SWITZERLAND’S CASH-STRAPPED MUSEUM LANGMATT UNDER FIRE FOR SELLING CÉZANNES
Baden, Switzerland’s Museum Langmatt has raised the hackles of the International Council of Museums (ICoM) with its plan to sell off three works by Paul Cézanne in an effort to remain solvent and therefore extant. Langmatt is putting the French Post-Impressionist’s Fruits et pot de gingembre (Fruit and Pot of Ginger), ca. 1890–93; Quatre pommes et un couteau (Four Apples and a Knife), 1885; and La mer à L’Estaque (The Sea at L’Estaque), 1878–79, on the auction block at Christie’s on November 9. The trio of paintings are considered to be the crown jewels of the small museum’s roughly fifty-piece collection, which was bequeathed to the city of Baden by collectors Sidney and Jenny Brown in 1987.
“It is outrageous,” Tobia Bezzola, president of the Swiss branch of ICoM, told the Art Newspaper, which originally published the story. “For Icom, this is an absolute no-go. We have written an official letter to the foundation. They are selling off core elements of the collection to finance future operating costs.” Bezzola noted that the sale, should it take place, will set an unfortunate precedent, one that other impecunious institutions might hasten to take advantage of. ICoM, which establishes professional and ethical standards for museums, expressly forbids the deaccessioning of works to cover operating costs, stipulating that “in no event should the potential monetary value of an object be considered as part of the motive for determining whether or not to deaccession.”
Markus Stegmann, Museum Langmatt’s director, acknowledged that the decision to auction the works had been a “painful” one, but stressed the necessity of a sale in order to keep the lights on and the doors open. Stegmann affirmed that the Langmatt Foundation is “almost insolvent” and described the sale as an “emergency measure.” Without it, the museum, which is housed in a purpose-built villa that was home to the Browns for two generations, is at risk of closing and seeing its collection scattered on the winds.
Those lamenting the impending sale of the paintings, and thus their possible removal from public view, may be slightly cheered by the knowledge that should Fruit and Pot of Ginger, the most valuable work of the three, with a hoped-for hammer price of $44.4 million, sell, its companions will be whisked off the block and back to the comparative—if seemingly temporary—safety of the Langmatt.
