TEFAF Maastricht 2011: reflecting on sales

Dr Jerome Eisenberg has been talking about the sale of antiquities at TEFAF Maastricht 2011  ("Big-money still being spent on works of art despite world's traumas", The National March 24, 2011).

At Royal-Athena Galleries, the American antiquities dealer Jerome Eisenberg said business was good. Clients were buying Greek and Etruscan vases from the collection of Patricia Kluge (widow of the movie mogul John Kluge), he noted. "Right now a lot more interest is in the investment benefit because of the phenomenal prices in the auctions last year," he said. He said that new clients included a museum of ancient art in Mougins, France, and a private collector in an undisclosed Gulf state who bought €2.8m worth of vases in January. Interest was also high in Egyptian objects, said Eisenberg, pointing to a relief of Arsinoe II from the Ptolemaic period that he sold the first night of the fair for €52,600.

The Kluge collection was discussed by Fabio Isman in the Italian press earlier this year.

The Mougins Museum of Classical Art will be opening in May 2011. The director is Dr Mark Merrony, the editor-in-chief of Minerva. And as the website of Minerva tells us, "the Mougins Museum of Art [sic.] (MMoCA) is a unique museum from the publisher of Minerva ..." And the most recent number of Minerva has an article on the new museum by Merrony.