Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science | |
Long-Forgotten Picasso Is a Museum’s Windfall
Picasso’s “Seated Woman With Red Hat” was found at an Indiana museum.
When Arlan Ettinger, the president of Guernsey’s auction house in New York, first called the Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science back in February to ask about a layered glass mosaic by Picasso that he had traced to the museum, officials there said, in effect, “Sorry, wrong number.” They had never heard of it.
A day or two later the museum called back, Mr. Ettinger said. Spurred by his query officials discovered that this rare work was there in Indiana after all, mislabeled and stashed in an old shipping crate for more than 40 years.
“You could sort of hear corks popping at their end of the line,” Mr. Ettinger said.
Rather than display their newfound Picasso treasure, however, officials have decided to sell it, using Mr. Ettinger’s company.
It is nearly impossible to put a price tag on the piece, “Seated Woman With Red Hat,” since this kind of work has not been on the market for nearly half a century, experts say. But Mr. Ettinger said he hoped to sell it for $30 million to $40 million, more than five times the museum’s entire $6 million endowment.
The potential windfall has raised a grab bag of questions for museums large and small beyond, “Have you checked the basement lately?”
What responsibility, for example, do institutions have to hold on to donated works and display them? And how should valuable art be handled when it threatens to tax an institution’s resources and confuse its mission?
Some residents of Evansville, for instance, have complained that this rare artwork is being sold off without their even getting a chance to see it.
But R. Steven Krohn, president of the museum’s board, said in a statement that keeping “Seated Woman With Red Hat” just did not make sense: “Now that we have a full understanding of the requirements and additional expenses to display, secure, preserve and insure the piece, it is clear those additional costs would place a prohibitive financial burden on the museum.”
Although the museum owns some works from banner names like Georgia O’Keeffe and Renoir, its entire art collection is valued at only $10 million. Its recent expansion was devoted to building up its interactive science exhibitions, including a theater.
The museum declined to specify what changes would be needed and how much they would cost, but caring for an extremely valuable work can be burdensome. Advancements in technology have made protection more affordable, said Robert Marentette, the security chief at the Art Gallery of Hamilton in Ontario, but the added that costs of securing such works can “suck revenue out of tight operating budgets.” Insurance premiums can also be extremely expensive, he added.
“The bottom line is and will always be the level of risk one decides to operate under,” he said. “In this case it seems the risk and associated costs are high and not acceptable to the board and members.”
The work, a three-foot-high portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso’s French mistress, is one of about 50 glass paintings known as gemmaux that Picasso created in the mid-1950s at the Malherbe Studio in France. The unfamiliar word is a reason that this portrait lay in the museum’s storage for nearly half a century. It was incorrectly labeled in documents as having been created by the nonexistent artist “Gemmaux,” not Picasso, the museum said. (“Gemmail” is the singular, and the name of the technique.)
Gemmaux are made of multicolored pieces of glass, layered and then fused together with liquid enamel, a technique first developed by the French artist Jean Crotti. “Seated Woman With Red Hat” is encased in a wooden shadow box so that it can be illuminated from the back.
“It’s just a wonderful thing to see,” said Mr. Ettinger, who visited Evansville. “Unlike flat canvas, it really sparkles; 2-D pictures don’t do it justice.”
He conceded that his multimillion-dollar estimate is partly guesswork and instinct, since Picasso’s gemmaux are relatively unknown and are rarely sold. The artist gave half of them to his collaborators, the Malherbe family. He sold the rest, with some going to private collectors like Nelson Rockefeller, Emperor Hirohito of Japan and Prince Rainier of Monaco.
The pioneering industrial designer Raymond Loewy, who owned “Seated Woman With Red Hat,” promised to donate it to the Evansville museum in 1963. According to The Indianapolis Star, it was appraised for tax purposes at the time for $20,000.
The museum has chosen to skip a public auction. Mr. Ettinger said that sellers sometimes think private sales can be faster and simpler, but he acknowledged, “At the end of the day, like any work of art, it’s worth what somebody will pay for it.”
The Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York has three gemmaux by Picasso, none of which are on display. As it turns out, the Corning museum had been researching them recently to assess whether to exhibit them once its planned expansion is completed in 2014.
“We really don’t have a clue of what the current market value is of our own pieces,” said Karol Wight, Corning’s executive director. “It seems like after they made their debut in the ’50s they just sort of became out of fashion, and no one’s really paid attention to them.”
With the worldwide attention the Evansville find has received, that has certainly changed.
Forgotten Picasso Is Windfall for Evansville Museum - NYTimes.com
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/arts/design/forgotten-picasso-is-windfall-for-evansville-museum.html?_r=1
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