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MoMA will auction works worth 70 million to digitize the museum with that money

2022-09-14T03:56:57.482Z


The institution, which will get rid of Picasso, Renoir or Bacon jewelry from the CBS founder's collection, plans to increase its NFT collection


There is an update available at MoMA.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York will put 29 works from its collection up for auction this fall and the money raised (between 70 and 100 million dollars, the intermediaries of the sale calculate), will be used for the digital transition of the art center.

The set that leaves the American collection is about a third of the legacy received at the death of CBS founder William Paley, who left the museum 81 highly valuable pieces, paintings and sculptures that include names such as Picasso and Francis Bacon.

These two artists provide the most important pieces of the operation;

a sale at Sotheby's in London scheduled for October 14.

One of his cubist guitars, from 1919, will be released by the artist from Malaga (from 20 million).

From the tortured British painter, a small-format triptych from 1953, entitled

Three Studies for Portrait of Henrietta Moraes

(35 million).

William S. Paley and Frank Stanton (right), with one of the first CBS cameras, in 1951. ASSOCIATED PRESS

Most of the money will be used to deepen the digitization of the museum, according to the

Wall Street Journal,

after confirming it with sources from the Paley foundation and with the director of the center, Glenn D. Lowry.

The New York financial newspaper ventures that there are plans to launch its own

streaming

channel and to improve the digital art collection.

Since its foundation in 1929, MoMA is the kind of institution that marks the path that the others end up following, so the gesture transcends the mere economic operation.

Paley's history with the museum is long: he joined the board in 1937. He was a great collector of contemporary art when it was not yet considered a

chic

must-have among the wealthy.

He went on to be president and chairman emeritus of MoMA's governing body, so when he died his legacy was not exactly a surprise, nor was it that he did so without conditions.

The museum was authorized to keep the works but also, if necessary, to sell them.

The foundation, in which his son Bill is involved as vice president, has participated in the operation, also in the selection of the works that will come out of the museum.

In addition to the

picasso

and the

bacon

, in the lot there are paintings by Renoir, a

derain

from his Fauvist period and a Henri Rousseau canvas, as well as sculptures by Rodin and Maillol.

In the museum's plans for the money obtained from the sale, it is also joining the uncertain revolution of the NFT, works of digital art that, to use a pecuniary simile, are to an impressionist painting what a bitcoin is to a mountain of banknotes. legal course.

The pandemic altered the museum system as we knew it beyond the break it forced them to.

After the reopening of its doors (the MoMA opted, like the rest of the American institutions, for a slow and cautious return) the levels of visitors have not yet returned to those before the coronavirus.

The covid also put the centers before the mirror of their digitization.

They all launched into online

exhibitions

, Zoom talks, podcasts, and curated

streaming

tours .

This allowed them to realize that not everything goes in the virtual world, which is the same as saying that everything costs.

Hence, the MoMA is ready to exchange jewels of the old tangible art for the urgency of updating its digital image.

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Source: elparis

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