Among the Intellectualoids/Zoo Story
Queenan, Joe
AMONG THE INTELLECTUALOIDS ZOO STORY by Joe Queenan In a recent issue of the New Republic, Michael Kinsley took museums to task for their failure to deflate the current art bubble. Kinsley feels...
...Thus, rather than shelling out $35 million for a rare white rhinoceros, they could simply bleach an ordinary rhino...
...Yet another possibility is surrounding cages with magnifying glass, thus tricking visitors into believing that an ordinary hamster is a giant capybara...
...With the top zooanimals being snapped up right and left by speculators, we have no realistic hope of expanding our collection or replacing aging animals," laments Tom Flanagan, executive director of marsupial acquisitions at the Cleveland Zoo...
...Citing asuggestion first made by Harvard professor Edward Banfield, Kinsley also counseled museums to sell off some of their masterpieces and replace them with high-class forgeries, because only four or five people in the entire world can spot the fakes anyway...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1990 29...
...I would rather every zoo animal in America ended up in the basement of the most avaricious Japanese investment banker imaginable than that we trick our children into thinking that a cow wearing a wig is a lion," says Pilsener...
...S everal observers recommend that zoo curators resort to the strategy suggested by Kinsley and Banfield...
...and a Boston mutual fund, Select Eastern European Amphibian, shelled out $72.7 million for Biff and Buffy, brother-and-sister Serbo-Croatian bog toads...
...Capybara, my foot," says Barney Furman, chairman of Citizens with Dramatically Lowered Zoological Expectations...
...Gretchen Sturgill, special-events coordinator at the Philadelphia Zoo, sees a Catch-22 situation here...
...The-problem is, at existingbudgetary levels, zoos can only afford to buy cranes, storks, armadillos, and caribou...
...Good," says Kinju Ashari, the most avaricious Japanese investment banker imaginable...
...Ten years ago, we bought a python, a ring-tailed mandrill, four tapirs and an extremely rare South Chicago puma —yet we still had $4.5 million left over in our budget at the end of the year," says Myrna Kosygin, acquisitions director of the Regents Park Zoo in London...
...Last year alone, a New Zealand brewery magnate paid $67.6 million for Buppo, a Siberian red panda...
...Kinsley feels that by flooding the market with masterpieces from their inventories, museums could drastically reduce the going prices of the limited number of Van Goghs and Manets that are actively traded, forcing prices back down to a level at which cultural institutions could once again afford to expand their own collections...
...Right now, we are projecting a 1993 shortfall of three hippos, two lions, four walruses and two snow leopards, as our existing collection dies out...
...are incensed by the encroachment of speculators, bitterly complaining that, with their limited budgets, they are powerless to outbid cash-rich foreigners for prize specimens...
...And that flamingo would probably have a limp...
...Salivating at those numbers, speculators—many from the Far East—have bid zoo animals up into the stratosphere...
...the angel fish you could buy at a pet shop for five bucks," seethes Rocco Barmazian, a bearish Hallandale, Florida, hedge fund operator who has taken a bath recently shorting hyenas, orangutans, and pumas...
...Unless something changes dramatically, I see no realistic chance of our acquiring anything more exotic than a flamingo...
...Or a llama and a camel...
...But Tatania Pilsener, author of Gorilla Warfare: The Truth About America's Zoos, finds Furman's position morally reprehensible...
...To raise the cash to compete with speculators, zoos are going to have to charge the public higher admission fees," she explains...
...Believe me, caribou do not bring fannies through the turnstiles...
...least one instance there is reason to believe that dodgy financial arrangements may have facilitated the transaction...
...Curators at other museums echo Kosygin's chagrin...
...a Japanese electronics firm paid $85.3 million for Kismet, a rare Namibian crocodile...
...But the public is only going to pay higher admission fees to see unusually cuddly animals—pandas, baby elephants, mutant spider monkeys...
...When can I stop by and pick them up...
...In each case, the bidders doubled the previous record for animals of the species, and in at Joe Queenan is a frequent contributor to Barron's and other publications...
...I mean, who the hell can tell them apart anyway...
...Last year, even with a budget of $22.4 million, we were forced to settle for a toucan, a pair of not especially rare Manitoban snow gerbils, and a wildebeest...
...Curators also complain about dubious financing arrangements between zoological auction houses and investors...
...A second suggestion is hiring unemployed performance artists and mimes to don the skins of dead animals and gambol with abandon, creating the illusion of life...
...The dog's worth $2,500 max...
...Zoos make such a big deal about authenticity, but you tell me: Does a zoo really need both an emu and an ostrich...
...You don't need Bill Bennett to tell you our kids are so dumb they can't tell a grey wolf from a dingo, or a vulture from a budgerigar...
...The proceeds from the sale of the authentic artwork could then be used to feed the homeless, restore democracy to Cambodia, or complete 1-95...
...Valid as Kinsley's criticisms are, the most outrageously inefficient market today is not in the art world, where a Van Gogh sold not long ago for $53.9 million, but in the zoological community, where zoo-quality specimens routinely fetch $60 million or $70 million apiece...
...The rest was covered by a $25.7 million loan using Bound's English setter, Disraeli, and his collection of angel fish as collateral...
...urators at the world's major zoos N...
...So rather than spending $13.5 million 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1990 to get a new zebra when the old one dies, my advice is: stencil in some stripes on a mare you can get at cost, and use the $13.5 million to improve the school system...
...And the wildebeest was blind...
...This whole deal stinks...
...In a recent survey of investment returns for the period 1980-89, a major Wall Street brokerage house found that investors in zoo animals earned an annual return of 54 percent, far outstripping stocks, bonds, precious metals, Chinese ceramics, and yes, even Pete Rose baseball cards...
...Then maybe in a generation or so you won't be able to fool school kids into thinking a porpoise is a whale, and then you can go out and buy the real thing...
...For example, when Australian tycoon Allen Bound bought Ruffles the Albino Chimp from a private collector six months ago, he only put up $27.5 million in cash...
Vol. 23 • March 1990 • No. 3
