Marcos’ Art, Silver Will Be Auctioned

Old Masters paintings and silver acquired by Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos during their years in power in the Philippines go on view Saturday at Christie’s auction house before their sale for an estimated $9 million to $14 million.

The Marcoses’ property will be sold next Thursday and Friday for the benefit of the Philippine government, which contends that the late Philippine president and his wife used public funds to purchase the artworks.

They were removed from several palaces and guest houses and the Metropolitan Museum in Manila and two New York residences.

The silver is collectively of much better quality than the paintings, which are mostly of religious subjects and from the schools of great artists rather than from the brushes of the masters themselves. Many of the attributions made for the paintings when purchased by the Marcoses have been changed to lesser artists, a Christie’s spokesman said.

Twenty-four paintings are being sold by the U.S. government. They were seized in France in 1987 from international entrepreneur Adnan Khashoggi, who acquired them from Mrs. Marcos the previous year.

They are being sold to pay the court costs of prosecuting Mrs. Marcos and Khashoggi on charges of racketeering and fraud last summer. They were acquitted on all counts July 2 and later renounced any interest in the paintings.

Visitors to Christie’s are expected to be more dazzled by a panoply of English 18th- and 19th-Century silver, 78 lots in all including a complete dinner service of more than 100 pieces wrought by Paul Storr in 1806.

Storr is considered one of the finest George III silversmiths and the pre-sale estimate on the service is $600,000 to $1 million.

Teresa Roxas, a spokeswoman for the Philippine Presidential Commission on Good Government, custodian of funds raised by the sale, said the money will be spent on government land programs and the victims of earthquakes and other disasters.