The Kimbell Art Museum just got a major donation from the Ft. Worth collection of Ted and Lucile Weiner. Their daughter Gwendolyn donated a Modigliani head, one of only 30 extant works, to the museum in her parents honor.
Only a few museums, like New York’s Metropolitan, have one. Their scarcity has had an effect on the price. Another version sold at Sotheby’s three years ago for $70m:
The Kimbell’s “Head” is carved in limestone, which Modigliani scavenged from construction sites around Paris, including the city’s subway. […] The Weiners bought their sculpture from the Knoedler Gallery in New York in 1963. They displayed it for years alongside other 20th-century works in their Fort Worth home designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes, the architect behind museums including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Dallas Museum of Art. For the past two decades, the Modigliani has been on view at the Palm Springs Art Museum in California.
Kimbell Art Museum in Texas Acquires a Rare Modigliani Sculpture (The New York Times)
