The NY Post is reporting that the Feds are threatening another owner over a work created by the WPA. But this time, the artist is Ad Reinhardt and the painting was sold through Sotheby’s nearly two decades ago:
“Abstraction #6” by Ad Reinhardt was listed at just $15,000 to $20,000 when Sotheby’s put it up for sale in November 1997, says the buyer, Myron Kaplan.
But the federal government says “Abstraction #6” was made for them in 1940 under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration [….] Both Sotheby’s and the GSA refused to share information about the artwork’s origins, so Kaplan is asking a Manhattan judge to force Sotheby’s to tell him what it knows to satisfy his “urgent need to independently verify the provenance of the painting.”
Feds fight to reclaim New Deal-era painting (New York Post)
