Art for money's sake
By STAFF Louis Kraar, Leslie Brody, Alan Farnham, David Kirkpatrick, Charles A. Riley II, Patricia Sellers, H. John Steinbreder

(FORTUNE Magazine) – ''Going, going, gone'' -- the auctioneer's cry of triumph -- may turn into the museum director's cry of despair. Now that John Whitney Payson has decided to sell Van Gogh's 1889 masterpiece Irises rather than donate it to Westbrook College in his hometown of Portland, Maine, the art world is preparing for a dramatic swing from charitable donations to charity-begins-at-home sales. Auction prices are setting record after record, and the tax advantages that wealthy benefactors used to enjoy are now, thanks to tax reform, a fraction of what they once were. Anne d'Harnoncourt, director of the Philadelphia Museum, has her fingers crossed: ''We hope other people do not follow Payson's example.'' They surely will. Christopher Burge, the president of Christie's auction house, says: ''We're just watching human nature at work.'' New York investor Asher Edelman, 47, who has collected more than 300 contemporary paintings, relishes the fact that ''auction houses provide a free market.'' Bob Guccione, 55, the founder of Penthouse and Omni magazines, seems ready to sell, claiming that the current market puts a higher value on his paintings (including works by Picasso, Degas, Renoir, El Greco, and Botticelli) than professional appraisers do. Even more establishment types like Norton Simon and Armand Hammer may part with their favorite paintings -- for a price. Irises, which is expected to fetch a record $50 million in November, is the centerpiece of a legacy of 27 major works Payson inherited from his mother, Joan Whitney Payson, the lumber, banking, and real estate heiress and patron saint of the New York Mets. He is giving 25% of the proceeds to support Westbrook and a foundation for Maine arts. He says: ''If we were just to sell the painting and run off and buy a fleet of Ferraris, it would be an insult to Van Gogh.'' Instead of wringing their hands, institutions should take advantage of the new environment. Thomas Hoving, editor of Connoisseur magazine and former director of New York's Metropolitan Museum, suggests that universities and museums sell some suddenly more valuable works. His conclusion: ''This is not the death of museums by any means.''