Word: bernet
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...racks his brain for superlatives. And it is the greybeards, full of probity, in the museum pantheon who toll the bell. But roles were reversed last week when New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art bid a paltry $225 for a sculpture at a Parke-Bernet auction, then gleefully announced that its new acquisition might be worth more than...
Forgotten History. The bust was next" sold through the fabulous Lord Duveen to a Philadelphia heiress, Mrs. Eleanor Elkins Widener, first wife of a surgeon and explorer, the late Dr. A. Hamilton Rice, for a resounding $200,000. But when the bust arrived at Parke-Bernet its history had been forgotten; it was billed as merely another plaster copy...
...bust had not escaped the Metropolitan's eye. Three times, Met Director James J. Rorimer dropped by Parke-Bernet to examine the piece with his hand lens. "We've been burned before, and I wanted to be sure," he explained, then with relish recounted his role: "I just kind of moseyed along, looking casually here and there. When I noticed a man near by watching me examine the statue, I quickly refocused on the tapestry behind...
Rorimer was not the only one cloaking his intentions in mystery. By chance, Art Dealer Fowles, now 80 and retired, happened by Parke-Bernet, spotted the bust he had bought 45 years before. He decided to buy it for the Metropolitan "so that it would get the glory it deserves." To hide his hand, Fowles sent his stepson to do his bidding; the Met sent a junior curator. All that kept the price from going sky-high was that each party thought that the final bid had been his; only later did Fowles learn that the auctioneer had awarded...
...Estaque. It was the sort ot keen observation of nature that Cézanne captured consummately in oils And last week, eighty years after he finished it, his Houses at L'Estaque sold for $800,000 to a private U.S. collector at Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries It was a world's record for a Cézanne and the highlight of the biggest money-making art auction in recent history...