About to Get Shafted Again

I received a lot of comments from museum directors and curators on last month’s blog, agreeing with me that changing social mores have caused a re-evaluation of what gets presented in museums today.  The art market follows this trend: paintings depicting Native Americans as ignorant, bloodthirsty savages are much harder to sell than they were 30 years ago, and their fair market value has consequently decreased.

On the other hand, paintings that depict Native Americans in a sympathetic light have risen in fair market value.  A telling example can be found in a sale at an auction in Nevada last month.  Western art, in addition to being offered at the New York auction houses, has its own specialty auction houses, and the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction (which, though it bears the name of its original venue, has been held in Reno for years) is one of the 800-pound gorillas of the Western art market.  Its annual summer sale is attended by all of the major Western collectors and dealers, and record prices for Western artists’ works have often been achieved there.

Howard Terpning (born 1927) has long been the dean of living Western artists, with several works previously bringing seven figures at auction.  The painting below was sold for $2,360,000 last month, a record for the artist.

Howard Terpning (born 1927). Paper That Talks Two Ways – The Treaty Signing, 2008
Photo courtesy Coeur d’Alene Art Auction

I think that Terpning’s choice of subject was the major factor contributing to the record price.  Just as politicians in Congress do today, a Native American tribe is discussing a proposed treaty that they are being asked to sign. They’re not idiots.  It seems obvious from the speaker’s face that he doesn’t think that the treaty is worth the paper it’s printed on.  (Terpning’s title alludes to an old Native American complaint that treaties always seemed to be interpreted in one way by the whites who signed them and in another way by the tribes whom the treaties affected.)  These Native Americans may have increasingly limited agency in their dealings with Anglo encroachers, but they’re not unsophisticated.

Terpning is a wonderful artist, and any of his works would be of interest to the market, but this subject hits the sweet spot in current collecting fashion, and its record auction result reflects that fact.  It’s a trend that I expect to continue for the foreseeable future, and my appraisals will reflect this.

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Oedipus was destined to murder his father and marry his mother.  As a poetry-scribbling undergraduate at a provincial college, I assumed that a likewise inexorable fate awaited me:  English teacher.  A three-year immersion in art at major European museums, courtesy of a stint in the U.S. Army, broke the chain of destiny, however, and when I returned to academia it was as a grad student in art history.  From there, it was but a few steps on the primrose path before I slipped into the Dark Side of art dealing and appraising, and all these years later, I’m fit for nothing else.

I’ve never stopped writing poetry, however, and a selection of my poems has just been published by Kelsay Books.

Without false modesty, I can say that the poems are good.  If you’ve enjoyed my blog, I think you’ll enjoy the poems.  23 bucks on Amazon.  Here’s the link.

See you on Parnassus.