Artist Robert Cenedella has filed a federal class action lawsuit against five major American institutions alleging manipulation of the art market, Bloomberg reports. The artist, known for his satirical paintings and as the subject of the 2015 documentary Art Bastard, submitted an 18-page court file in which he accuses a ‘corporate museum cartel’, namely the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the New Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, of ‘increas[ing] prices for certain contemporary art within domestic and international art markets while suppressing prices for the plaintiff’ and other artists.
‘The system today – put in place by galleries, auction houses, and art critiques – has nothing to do with talent, development of skill, or maturation of the art world,’ Cenedella said. In compensation for his exclusion from that closed system, the artist is asking for $100 million.
8 February 2018
