Museums boost wind trade in art

Should the state spend 150 million euros on a Rembrandt? This week the Rijksmuseum announced that it has an option to buy from The Standard Bearer (1636), still owned by the French banking family De Rothschild.

The poignant comparison is rightly made between poverty in the contemporary art sector and the immense purchase price. But there is something else at play, a more fundamental question that the House of Representatives should consider in its decision.

The bizarre price increases of paintings arise because paintings are not reproducible and because their scarcity is guaranteed by the fact that most of the canonical masterpieces are in the hands of national museums that will never sell their collections. The paintings can therefore function as securities for the super-rich who are looking for a place for their surplus cash. Such a Rembrandt is minimally stable in value, almost certainly increasing in value and quite liquid.

Paintings are also easy to move and store, making them a useful instrument for hiding assets from the tax authorities. Swiss warehouses are therefore full of the multimillion-dollar art that was auctioned at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. The French owners of the coveted Rembrandt also use their art as securities.

The exuberant price increases harm the museums. As art prices rise, insurance costs rise with them. The costs of loan traffic (the borrowing and lending of works of art for exhibitions elsewhere) are also growing. Security is becoming more expensive, because the price increase attracts criminals. As a result, much less money goes to education and exhibitions. Sometimes the artwork itself becomes less visible, because it has to be displayed behind thick glass, or because it is almost impossible to travel to temporary exhibitions.

Also read: Rembrandt’s bravado is worth the money

Not illegal, but immoral

The wind trade in painting is not illegal, but it is immoral. Treating art as a security is ignoring the cultural value it has for the entire community.

Now there is nothing wrong with making a profit from art. In fact, collectors play a major role in preserving heritage. But a responsible collector knows that he is never the exclusive owner of the artwork. It also belongs to the artist’s enduring intellectual and spiritual legacy and the cultural memory of the community.

Almost all governments therefore have generous tax deduction schemes for donors. In this way the collector can be rewarded for his audacity, his eye and his knowledge, and he can transfer the art to the community in a dignified way.

As mentioned, national museums play a major role in the exorbitant increases in value, because they guard both the scarcity and the public reputation of the works of art. In a sense they function as the central banks of the art trade. They cannot do anything about it, that is an unintended side effect of their public task. However, they should also do everything they can to prevent these increases in value, because their costs increase as a result and scarce cultural money flows away to insurers and security guards.

Also read: Stop de blockbusterverslaving

Why donate?

When museums and governments pay top prices for paintings, they legitimize the wind trade. They even give it prestige. Moreover, they frustrate the benevolence of donors. Why donate to a museum when that museum pays the top prize to billionaires? Let them buy my art too, the collector will say!

Museums should agree internationally that they no longer participate in paying millions of prizes. In this way you encourage donations and make it clear that there is no prestige to be gained for those who treat art as a security.

Because above all, the 175 million for Rembrandt (150 million by the state, 25 million by other parties) is a tarnishing of the idea that the value of art cannot be expressed in money, that art is not just a tradable good, such as gold or diamonds, but of living, spiritual and intellectual value, a product of the imagination that should be accessible to all who need it. If museums no longer defend that idea, why do they exist?

No, this purchase is a stain on the honor and reputation of the Rijksmuseum and a stain on the reputation of the Netherlands as a vulnerable cultural nation. The House of Representatives should let its mind speak and not be carried away by stories about prestige, nor by the apparently irresistible glamor of big money. This purchase is wrong, stop it.

A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 11 December 2021

A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of December 11, 2021