The Rape of a Major Photo Collection!

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000....html?mod=e2tw

So let's just let the courts say, take the best 10% of a collection and sell it off piecemeal, putting in no thought or reason how the collection is viewed as a whole.
Sotheby's - Mini-site - Photographs from the Polaroid Collection

[DSL_PWR]

Experts say the auction is expected to bring in at least $7.2 million.

That is all they care about and rightfully so in this economy.

[SCone]

When you take away the artist names, you're left with a bunch of old photographs. No different than any dresser drawer after the passing of a loved one. What to do with the images? Should they be kept or discarded? A tragedy in and of itself, a lifetime of memories left in the hands of someone that may not even know who is in the photo.

[Valerie]

A.D. Coleman has been writing about this since the ordeal began.

Photocritic International Polaroid Collection: Urgent Photographer Alert

[iCe]

I'm not sure that I understand why breaking the collections up is a bad thing. I don't think all of the Monet's, for example, are in a single collection yet that doesn't detract from their value.

[RKEnnis]

Yeah, I don't see the problem with breaking up the collection, either.

Of course, if the some of the prints being sold are still owned by the artist, than that IS an issue.

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

OK, only a few of the pieces are "unique" copies of the work-mostly the Polaroids taken by Warhol so the art is out there in other forms for people to see. If you took the time to look at the second link and pulled up the auction catalogue on line of the 400+ works you start to see the vision of the collection and what Polaroid was trying to amass. Now I would not have seen it as a problem if the WHOLE collection was acquired by an institution en mass but this piecemeal break up totally destroys the vision of it being a collection.

The comment of this being just a bunch of pictures in a drawer is a total insult! These were specific acquisitions and not just a pile of pictures donated to Polaroid.

As to the Monet's they have never been in just one collection but there are some collections of Monet's, mostly held in France, that if broken up would bring about a National Uproar in the country where they are held.

At least they are bringing in more $$ than expected!

[RKEnnis]

I did look through a fair portion of the collection. I would certainly welcome the chance to view these works as a collection. With that said, I don't see a cohesive enough theme to necessarily warrant keeping all the images in one collection.