WHO OWNS WPA PRINTS?
TRANSCRIPT OF PANEL DISCUSSION HELD AT THE PRINT FAIR
NOVEMBER 4, 2000 -- page 4
At this point, as I look at Blanche (Grambs), Fred (Becker), Jake (Kainen), and Will (Barnet) here, they have very few prints they did during the WPA left in their personal collections. These prints have been grabbed off by dealers such as myself, who saw the historical and commercial values they have and we all shared in the proceeds. I think one of the things we wonder about is how many WPA prints are really around, and I may be coming up with some really pie-in-the-sky-stuff. I figured if the GSA can do it, so can I.
I believe there are some thirty dealers in the International Fine Print Dealers Association who deal somewhat with WPA prints as part of their stock. Of those dealers, I have tried to figure how many we each have. I know at the moment I have something like 29 or 32 (I forgot to count them before I came here) for sale. I have two for sale here at this fair. Why do I only have two if I have so many? I have very few WPA prints that are really salable. Most of the ones in my inventory are priced at $200 or $300, and are not particularly appealing. I brought prints to the fair by Riva Helfond and Minetta Good, which are the two best WPA prints I have. One is $2,400 and the other $750 or $900.
So, figuring there are thirty dealers with an average of about 30 WPA prints for sale and add some private dealers who also have WPA prints - say 50 dealers in all - so that's about 1500 prints on the marketplace right now out of the 250,000 to 350,000 supposedly produced.
As far as the auction houses are concerned, they only have WPA material from time to time. Christie's and Sotheby's have very little interest in WPA prints right now. They don't have enough value to offer them for sale at their average $3,000 to $5,000 per lot. The smaller auction houses do offer WPA prints for sale, and frequently put them up in lots of 6 or 8. My guess is right now there are probably less than 100 WPA prints in the hands of the auction houses waiting to be sold.
When we come to private collections, we only have two major private collectors, one of whom is on the panel, and then we have people who have a few here, and a few there, and bought the print because they like the image. I'm thinking there are 2,000 to 3,000 prints in the hands of private collectors, and it could be less than half that number.
So, when we add this together: 1,500 with dealers, 100 with auction houses and 2,000 to 3,000 in private hands - I end up with a high figure of about 3,600 to 4,600 WPA prints that are not in public institutions or federal depositories.
So how much is all this really worth? Out of the thousands of editions produced by hundreds of artists working for the WPA only three artists did work which have sold in the market for more than $ 5,000!! Stuart Davis did one color lithograph and two in black and white, Louis Lozowick did two or three, and Raphael Soyer did one. I'm talking about the WPA artists and not the work produced before or after.
If we follow my arithmetic, we have to arrive at an average value of a WPA print. I'm being very generous at $ 400, and I believe it may be less than that. If you go through the "phone book" the GSA sent us, you will see name after name you've never, ever heard of.
Thus, 1,600 prints in the hands of dealers and auction houses, at a high average value of $400, comes to $640,000! And the high figure of 3,000 prints in private hands at the same value comes to $1,200,000. I have a feeling if the GSA could even retrieve 20 % of the WPA prints, it would cost many, many more millions of our taxpayer dollars. As a dealer, I have been custodian of many artists' wonderful work I think could produce something without worrying about the marketplace. I have cleaned them, restored them, I've sold them to many museums. There are enough WPA prints out there in public places that the "tax payers" will never, ever be deprived. And, as far as I'm concerned, for my government to put a shadow on me and say I'm dealing in "hot" goods, is very upsetting.
David Mickenberg: As Director of a university museum that is based on an interdisciplinary study of the arts, that has a relationship with a faculty that is deeply interested in the 1920's, '30's and '40's American art history, that is interested in the dialogue and the discourse pertaining to how art gets created and what the role of federal sponsorship in the arts is, and an institution devoted to research relating the political and social implications of art created between World War I and World War II, the collecting of WPA prints is of central importance to what we do as an educational institution.
The first large collection of WPA prints that came to the Block Museum of Art came from a woman whose name is Ms. Louise Dunn Yochim. Louise Dunn Yochim not only was an artist who worked for the graphics division in Illinois in the latter period of the WPA, but she eventually became the head of the arts curriculum in the Chicago public schools. She's now, I think, 93 and lives in Skokie, Illinois. On the last day in which she worked for the Chicago public schools, on her way out the door into her retirement, she passed by a garbage can, and in that garbage can, was a bunch of prints wrapped up, thrown out by the superintendent of schools. She just happened to see it, out of the corner of her eye. There were 75 prints, all of which were stamped as being part of the WPA. She went to the principal of her school and asked if she could have them. He threw up his hands and said "Sure." They remained with her, wrapped up in the original plastic wrapping, in her apartment in Skokie until she called me and asked if the museum had an interest in this.
That was first of the large scale collections that have come to us. The Block has between 300 to 400 WPA prints that have all been collected in the last 8 years. And they have come to us through donations that make Louise Dunn Yochim's experience not atypical by any stretch of the imagination. They have come to us in trade by other individuals that have had their works. They come to us from a series of dealers from throughout the country, from Susan Teller to Sylvan Cole to Malbert to Lee Stone, who have specialized in that period and in the WPA.
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