I will trade my Jose Cansecso rookie card and three Alf pogs for your Edvard Munch's "The Scream". Fine... I'll throw in my chocolate milk for a week.

A museum removes them from circulation forever? What about when a museum puts it on display for people to see? Is that not a circulation for the people? Or how about when a museum lends the art and/or artifacts out for a tour?

Imagine that you trade baseball cards and you can never have all of the most rare and impressive cards. Would you really want to collect cards?

For the most part, serious collectors buy and trade art in the same vein as children trade and buy baseball cards. The rare book trade is an example. The last thing a rare book dealer likes doing is to donate or give rare books to libraries because it effectively removes them from anyone being able to acquire them.

Not cool if these rumors are true.

Munch masterpieces destroyed?

Poor munch

Curse you! You and your making the inevitable UK Member based joke skills!

Next time TheDuke it will be a different story!

*shakes fist, lets go of side rail, falls into boiling ocean, the body will never be found*

Beat me to it.

I can hear Indiana Jones now:

"This belongs in a museum!"

But everyone being able to enjoy them. Who gives a fuck about art collectors? Granted, museums don't display everything they own and libraries put limitations on access to rare and fragile books, but it's still better than hanging in Wilfordshire P. Rockefeller-Carnegie IV's summer house.

YOU BELONG IN A MUSEUM!

WTF are you talking about? That is one of the worst comparisons I've ever heard. The most valuable and rare baseball cards are ones THAT THE "CHILDREN" WILL NEVER HAVE. The serious art collector is just like the rich baseball card collector--the sort of person who keeps the best collectables out of the hands of the regular collectors. Shit, I'm not sure about you, but I'd rather see the Munch painting hanging in a museum where ANYBODY can see it, rather than being in some rich guys house, where its only for him and his family. Stop acting like art thefts are some sort of good thing. Geez.

Not to mention the fact that in no way are these painting "in circulation"


[Edited on May 03, 2006 by PointBlank]

You're not a collector, are you?

Art collectors are always sharing their collections outside of their families. And unless a painting is über-famous, it's in storage. And unless they're Scrooge McDuck, collectors are eager to share their pieces.

As far as seeing a Munch painting in a museum, because the museum didn't provide adequate security, tracking, or recovery of the piece NO ONE will see it.
I think that the theft of these piece are terrible and four to eight years in jail isn't nearly enough for these assholes, but in my opinion they would have been easier to track and harder to steal if they were in private hands.

Ummm...I work in a museum that is FILLED with paintings you've never heard of. There are tons of museums like this. I'd say that, as a rule, Museums tend to show more of the art they own to more people than private collectors do (unless they loan them out to, er, museums). And I'd say that it's not even close.

The Answer would still be...if I had a chance to see it, even if it were a museum, it would be in circulation. As long as the museum has it out for people to see it is in circulation. The other benefit of the paintings being at a museum is that the museum knows how to protect the integrity of the painting and/or artifact. Take a look at the book of judas which was in the hands of a personal tradesman. He was trying to keep it in your version of circulation, alas because of his stupidity and not knowing how to properly take care of the item, it started to distingrate due the regular exposure to air. The answer is still the best place for most artifacts of humanity is in a museum under properly maintained conditions.

Your card analogy is wasted on me, I used to own a comic store and never felt that I had to own all of the ones from the series I collected (though I did attempt to complete the series, but that was my OCD of needing a completeness.) I also used to collect hockey cards...still never had that urge. I was what would be considered a serious collector too, considering it led me to opening the store in the first place.