ANSEL ADAMS’S SON SUES FRESNO METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
Ansel Adams’s son has sued the Fresno Metropolitan Museum, seeking return of six of his father’s iconic works, including three shots of Yosemite Valley. The museum went out of business in January and is liquidating its assets, and Michael Adams says that he struck out the phrase “the [museum] directors are at liberty to use or dispose of this property at their unrestricted discretion,” in the declaration of gift made in 1983.
In his claim in Fresno in Superior Court, Adams seeks return of the large prints of three Yosemite prints: Half Dome in Winter, 1938, Moon and Half Dome, 1960, and Tenaya Creek, Dogwood, Rain, circa 1948. He also wants back Mt. McKinley and Wonder Lake, 1947, White House Ruin, Canyon de Chelly, 1942, and Clearing Storm, Sonoma County Hills, 1951.
Adams says that when he learned the museum was liquidating its collection, he asked it, through counsel, to return the prints. The museum responded, through its counsel, “that it believes the plaintiff’s gifts of the Adams prints was absolute and unconditional” and that the museum “believes that it may sell the Adams prints to satisfy its creditors’ claims.”
