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)