Recent court events in America suggest that what’s good for the backstreet
dope fiend may also be useful advice for the aesthete. Sotheby’s ex-chairman A.
Alfred Taubman was convicted of a price-fixing conspiracy with rival auctioneers
Christie’s, said to have cost clients $400 million. Meanwhile Fred
Schultz, a New York antiquities dealer backed by Christie’s, argued that the US
could not prosecute him for allegedly breaking Egyptian law by handling
illegally exported artefacts. Anyway, said Schultz, how was he to know the
artefacts were of archaeological significance. Why else, said the US government,
would you ask $2.5 million for a…
Never trust your dealer
By Mike Pitts
9 February 2002
