A group of private foundations led by the J. Paul Getty Trust is set to purchase the complete photography archive of Johnson Publishing—which comprises some 983,000 photographs and 3.35 million unprocessed negatives from Ebony and Jet magazines dating back to 1948—after submitting a winning $30 million bid in a bankruptcy auction in Chicago on Wednesday morning. Johnson, which sold Ebony and Jet to the private equity firm Clear View Group in 2016 after seven decades of ownership, had sought to sell off the archive, its most valuable remaining asset, in order to satisfy outstanding debts after filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in April. Led by the Getty Trust—which operates a pair of art museums in Los Angeles and claimed a total endowment of $7.3 billion as of 2018—the purchasing group also includes the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon foundation. A rep for the Getty Trust did not immediately respond to a request for comment. After an initial auction held on July 17 yielded a winning bid of just $12.8 million, the deadline was extended to Wednesday morning after a "truly remarkable" level of interest from multiple parties, according Chapter 7 trustee Miriam Stein, with the sale price eventually arriving at $28.5 million, plus the $1.5 million deposit required in order to participate in the proceeding. A hearing to approve the sale will be held Thursday, with the deal expected to be completed on Friday. Chicago-based advisory firm Hilco... Continue reading at 'Folio Magazine'
[ Folio Magazine | 2019-07-25 17:18:02 UTC ]