Zilkens' News Blog

Zilkens‘ News Blog 29 2024

When countries dispute the provenance and ownership of works of art, moral outrage is quickly at work, as in the case of the Benin bronzes, for example. But there are also works of art in museums in the USA that came there quite normally, although they are sorely missed in their original location, such as the other half of the cloister of St. Michel de Cuxa, created in the 12th century and sold to the Cloisters in New York in the early 20th century. The iconoclasm was called secularisation.

On the French national holiday, an assassination attempt is made on the American presidential candidate and a European football final is played. Fortunately, the assassination attempt misses its target and the presumed assassin does not survive his dastardly deed. It will have a massive impact on the American election campaign. The exact circumstances will no longer be able to be clarified and all kinds of theories will fuel the increasingly fake news. The gun lobby is rubbing its hands with glee, because with Trump they don't have to worry that he will advocate stricter controls on gun ownership in the USA. He has survived and will capitalise on this. Now, it can be assumed, Biden's physical weaknesses will be brought even more to the fore... The road to November is long, perhaps too long for him.

A new art hotspot has opened its doors in Munich: Bergson Kunstkraftwerk in Aubing near Munich, with spacious exhibition areas, a concert hall and a restaurant. Johann König from Berlin has opened his fifth branch here. We wish him every success in these difficult times.

In the Berlin Tagesspiegel, two letters to the editor from those affected (including Monika Grütters) have appeared in response to the Philippic by Peter Raue against state arbitrariness in connection with the sketchbook of CDF (Caspar David Friedrich). They see the whole thing very differently and sing the praises of the sketchbook's identity-forming power and the justified partial expropriation. Purely authoritarian state behaviour. Marion Ackermann, the future general director of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, is also involved in the background in her current capacity as general director of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen (State Art Collections) in Dresden. Both her future and her last two professional institutions have been in the hands of a competitor for decades in terms of insurance. Tenders for this service also seem to be rather rare and many people are no longer willing to participate because they get the feeling that it is already clear in advance who will win the contract. It's always about the price - and we in Cologne know a thing or two about that. After 14 years of construction, the opera and theatre are still not finished, although only three years were planned. Apparently there is a lack of personnel, although the city administration has been increased by more than 5,000 people in the eight years that our Lord Mayor has been preaching administrative reform, presumably in the course of the necessary modernisation. Now she wants to impose her outstanding expertise on the Cologne Cathedral Construction Society at the end of her foreseeable term of office. However, you have to collect donations and not waste tax money - it's a real cross to bear.

Stefan Kobel looks back on the first half of the year in the auction business. Not included is a court ruling from France that confirms the transfer of ownership with the hammer fall at the auction and declares invalid the conditional clauses linked to payments, as are popular with Sotheby's and other big auction houses. Whoever gets the knock-down bid has to pay, otherwise the legislator has other, also painful tools at his disposal

The new European football champion is: Spain

Nothing new in the East and the Russians are acting as if it were the others.

I wish you a strong week

Stephan Zilkens and the team at Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker GmbH in Solothurn and Cologne