This invitation was forwarded to me:
You are cordially invited to join us in celebrating the opening of
Poly International Auction’s New York Office
Monday, March 19th, 2012
4:30 - 6:30 pm
at
The Harvard Club
27 West 44th Street
New York, NY 10036
Please RSVP at info@polyauction.us
Admittance by invitation only. Business attire requested.
Food and beverages will be served.
This office will for the moment at least seek consignments for Poly auctions in China. But presumably in the not so distant future Poly may decide to auction off Chinese material here. If so, Poly will presumably use its connections at home to secure any necessary export permits -- something that no doubt will be much harder-- if not impossible-- for its US competitors to secure.
More evidence that the State Department's MOU with China and CBP's import restrictions on a wide variety of Chinese cultural goods have done nothing but provide connected Chinese auction houses with a competitive advantage against US based auction houses.
Poly International Auctions was formed by officers of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
For more, see http://www.jingdaily.com/en/culture/auction-house-beijing-poly-sets-opening-date-for-new-york-office/
james cuno has a whole chapter[4] devoted to the poly group in
ReplyDelete"who owns antiquity" a very intresting read.one of the directors of the poly group is quoted,
"buying back antiquities for china is a patriotic act" regardless of any incentivizing effect such aquisitions have on the looting of archaeological sites.
cuno goes on to say that the constraints they want the rest of the world to accept do not apply to their acquisitions.
in my opinion this weakens their case for mous.if they think something has been looted they should go down the greek/turkish/italian route and try going through the courts,not inflate the market by buying everything,with the resulting bidding wars pushing up the prices of chinese vases to astronomical levels.
kyri.