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Yes, a museum director is fundamentally a tax guy. They’re not paying for the work that gets “donated,” so a museum director is a negotiable third party who is
by dondawest 7y ago
Yes, a museum director is fundamentally a tax guy. They’re not paying for the work that gets “donated,” so a museum director is a negotiable third party who is highly willing to appraise works at values the Donor suggests.
The incentive for the Museum to inflate the value of the work that gets donated to them is inflating the supposed value of their holdings. The incentive for the Donor is tax evasion.
OH WAIT I meant “tax avoidance.”
- stanfordkid 7y agoIt gets even crazier — there are people literally buying new paintings at higher prices to inflate the value of existing holdings. So let’s say you buy 3 Vassarely’s @ $200k each (or insert semi-hot artist here). You wait 4 years and have someone else buy a 4th Vassarely piece for 3x that price point. Now you use the inflated value for that single piece as a comp for the other 3 pieces that will then be donated. Art market reps basically find ways to facilitate these types of things. This is why you always see wings of museums named after rich folks.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]