The Fernwood Collapse: Even the Savvy Get Soaked

You’d think these people might know better:
Daniel Grant reports in the Maine Antique Digest that among the empty-handed investors who filed suit against Bruce Taub, CEO of the belly-up art hedge fund, Fernwood Art Investments (scroll to second item), were: Ashton Hawkins, former secretary, counsel, and executive vice president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and president of the American Council for Cultural Policy; William Pearlstein, a New York arts attorney and a member of ACCP. Grant reports that their investments in Fernwood were $150,000 and $200,000, respectively, as disclosed in court papers.
Individually and through ACCP, Hawkins and Pearlstein have been very active on the side of U.S. collectors and dealers in the antiquities wars. This should create some schadenfreude in the archeologists’ camp.
More details of this sorry art-for-profit debacle are here.