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By LISA SCHEID; Times Leader Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 11, 1992 Page: 2D QUICK WORDS: SHRIMP PAINTING
EVERHART
SCRANTON — The crustaceans that touched off a controversy in the art world
will return to Scranton.
“The Pink Shrimp,” a painting by impressionist Henri Matisse owned by the
Everhart Museum and valued at $4.25 million, failed to find a buyer at
Sotheby’s auction Tuesday night.
That leaves the museum struggling to stay afloat in the face of shrinking
public funding.
“The probability of layoffs and cutbacks loom bigger now,” said Ken Medd,
public relations officer of the museum. “We’re looking at insolvency by the
spring of 1993.”
In an unprecedented ruling, the museum’s board won approval from Lackawanna
Common Pleas Court a week ago to sell the painting to keep the non-profit
institution open. But that conflicted with a code of ethics of art museum
directors that says art should be sold to acquire art and not to pay for
operating expenses.
Medd said Sotheby’s will analyze why the painting didn’t sell and return
its conclusions to the museum. He did not know when.
It was not clear Tuesday night whether the economy, the late notice of sale
or some other factor, such as the controversy surrounding the sale, affected
the bidding.
Medd said two other Matisse paintings were sold Tuesday but bids just
barely hit the low estimated values. A major work went for $10 million.
About 30 Matisse paintings, sculptures and sketches are up for sale as the
auction houses and collectors try to profit from the Matisse retrospective at
New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
“The Pink Shrimp,” painted in 1920, is considered by art critics as one of
Matisse’s lesser works. Yet it was included in the retrospective.
Lackawanna County Orphans Court Judge Frank Eagen said art collectors
interested in a specific painting often negotiate the purchase of a work after
an auction.
But Eagen said the painting could not be returned to the auction block
again until next spring.
Museum organizations have opposed using the funds for operating expenses.
Opponents include Armand Deutsch, son of the late Adele Rosenwald Levy, who
donated the painting.
“It was far from the intention of my mother, a Manhattan resident, to
contribute directly or indirectly to a museum’s operating fund,” Deutsch wrote
in a letter. “The sole purpose of the gift is to enhance the pleasure of the
viewing public.”
Another opponent, Sondra Myers of Scranton, cultural adviser to Gov. Robert
P. Casey, called the sale “irresponsible” and criticized the financial and
management policies of the Everhart.
The painting, which Henri Matisse painted while visiting the French
cliffside resort of Etretat on the English Channel, hasn’t been displayed at
the Everhart since the museum learned its true worth and what it would cost to
insure.
The Associated Press contributed to this report