Salesforce CEO and billionaire Marc Benioff might be having buyer’s remorse after some art world experts have called into question the value of a supposedly 200-year-old wooden statue he bought for more than $7 million in a Christie’s auction two years ago. Now, some experts are saying the statue could only be worth less than $5,000, The New York Times reports.
Multiple art dealers and experts told The New York Times that the wooden statue depicting a Hawaiian war god could be much less valuable, and created much more recently, than Christie’s claimed ahead of the November 2017 auction.
“It’s the sort of thing you see in a tiki bar,” Daniel Blau, a Munich-based art dealer told The New York Times. Another expert in Hawaiian artwork, Smithsonian Institution curator Adrienne Kaeppler, told the newspaper that she previously informed Christie’s of her concern that the statue could only be as old as the 1930s. (Christie’s said the statue was made “circa 1780-1820” in promotional materials ahead of the 2017 auction.)
Photo Credit: Jesse W. Stephen | Bishop Museum
However, other art experts told the Times that they still believe the statue is as old and valuable as Christie’s claimed. Julian Harding, a London-based private art dealer, told the Times that he remains convinced of the statue’s authenticity, calling it “a masterpiece of Oceanic art.”
Neither Christie’s nor Salesforce immediately responded to CNBC Make It’s requests for comment.
The statue, which was part of the private art collection of French collectors Pierre and Claude Verite before Christie’s put it up for sale, sold at auction for a price of roughly 6.35 million euros (which would be nearly $7.2 million based on current conversion rates), according to the Christie’s website.
Benioff, who has an estimated net worth of $6.6 billion according to Forbes, was later revealed to be the purchaser. The billionaire and his wife, Lynne, donated the artifact to the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu.
The museum’s president told the Times that the museum is aware of “a question about [the statue’s] history and provenance” and that curators are researching the matter.
If it does turn out that Benioff massively overpaid for the statue, he would not be the first billionaire collector to be duped. In 2013, billionaire William Koch won $12 million in damages after he’d paid $320,000 for 24 counterfeit bottles of wine.
Don’t Miss: Why Marc Benioff makes Salesforce employees do volunteer work on their first day
Like this story? Subscribe to CNBC Make It on YouTube!
