Saltz: MoMA, Don’t Sell Monet for Koons Train!

Jerry Saltz came out against the Museum of Modern Art’s decision to sell its Monet painting of Poplars that museum claims does not fit in the collection because it pre-dates MoMA’s particular “story” of Modern art. Saltz rightly goes after this tenuous reasoning. A more likely explanation is that MoMA is looking to use the proceeds of the sale for other acquisitions.

Here Saltz makes a leap:

Making the sale all the more irritating, the market is now so distorted and tilted toward contemporary art that $14 million raised from the auction of a Monet is less than the cost of a large work by a contemporary art star like Gerhard Richter, Jeff Koons, Christopher Wool, Peter Doig, and many others. Some works are considerably more than that. Is it really worth trading a Monet for a slice of Koons’s hanging locomotive?

Did anyone say they were trading the Monet for a Koons let alone the hanging locomotive that was floated as project first for LACMA and then for the High Line?

MoMA’s Monet Fire Sale  (Vulture)