Sotheby’s called out over Pollock offer
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Over at Modern Art Notes, Tyler Green has the shocking document from the University of Iowa Museum of Art that shows Sotheby’s auction house offered a $150-million guarantee if allowed to sell Jackon Pollock’s pivotal 1943 painting, ‘Mural.’ The offer came in 2007 -- long before June 2008 floods caused an estimated $232 million in damage to the school. The museum refused the offer.
Following the devastating flood, UI regent Michael Gartner caused a ruckus when he requested an estimate on the 8-by-20-foot painting’s monetary value. According to an Aug. 8 story in the Des Moines Register, proceeds would have helped defray rebuilding costs. But a museum can lose its accredition if art from the collection is sold to pay operating costs or other bills, and Gartner subsequently denied that a forced sale was his intent.
Sotheby’s also inquired about selling Max Beckmann’s 1943 ‘Karnival Triptych,’ the document says, but no figure is cited. ‘Mural,’ a 1946 gift to UIMA from Peggy Guggenheim, was a breakthrough painting for Pollock, introducing the all-over composition that became a standard for American abstract art in the 1950s.
The document was made public by UIMA late Friday. The report, prepared by the museum for the university’s board of regents, also includes a 1963 letter from Guggenheim to a former UI president, insisting that the painting be returned to her if the museum no longer wished to keep it.
Modern Art Notes sums it up this way:
Publicly traded companies are in the business of making money, but attempting to loot and plunder (healthy) university art museums is ethically reprehensible. (Imagine what might happen if the auction house making the same offer to the Met or to MoMA!) Sotheby’s should be embarrassed.
-- Christopher Knight
