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The Met's Money and The Actor

January 28, 2010 by Marion Maneker

NPR on Damaged Met Picasso “The Actor”

Obviously the folks at NPR are having a little fun in the radio segment above. And Sarah Thornton does a good job of playing along. But the premise of the bit–that the Met’s damaged Picasso was worth $130m before the accident but now has lost value–is a sad and troubling consequence of the accident. Troubling because the only way the media seems to have to convey the importance of the painting is to cite a fictitious and irrelevant number.

The damage to The Actor doesn’t effect the historical value of the painting. It’s a conservation issue, not a market one.

Will Damaged Picasso Be Worth As Much? (Morning Edition/NPR)

Restoration Is Harder Than Hope

January 28, 2010 by Marion Maneker

Randy Kennedy finds in the New York Times that the Met has a few more damaged works that aren’t getting repaired as quickly as was originally hoped:

In 2002 a 15th-century marble statue by the Venetian sculptor Tullio Lombardo — one of the most important High Renaissance statues in the museum’s collection — crashed to the floor and broke into hundreds of pieces when part of its dense plywood base buckled. Nearly six years later an Andrea della Robbia terra-cotta relief from the same period shattered after falling from a shelf above a doorway. Neither piece is back on view.Continue Reading

Why An Early Picasso Is Different

January 25, 2010 by Marion Maneker

The accident at New York’s Met involving an early Picasso has generated a lot of interest. Sadly, press reports insist on dwelling on the fictitious market value of the work that has been pegged at $100, $120 and $130 million by reporters. If we take the anti-deaccessionist line–which would be the correct line for an institution like the Met–the painting has no market value and never will. In fact, there is a greater value to the work: it’s unique historical value which is illustrated in this passage from Carol Vogel’s follow up story on repairing the early Picasso painting:

The early canvases are more delicate and the oil paint is thinner than the enamel-based kind the artist was known to have used later in his career. And then there is the question of whether there’s only one image involved. “The Actor” was painted when Picasso was only 23. “He was very poor, and these canvases were expensive,” said John Richardson, the Picasso biographer. He explained that if Picasso made a mistake, he couldn’t afford to throw out the canvas, but rather painted over it. “Nearly all these early canvases have something painted underneath,” Mr. Richardson said. He added: “There are few major paintings from this period and” — at 4 feet by 6 feet — “this is one of the biggest. It’s very important.”

Questions Over Fixing Torn Picasso (New York Times)

Rose Period Picasso Damaged by Museum Goer

January 24, 2010 by Marion Maneker

It’s surprising this doesn’t happen more often:

On Friday afternoon a woman taking an adult education class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art accidentally lost her balance and fell into “The Actor,” right, a rare Rose Period Picasso, tearing the canvas about six inches along its lower right-hand corner.

Woman Collides with a Picasso (New York Times)

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