Weeks before Hunter Biden’s art show — “The Journey Home” — opened at a New York gallery, marking the splashy debut of a newcomer with a famous name to the commercial art world, the White House insisted it had safeguards to ensure that no one who buys a painting will be able to use the acquisition to influence his father’s administration.The White House Counsel’s Office helped develop guidelines for the Manhattan gallery to keep the identity of art buyers from both the artist and the administration. The gallery could reject offers that were “out of the ordinary.”Ultimately, the White House said, the person who would enforce this arrangement would be the gallerist who is hosting Mr. Biden’s show, Georges Bergès.In an interview this week at his gallery on West Broadway in SoHo, Mr. Bergès, 45, fully embraced his role as gatekeeper.He is having no discussions with the White House, he said. He sets the prices, most of which are in the tens of thousands of dollars. He vets the buyers and only he, he said, will know who has bought one of the 25 works hanging in the gallery’s two floors.“It’s all on me,” he said. “Who is buying and who is not, it’s solely on my shoulders.”ImageMr. Bergès in his gallery. He has said he will closely enforce safeguards designed to ensure Mr. Biden does not learn the identity of the people who purchase his art.Credit...George Etheredge for The New York TimesBut Mr. Bergès declined to address what sort of criteria he or the White House had set to distinguish between lovers of art and lovers of influence.Would there be contract provisions for purchasers designed to minimize any ethical concerns? Would foreign nationals, for example, be excluded from purchasing?He deflected the questions, asserting that as a private dealer he must keep those details confidential. Overall, he said, he expected those interested to be “serious collectors,” most of whom were his existing long-term clients that he could trust.But he acknowledged that the art market is a free market. If someone wanted to reveal publicly that they had bought a Biden work, he said, what could he do to stop them?The lack of specifics from Mr. Bergès and the White House about the safeguards has done little to silence those who say the art exhibition is a potential ethical minefield. They say they worry that the prices Mr. Biden is said to be charging — high for an art-market novice — have more to do with Mr. Biden’s name and contacts than his skill.“It’s a plan that is almost certain to fail,” said Walter Shaub, senior ethics fellow at the Project on Government Oversight and former head of the Office of Government Ethics. “When you look at public perceptions of corruption, it has already failed.”ImageCritics question whether Mr. Biden’s paintings, which have high price tags for an artist just beginning to market his work, would be bought by those seeking to influence his father’s administration.Credit...George Etheredge for The New York TimesMr. Shaub scoffed at the suggestion by Mr. Bergès that in Mr. Biden he had found the next great artist of the 21st century.“What he has found is not a new Jackson Pollock,” Mr. Shaub said. “What he has found is a new Eric Trump.”Biden administration officials tend to respond defensively to questions about Hunter Biden, often privately making the point that his art venture is not the same as what they depict as brazen attempts by President Trump’s sons to associate the family business with the presidency.Mr. Bergès, too, views the criticism as largely politically inspired, unduly negative and overwrought. He said he doubted any buyers would make public their purchase because collectors typically value privacy. By announcing they owned a Biden, they would only expose themselves to criticism in today’s polarized climate, he said.(Mr. Bergès said he has been the subject of threats, and his gallery has been vandalized. A visitor to his gallery noted an armed security guard working there.)“If you are a head of a company, you have Republicans and Democrats as clients, does it serve you well?” he said. “Let’s say you fall in love with a painting, a Hunter Biden, to have your name publicly told to everybody. If you look at the amount of calls I get, imagine a business owner — they would be punished for buying art.”(Though Mr. Biden will not be told who purchased his art, according to Mr. Bergès, he will be told what it sold for.)ImageMr. Biden has been making art since childhood, but has no formal training and is just now entering the commercial art market. Credit...Randy Holmes/Getty ImagesIf buyers did publicize their purchases, a person familiar with the White House plan said, government officials would be wary of requests from them for business or access.Mr. Bergès declined to be specific aboutBy: Graham Bowley
Title: At Hunter Biden’s Art Show, Line, Color and Questions
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/arts/design/hunter-biden-art-buyers.html
Published Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2021 17:06:36 +0000
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