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Art Business News, August, 2000

In New York, nudes were making news. Despite Mayor Giuliani's objections and injunctions, photographer Spencer Tunick finally got his way: he shot 150 nude men and women who were lying on an empty stretch of Delancey Street under the Williamsburg Bridge after the U.S. Supreme Court decided it was okay. "This is a victory for the body as an art object, not a sexual object or a recreational object," said Tunick.

At Sotheby's, the largest outside shareholder in the auction house's holding company says that electing the son of the former chairman, Alfred Taubman, to a board seat would represent a conflict of interest, in the face of the continuing criminal investigation into price fixing. Objections to the seating of Robert Taubman were raised by Ronal Baron, whose investment funds are the largest outside investors in Sotheby's.

Early this summer in London, some 9,000 dealers came together to attend an abundance of art fairs. Reportedly, the art market is at its most bouyant since the late `80s, with dealers reporting a 30-40 percent increase in turnover in the last two years.

Stung by criticism that too many fraudsters are putting in bids for goods on its site, eBay has teamed up with Wells Fargo Bank to offer an "electronic check" payment option. Now a seller can get confirmation that the buyer has enough money in the bank to cover the cost of the item within minutes.

Half a dozen members of the Art Dealers Association of America provided expert opinions to the New York State Attorney General's office in an eBay court case. The six were Frederick D. Hill, Berry-Hill Galleries; Robert S. Fishko, Forum Gallery; Jane Kallir, Galerie St. Etienne; Cameron M. Shay, James Graham & Sons; Martha J. Fleischman, Kennedy Galleries; and Richard T. York and Susan E. Menconi, Richard York Gallery.

Meanwhile, a British advertisement that features a nude couple to promote the joys of reading has provoked a storm of complaints. The outdoor ad, showing a naked woman straddling a naked man--each engrossed in a book--has provoked 315 complaints about pornography. The Saactchi ad agency said their focus group found it witty and light-hearted.

Billionaire Si Newhouse shocked the art world when he gave up his coveted board seat he held for 27 years at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The publishing mogul, who is also one of the world's biggest art collectors, secretly bought a $10 million Picasso from the museum's collection--in violation of rules barring trustees from getting insider deals.

When the North Carolina Museum of Art discovered that a work it possessed by Lucas Cranach the Elder had been looted by the Nazis in 1940, it returned the painting to the rightful heirs in Austria. The Hainisch family has now sold "Madonna and Child in a Land-scape" to the museum for $600,000, while making a gift in the same amount to the institution, representing the difference in the $1.2 million estimated value of the painting.