A Museum for Picasso’s Picassos
By Megan • Dec 3rd, 2007 • Category: News for Creatives (archives)Gerald Clarke reports for Time:
“Bearded, bundled in his greatcoat, the young man stares defiantly at passersby as if to say that although he is only 19, he already knows that he will dominate the art world for the rest of his life. If anyone doubts the implicit truth of Pablo Picasso’s 1901 self-portrait, he has only to walk farther into Paris’ new Picasso Museum, which opened last week. There, spread out like all the treasures from Aladdin’s cave, are the gems of nearly three-quarters of a century of labor: 228 paintings, 149 sculptures, nearly 1,500 drawings and just as many engravings. The museum is perhaps the best excuse ever devised for high inheritance taxes. After Picasso’s death in 1973, the French government calculated that his heirs owed it an estimated $50 million, about 20% of an estate that totaled $250 million. Under an enlightened 1968 law, the many heirs could pay in art rather than cash, and that is what they finally did, a decision that has given France, where the painter lived for 68 of his 91 years, the greatest Picasso collection in the world. (The runner-up: Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art.)”
Megan is a creative producer at Wise Elephant.
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