Newly released details of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability’s (HCOA) interview with Hunter Biden’s art dealer Georges Bergès reveal that there was no communication between him and the White House about an ethics agreement designed to appropriately govern the president’s son’s art career. In a statement from the bipartisan investigative committee, HCOA Chairman James Comer called the White House’s guidelines “a sham” and Biden’s art career an “ethics nightmare.”
Hunter Biden ventured into visual art as a form of therapy, but was quickly drawn to commercializing his practice in late 2020 when it was reported that he was going to be represented by Georges Bergès Gallery in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. Concerns about the ethics of the president’s son selling art mounted ahead of his first solo presentation with the gallery, prompting the White House to develop guidelines in 2021 for Biden and Bergès to abide by in order to avoid conflicts of interest.
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Notably, the agreement outlined that Bergès would not disclose collector information or identities to the novice artist or the White House in order to prevent clients from attempting to “curry favor” from or rub shoulders with the Biden Administration. Critics pointed to potential holes in the guidelines, arguing that foreign officials should be barred from purchasing Biden’s art and that total transparency would be better than obscuring buyer information.
Others were wholly unconvinced at the possibility of ethical sales after learning that Biden, considered an amateur artist, was selling his work for between $75,000 and $500,000.
Hyperallergic sought comment from various legal, political, and art-world experts, including representatives from the Brennan Center for Justice and the Art Dealers Association of America, to contextualize the concerns for conflicts of interest and has not yet received responses.
Regardless, Bergès appeared to agree to the White House’s terms for selling Biden’s art in 2021, telling the New York Times that “artists never know who the actual buyer of the work is for obvious reasons.” Neither Bergès nor several artists represented by his gallery responded to Hyperallergic‘s request for comment on whether collector confidentiality was the industry standard.
Last July, reports emerged that Biden campaign donor and Los Angeles real estate investor Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali purchased some of Hunter Biden’s artwork. According to Bergès’s interview with the HCOA, Naftali first bought one of his artworks in February 2021 and was appointed by the Biden Administration as a member of the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad in July 2022. Naftali purchased another Biden artwork in December of that year.
The HCOA pivoted its investigation of the Biden family’s political influence to examine Hunter’s art career after Naftali was revealed as a buyer, claiming that Bergès was not complying with its requests to disclose collector information earlier in 2023. Entertainment lawyer Kevin Morris, a close friend and financial supporter of Biden’s, reportedly purchased $875,000 worth of artwork in 2023 as well. Neither Naftali nor Morris have returned Hyperallergic‘s comment request.
In the recent HCOA interview with Bergès, the art dealer admitted that Biden was aware that Naftali and Morris had purchased his art despite the White House’s terms, and claims that the administration never touched base with him regarding the agreement — contradicting what he mentioned to the press in 2021. The gallerist also confirmed that Biden’s family and presidential association contributed to the high pricing of work.
It’s far from the first time that political figures’ entanglement with the art world raises serious ethical questions. News broke last April that for decades, conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted undisclosed vacations and gifts, including works of art and culturally significant objects, from a prominent Republican party donor Harlan Crow. Former President Donald Trump was also exposed in 2019 for using his own foundation money to buy a portrait of himself through a fake bidder.
Source: Hyperallergic.com