Sections
When most people think of art auctions, they think of Christie’s or Sotheby’s in New York or London, not a cruise ship. But over the last two decades, auctioning “fine art” on cruises, often to first-time bidders who have never met a reserve or inspected a provenance, has become big business.
The biggest player by far, with more than $300 million in annual revenue and nearly 300,000 artworks sold each year, is Park West Gallery, based in Southfield, Mich. It handles such a high volume of art sales at sea that it bills itself as “the world’s largest art dealer.”
Park West sells art on the Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Norwegian, Carnival, Disney, Holland America, Regent and Oceania lines. (Princess runs its own auctions in-house.)
For the cruise-ship companies, Park West’s auctions have become a revenue source like any other concession. For the passengers the auctions are a popular form of onboard entertainment, like gambling or shopping or catching the shows.
Yet some Park West customers say they did not get what they bargained for.
One is Luis Maldonado, a businessman from the La Jolla section of San Diego with interests in finance and construction and a penchant for Latin American art. He was touring the Mediterranean with his wife, Karina, on the Regent Seven Seas Voyager in November 2006 when they decided to stop by the Park West art auction promoted onboard.
He was surprised to find artworks by Picasso and Rembrandt in the auction area, a lounge near the casino, where they were greeted with Champagne. He gravitated toward the Picassos.
There, he said, the auctioneer talked up two “museum-quality” Picasso prints appraised at more than $35,000 each and a trilogy of Salvador Dalí prints valued at $35,000 as a set. Mr. Maldonado said the auctioneer described the works as “good investments,” explaining that they were being offered at 40 percent off their “appraised value,” with no sales tax....
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