Selling three Cézanne paintings to pay the bills: the existential dilemma of a Swiss museum

The Swiss Langmatt Museum It recently sold three paintings by the impressionist painter Cézanne to save itself from definitive closure. The announcement of the auction at Christie's reopened (or perhaps has never been closed) a debate in the art world in which concepts as solemn as the protection of artistic heritage, the need to save the employment of, sometimes, hundreds of people are mixed; guarantee the survival of an art center, the possibility that museums can sell work to expand or renew their collections and the role of the States in this whole matter.

“It was the end,” he tells this newspaper Markus Stegmann, head of the Langmatt museum, in the Swiss city of Baden, which contains one of the most important collections of Impressionist art in Europe. “The foundation that manages the museum no longer had capital,” he continues, “we needed 40 million Swiss francs [43 millones de euros] and after years of trying to find another solution we came to this: sell three paintings from a collection of about 50″. Finally, they got even more, 48 million euros for the three canvases at Christie's auction last September. Museum saved.

But this is just the end of this story.

Chapter 1: The Goldsmith Family Picture

The Langmatt museum chose to sell Four pommes and a couteau, La mer à l'Estaque and Fruits and ginger potthe painting in which they had placed the greatest hopes, which were substantiated when Christie's put an estimated price of between 35 and 55 million dollars (it finally sold for almost 39, about 36 million euros), the highest of the three pieces.

Sidney and Jenny Brown, the couple who founded the Langmatt, they bought Fruits and ginger pot in 1933 in Lucerne (Switzerland) to the Jewish and German family of art dealers Goldsmith for 57,750 Swiss francs. An amount that, for the time, Stegmann considers within the market price, although he does not know, he assures, what percentage the original owners took. So far, what apparently is a typical commercial transaction between two art galleries.

But what Christie's discovered, once the Cézanne painting was in its possession, is that the Goldsmith family did not escape the initial persecution of the Nazis, and Jacob, the first owner of the work, was forced by duress to get rid of it. part of your collection. “In January 2022, we began an investigation with specialists from outside the museum into 13 works that had been acquired between 1933 and 1941, the year of Sidney Brown's death,” explains the Langmatt director. “In the case of this painting, we did not find clear evidence until the auction was announced.”

For this reason, Stegmann says, immediately after obtaining this evidence they contacted the current Goldsmith heirs. Mara Wantuch-Thole, one of the lawyers representing the grandson of the Jewish dealer, explained to The New York Times that he was unaware that his grandfather had owned Cézanne's painting until they contacted him since the museum was founded. “We have reached an agreement,” the lawyer told the American newspaper. The director of Langmatt has refused to give this newspaper more details of what he calls “a fair and equitable solution.” “It's confidential,” she concluded.

Chapter 2: Sell three paintings to pay the bills

The sale of Cézanne's paintings in European territory raised a debate that is more common in countries like the United States, where the management of large art galleries is guaranteed by private capital or philanthropy (after all, another way of calling private property) with little participation from governments; that is, public financing.

Icom, the International Council of Museums, through its Swiss representative, Tobia Bezzola, was the first to warn of the danger of this sale, which it described as “scandalous and short-sighted”, in addition to denouncing that it violated the guidelines of the Code of Ethics of this organization. “Legacies and donations come to museums because people believe they will be safe,” Bezzola said in the press in his country, while demanding that the auction not take place. “All important collections in Switzerland come from private donations and legacies, which sends a terrible signal.”

“These criticisms are based on a code that must be renewed and adapted to our time,” the director of Langmatt is forceful. “It does not foresee an existential emergency in a museum. 40 years ago was a different time,” he emphasizes, and recalls that in “Europe, museums receive less and less public money.”

Looking at the United States, several recent similar cases appear. During the pandemic, and in the first months after the harshest confinement, The Brooklyn Museum in New York put 12 paintings up for auction, also at Christie's., among which there were important names such as Cranach the Elder and Courbet, to try to raise 40 million dollars and cushion the economic crisis derived from the plummeting number of visitors due to the collapse of tourism. This example led to the Association of Museum Directors of the United States (AAMD) approving until April 2022 “not to penalize sales that serve to pay expenses associated with the care of the collections” of the museums.

That is, new red lines were establishe
d that allowed some commercial transactions. “No type of precedent was established because this decision ended in 2022,” the AAMD reminds this newspaper. “In fact, only a few museums sold work to meet financial needs.” How many? “We don't have that information,” they say.

Chapter 3: “Museums are not supermarkets”

When the auction master's gavel sounded at Christie's in September, people at the Langmatt breathed a sigh of relief. It was the most extreme solution they found and its director says, with exclamation, that “this does not mean that museums have to sell their objects.” “It would be extremely dangerous. “Museums are not supermarkets!”

Stegmann rejects that his decision marks a precedent in Europe. “It is absolutely unique and should be considered that way,” he says. “The existence of the Langmatt was threatened. “This museum has been able to rescue itself without destroying its collection and identity.”

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