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EDITOR’S NOTES
We are all guilty
Nobody denies the need to combat the drugs trade and to suppress the money laundering that helps terrorists to flout the rule of international law – well, nobody except the drug barons and terrorists, anyway.
But the news that Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Bonhams and a number of the larger provincial rooms are to adopt the American system and routinely fingerprint auction-goers as part of the buyer-registration process has angered many in the antiques trade and raised a predictable storm of protest amongst woolly liberals, lefties and civil-rights campaigners (although, curiously, GAN’s own Nicholas Pine has been silent on the subject).
Major auction houses already refuse to accept cash payments larger than £5,000. They do this in order to thwart those undesirables who would otherwise be able to swap a kilo of best skunk for a George III walnut escritoire and leave no paper trail behind for the authorities to follow. Now it seems the auctioneers want to take it a stage further, and their desire to fight crime wherever it raises its ugly, pit-bull-like head has reached crazy new heights.
It has long been the case that buyers registering for important sales have had to produce proof of identity, such as a bank card or passport when picking up their buyer’s number, and the auction houses say that by asking buyers to give a fingerprint sample, just as they do in the US, they are simply refining this security system. “We are doing it in order to protect the auction-going public and to help to safeguard Western democracy,” as Jake Tiso of Auction Professionals (Europe) – the body that represents many of the Continent’s biggest auction houses – put it rather pompously in November 2007, when the idea of following the American system was first mooted.
“The only ones who won’t want to give us their fingerprints are those who have something to hide,” said Mr Tiso. “We think that the majority of people will be only too happy to give us a few moments of their time if it helps prevent crime in this way. It’s a small sacrifice to make, when you think what’s at stake, and it’s not as if we are asking to take their DNA or anything like that.”
Not yet, anyway…
The American’s have been fingerprinting auction-goers since mid-2003. In January, a Channel 4 documentary, Sheer Art Attack, shown as part of the controversial You For Real? strand, revealed that, bizarrely, buyers at the Currier and Ives saleroom in New York (one of the Big Apple’s biggest and busiest auctioneers) actually enjoyed the fingerprinting process; some even believed that it lent them a weird kind of kudos.
“It’s like a badge of honour,” one (apparently chemically enhanced) purchaser at a recent auction of Impressionist and post-Impressionist pictures was quoted as saying: “If you’ve got inky fingers then, sure, it means you must be a smart collector with a big wad (bank balance – Ed); but what’s great about this thing they do is that the black also shows you really, really, really care about the way the world is going and you want to do your bit by protecting society, you know? And hey, what’s more, that s**t goes over big with the chicks, so that’s real cool, too.”
It may be going too far to speculate that, in future, auctioneers will only take bids from buyers whose hands are a rich shade of ebony, but for some people the taking of fingerprints has already gone too far.
Alf Polori is the Head of the Federation of Auction Traders, one of several organisations that have pledged to fight these new measures tooth – and appropriately enough – nail. He is determined that the fingerprinting culture remains in America and that it does not make its way to these shores.
“It’s a total disgrace,” said Mr Polori. “When you register for a sale, you shouldn’t have to debase yourself in this manner. I suppose we should be thankful that they are doing something to earn their 30% buyer’s premium, but I just wish it were something a bit more productive. This is a fight that Joe Public can’t afford to lose and if the English courts don’t see sense than we are quite willing to go to Europe; I favour Florence but my wife is keen on Rhodes.”
GAN is given to understand that the new regime will be launched just before lunchtime on Tuesday the 1st of April, when Lord Lucan and Shergar will be the first celebrities to have their finger- (and hoof-) prints taken, in front of the drunken and debased rabble that is the world’s assembled media. I wonder.
Good Luck!
Stuart Maclaren
Editor