Last month, Hunter Biden sold five prints of his latest artwork for $75,000 a piece, netting him another $375,000, as he plans to debut an art show next year, the New York Post reports.
Biden’s prints were sold out of the Georges Berges Gallery in New York City in September, according to an anonymous source. The unidentified individual said that, although the exact identities of the buyers are unknown, they are most likely “private collectors with the gallery,” and “people that Berges knows personally.”
Despite the hefty sum accumulated by all five pieces, it was noted that the selling price of each one was substantially lower than the original price of around $500,000 for an original piece. The sales were made prior to Biden’s very first art show, a “pop-up” presentation in Los Angeles on October 1st.
Meanwhile, the planned debut of Biden’s art gallery at Berges, originally scheduled for later this month, has since been delayed to spring of next year. The Berges Gallery has allegedly hired a legal team to carefully vet every single person who wants to attend and potentially purchase some of Biden’s artwork, with the reasoning for the vetting being unclear.
The same anonymous individual said that “it is a whole process to get in to see the Biden show. You have to call the gallery in Soho, and they are vetting people carefully. They laid down rules that thorough vetting of any collector has to be done by a team of lawyers.”
Biden’s new foray into the world of art has drawn widespread criticism for the likely possibility of serious ethics violations. Even Richard Painter, a partisan Democrat who has been critical of the former Trump Administration, has spoken out about the likely violations to be found in Hunter making so much money off of artwork while his father is serving as president.
Painter, who previously served as an ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush Administration, noted how odd it was that the paintings were purchased in secret, since “buyers buy artwork to hang on the wall, not put in a closet.”
“They tend to be rich people,” Painter added. “and rich people come to their houses, and it tends to get around. Everyone’s going to be talking about it and everyone’s going to know.”
The ethical thing to do, Painter claims, is to wait until Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, leaves office as president before Hunter starts selling his artwork. In the meantime, there should be “full transparency” with regards to who is purchasing Hunter’s artwork, so that public scrutiny will reduce the chance of these buyers subsequently having any sway over the Biden White House. Painter suggested that Joe Biden and everyone in his administration should sign “recusal” forms on the matter in order to “ensure these people can’t get access to the White House.”