Kravis Acquires Seminal Johns Bronze for MoMA

Henry Kravis has bought an important Jasper Johns bronze work from dealer Mathew Marks, the price was not disclosed:

Created in 1960, “Painted Bronze” has been a fixture for more than three decades at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it has been on long-term loan from Mr. Johns’s personal collection. But now it will migrate north to a permanent home at the Museum of Modern Art, which will receive the sculpture as a promised gift from the collectors Henry R. Kravis and his wife, Marie-Josée Kravis, the Museum of Modern Art’s president, who recently bought it. […]

While many of Mr. Johns’s sculptures from the late 1950s and ’60s have been lent for years to the Philadelphia Museum, Matthew Marks, whose gallery represents Mr. Johns, said that the artist recently decided to sell the work to the Kravises, for an undisclosed amount, if they agreed to give it eventually to the Modern, which has one of the most significant holdings of his paintings, drawings and prints.

“It’s not easy to convince someone who’s kept something for himself for more than 50 years,” Mr. Marks said. “It’s a big deal for him, emotionally. And one can imagine all the people over all the years who have asked, all the institutions, all the collectors who have been told no, since I was a kid.”

MoMA Lands Jasper Johns’s ‘Painted Bronze’ (NYTimes.com)