«GOOD BUSINESS IS THE BEST ART»

“Five Guns Pablo” by Andy Warhol, an untitled picture by Willem de Kooning from 1968, and “The Adolescents” by Picasso already appear on the roll call of 50 paintings to be purchased for the new postwar art fund portfolio run by Castlestone Management. But the line-up will be even more formidable next year – when works by Jasper Johns, Keith Haring and Magritte join the repertoire.“We are creating, in a sense, the world’s first passive art investment tracker fund, focusing on the postwar genre,” says Constance Kubern, senior art adviser with Castlestone, an alternative asset advisory group. “We intend to hold representative pieces from all the artists listed in the index in order to mimic its performance. We hope this will give investors more confidence that art, and our fund, is an investable, analysable asset class, just like any other.”
A minimum of $10,000 is required to invest in the fund, which is listed in the British Virgin Islands, and the offer period lasts for three years. Around $25m has been collected already. A moving average of art auction results for the postwar period and the prices of the portfolio’s 50 paintings will be analysed monthly by Art Market Research, creator of the AMR Art 100 index, to help calculate returns.

Financial Times
August 21 2009