Sotheby’s has “an attitude problem,” Watson told NEWSWEEK, accusing the firm of breaking art-preservation laws in countries like Italy. The charges were repeated last week in a documentary on British television. In it, an undercover reporter asked a Sotheby’s expert in Milan how she might get an 18th-century painting by the minor artist Giuseppe Nogari out of Italy, where the export of any art work more than 50 years old requires a special permit. The expert’s answer, captured by a camera concealed in the reporter’s crystal brooch: “I’d smuggle it.” Which, the documentary shows, is just what he did, bringing the picture to Sotheby’s in London to be auctioned. Now the Italian government has launched an investigation. Sotheby’s suspended two executives. Meanwhile, in London’s Evening Standard newspaper, Sotheby’s CEO Diana Brooks dismissed the accusations as those two key elements of art-world buzz: “innuendo” and “speculation.”
