Art Failure

The proposed levy on the sale of European artwork will devastate UK dealers. The measure will give artists, and their descendants for 70 years after their deaths, claims upon a levy imposed every time one of their works is resold. Very fair, some will say. Yet in practice, it will simply cause owners of contemporary art to send to markets where the levy is not applied, notably Switzerland and the US.
It will deal a devastating blow at the London market, which today accounts for half of all European art sales. Experience in countries such as France, where a droit de suite already operates, shows that it is very costly to collect. It chiefly benefits not impoverished living artists, but the relations of rich dead ones.
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Irish Art