Results tagged “picasso”

The Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim worked out an agreement with a German art collector's heirs right before the case was headed to jury selection. This allow the MoMA to keep "Boy Leading a Horse" (1905-1906) and the Guggenheim "Le Moulin de la Galette” (1900; pictured). Bloomberg News reports, "Both paintings had been in the private collection of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a German Jewish banker, who died in 1935. The plaintiffs claimed in the suit that the paintings were sold under duress and should be returned to the family." The family had argued the paintings' transfer to Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's second wife was not legal; the museums said they were a gift to her and that they acquired them properly. The settlement was not disclosed, but Judge Jed Rakoff, who allowed the case to move to trial, believes it should be out in the open, "The public surely would want to know now and forever which of those diametrically different views was true, and the great crucible of a trial would have made that known."

NYU owns the land under the complex and two of the three towers (the third is a moderate-income housing complex for neighborhood residents NYU was required to build). [The University] wished to build a 40-story tower on the soon-to-be-landmarked open space north of the Picasso sculpture, blocking the public view of the art work. GVSHP adamantly opposed the plan, saying it violated the entire notion of landmarking the complex, and urged the LPC to protect the open space as part of its designation.

Even though Lars Ulrich recently declared the art market is "perhaps the last frontier where the best of the best will not go the way of the rest of the economy," it seems the Metallica drummer doesn't have a very good read on the climate after all. The NY Times reports that "a Picasso Cubist painting that was to have been a star of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art sale on Nov. 3 has been abruptly withdrawn." The artist's Arlequin (ca. 1909) was expected to take in over $30 million, but "fears that art prices were heading the way of the world financial markets" may have changed the seller's mind. Sotheby's confirms that, as of now, the painting is off the market. At the very least, the painting's history is worth reading about: The Times details how its previous owner, Surrealist painter Enrico Donati, came to purchase it (knowing Marcel Duchamp may have come in handy!).

The AP reports on two Picasso paintings that have hung in the MoMA and Guggenheim for decades, and the fight to keep them there. Julius H. Schoeps claims they are the property of his great uncle who was persecuted in Nazi Germany, and has demanded the museums hand over the paintings, "Boy Leading a Horse" (MoMA) and "Le Moulin de la Galette" (Guggenheim). The suit was filed at the District Court in Manhattan. Both museums...