Artworks auctioned after the pandemic
The practice of transferring publicly owned works by museums to raise the necessary funds for their activities put in crisis by Covid-19 and by the change of blockade, endorsed a few weeks ago by the Association of Directors of Art Museums (AAMD) , the historian who brings together the directors of the museums of the USA, Mexico and Canada [www.artsharesales.com/i-musei-sold-your-properties-for-surviving/], is beginning to reap the first victims. If in America there are still no resounding sales, except the one, in itself however worthy of note, of some rare books currently part of the collection of the MoMA of New York at prices that touch the 3,000 € each, a much more significant fact involves the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.
This is the case of the painting by Paul Gauguin Mata Mua, worth about 45.6 million dollars, until a few months ago on display in the museum in Madrid where he had already gone home. But the owner, the collector Carmen Cervera, founder of the museum, seems to have withdrawn the work, bringing it out of the country. It appears that Baron Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza’s widow is learning to sell it, along with other works such as Claude Monet’s Charing Cross Bridge, Edward Hopper’s Wellfeer Martha McKeene by Wellfeer and Edgar Degas’s Racing Horses. A legitimate operation, no doubt, but one that leaves a disturbing signal on the future of post-Covid-19 museums.
