What with the hazmat crew required to neutralize the thousands of gallons of formaldehyde and the efforts to stabilize the rotting, soaked corpse, moving Damien Hirst's shark costs an estimated $100,000.
Meanwhile, Mark Fletcher and Tobias Meyer ended up donating a John Bock sculpture to the Carnegie rather than keep replacing the fresh melons in it.
[Maybe they should have become Buddhists. When I was a missionary in Japan, old ladies were always offering us the fruit offerings--pyramids of oranges and melons, usually--from their butsudans, the black lacquer, gilt-edged, in-home shrines where they prayed to their departed family members.]
"These works become like devotional objects. It's like caring for your altarpiece," said Amy Cappellazzo, Tobias Meyer's Christie's counterpart.
Ephemeral Art, Eternal Vigilance [nyt]
Previously: how contemporary art is like a renaissance tapestry
