For a lot of people who transact in art, actually looking at the art is not at all the point of the exercise. Speculation on the art is the whole point. These things are effectively fanciful, convoluted, tax-dodging securities instruments, with only the most cursory nod to the appreciation of art.
Which, y'know, is awfully reminiscent of something else in recent memory...
One of my most interesting memories when visiting Geneva as a tourist a few years back was travelling in a public transport bus near the city's freeport, one of the biggest (if not the biggest) in the world. I was asking myself while on that public bus about how many masterpieces might be stored in the anonymous depot-like building I was seeing through the bus's window. A special kind of Louvre or Kunsthistorisches Museum, if you will.
Basically, either you wish to enjoy the artwork alone, then you have to pay taxes, or you wish to hide it from taxes, then you have to share it with the general public.
This is true, societies could choose to be less free. Alternatively, societies could choose to be more free.
I would rather my society be more free than it currently is, rather than less free.
In this phrase, “someone” are only million/billionaires (1%) and “something” is avoid taxes on a niche, speculation on art.
Not sure how that is much of a freedom to be honest.
Billions (TV show) depicts how these freeports work as well, exactly like you’ve explained. Absolutely disgusting that these loopholes exist…
Note: I find that when examples like these are used, you always get comments saying “Anyone can use a freeport” and “They have perfectly legal usecases”.
One fun thing about The Broad (pronounced "Brode") in Los Angeles is that you can peek into the storage and restoration area where the staff is often moving pieces of the collection around for cleaning and so on.
The movie Tenet has some fun with the freeport idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyoI7_C6N_s
Edit: BTW I recommend reading Priceless [0] by Robert K. Wittman [1]
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Priceless-Undercover-Rescue-Worlds-Tr...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_King_Wittman