Word: groote
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Shirley K. De Groot Eureka...
...been partly mortgaged for several years in advance against one painting. The result: the Met needed money. Hoving proposed to get it through "deaccessioning" pictures-the barbaric museum jargon for preparing to sell. Last September, the Met revealed that it had deaccessioned a major work from the De Groot bequest, Henri Rousseau's The Tropics, and secretly sold it, along with Vincent Van Gogh's The Olive Pickers, to Marlborough Fine Art galleries. No price was given, but the reliable figure was $1.5 million for the two. This is well below their market value; the Rousseau alone...
Backed by Vice Director Theodore Rousseau, Hoving defends the sale on the ground that The Tropics was "superfluous and third-rate." But why, in that case-since the Rousseau was by general consent the best painting in her collection-did the Met court Adelaide de Groot? To most art critics, it is in fact a major Rousseau...
...historians, critics and the Art Dealers' Association of America; one prominent scholar, John Rewald, wrote an article in Art in America demanding Hoving's resignation. Then the Met revealed another secret deal with Marlborough. At first it seemed that the museum had swapped two more De Groot paintings, a Modigliani and a Juan Gris, for Becca, a sculpture by David Smith and a painting by California Artist Richard Diebenkorn. Later the Met disclosed that the swap had cost the Met not two but six works - another Gris, a Bonnard, a Picasso and a Renoir...
Marlborough has now picked up six paintings as nearly pure cream from the De Groot sale. The Met's own valuation on these was $190,000, but chances are that Marlborough can sell them for considerably more...