A Canvas Craze?

Delaware Freeport

Art collectors are being replaced by investors. Where collectors might safeguard  prize works by placing them on long-term loan at a museum, tax-averse art investors hide away their masterpieces in free port warehouses. In Switzerland, perhaps. Or right here in the States, in Newark, Delaware.

Wonder what financial historians a century from now will say about our art craze. Will they be able to figure out why investors paid tens of millions of dollars, even hundreds of millions, for products that consisted of no more than a few hundred dollars worth of wood, canvas and pigment?


Maybe they'll call it just another Tulip Mania.

Posted by James L. Mcdonald, Retired Senior Editor, Merrill Anderson Co. Inc.