Daniel S. Loeb’s attack to “the Sotheby’s three” is a violent open letter, published on the web

 

 

The last assault in the war for the control of Sotheby’s auction house is a letter dated 21 April that Daniel S. Loeb – hedge fund manager, art collector and Sotheby’s largest shareholder since October 2013 – published on valuesotheby.com, the web-site Loeb has opened to promote his position. The letter addresses the company’s shareholders asking them to vote for “Shareholder Slate” Director nominees Loeb himself, Harry J. Wilson and Oliver Reza, instead of the Company’s nominees Jessica Bibliowicz, Robert Taubman and Daniel Meyer – called “the Sotheby’s Three” – at the upcoming Annual Meeting.

 

Why are we drawing your attention to this letter? Because a considerable amount of cultural value is under negotiation and because we think that this letter is marking a milestone in the art history for at least three reason.

 

The first one is that the letter has been published on the web, and not on the traditional press. Thus it addresses the general public, not only the lucky shareholders. It may be useful to also point out that Yahoo! acquired Tumblr – the most “arty” among the social networks – in June 2013, a month before Loeb submitted his resignation from Yahoo!.

 

Second: Loeb and his team’s aim, according to the letter is increasing the company’s profits. That is to say the influence of this powerful institution on the artistic culture depends on money, market, and good managers. Forget art for art’s sake, the information given by this kind of institutions is enormously more powerful than any critic or historical one.

 

Third: since Loeb is a collector himself it follows that he is not afraid of a possible conflict of interests: art is rarely about money, it deals with symbols and power.

 

September 22, 2014