LACMA to Sell 42 of Its Artworks

In its boldest collection-culling since 1982, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will sell off 42 artworks in November, including paintings by Amedeo Modigliani, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and Max Beckmann, sculptures by Alberto Giacometti and Henry Moore, and works on paper by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Edgar Degas.

Sotheby’s in New York will offer the works at auction Nov. 2 and 3 and expects them to bring in $10 million to $14 million. The headliner is a Modigliani, “Portrait of Manuel Humbert Esteve,” that is expected to fetch $4 million to $6 million.

The idea, said LACMA Deputy Director Nancy Thomas, is to prune redundant and unrepresentative items and spend the income on works that will fill in gaps -- especially modern works that could shine when the museum expands, reorganizes and rehangs its collection in 2007.

Museum officials routinely sell off items from their collections. In fact, Thomas estimates that LACMA sheds 200 works in a typical year. But the practice has grown highly controversial as it has spread and accelerated over the last three decades.

Art professionals consider it unethical for a museum to spend revenue from art sales on anything but the acquisition of more art.

In May, the New York Public Library drew a hail of complaints when it sold “Kindred Spirits,” a landscape by Asher Durand, to Alice Walton, of Wal-Mart’s founding family, for a price rumored to be $35 million or more. (The Waltons are starting a museum in Bentonville, Ark.)

Albert Boime, a professor of art history at UCLA since 1978 and specialist in 19th and 20th century works, warned that “for a museum to suddenly eliminate 42 works is a decision fraught with all sorts of difficulty.”

He speculated that financial factors could produce “pressure from above” on curators to find items to sell. “This kind of decision,” he added, “denies the public a voice.”

LACMA officials have pledged that all income from the works will be devoted to art acquisition. Most of the pieces involved, they said, haven’t been displayed for years. Stephanie Barron, LACMA’s senior curator of modern art, said the Modigliani was the toughest to part with, but because the museum has two other portraits by the artist that curators consider stronger, they decided the third was dispensable.

The items to be auctioned were produced between the late 19th century and 1960 and acquired by the museum from 1951 to 1995. The most recently acquired items were the 11 small Henry Moore pieces, which were a bequest to the museum by Burt Lancaster in 1995.

“We haven’t done anything like this since the early 1980s,” said Barron, adding that those sales 20 years ago came in anticipation of the museum’s then-new Anderson building.

That 1982 sale, in which Sotheby’s peddled hundreds of works, from watches to Old Master paintings, brought the museum about $1.18 million, less a 10% auctioneer’s commission.

As art experts are quick to point out, the market has changed vastly since then. A Renoir portrait, which would probably fetch millions today, went to a Midwestern collector then for $90,000.

“We’re just very cautious about de-accessioning anything that we’d regret,” Thomas said. But she added, “We don’t have major dedicated funds for modern art acquisitions at this time. So this will be a major part of our acquisition plan.”

The largest encyclopedic art museum in the western United States, LACMA counts more than 100,000 pieces in its collection.

Officials say the auction will conclude a process of many months, during which curators chose works to be sold, board members approved the move and staffers conferred with donors of the works affected.

Much of the museum’s fundraising over the last year has been pointed toward an expansion and reorganization designed by architect Renzo Piano.

The $130-million first phase of the expansion is to begin this fall, and museum officials say they have that money in hand.

The institution has also launched a capital campaign aimed at doubling its endowment, which reached $100 million in 2004.

David Norman, co-chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Department Worldwide, said he expected the 42 works -- especially the Modigliani -- to excite substantial interest among private collectors but not much at major museums.

Most major institutions, he said, already have strong examples of work from the artists in this group.

The museum acquired the Modigliani in 1951, Norman said. One in its string of owners had been Zeppo Marx in the 1940s.

Among the items to be auctioned:

* By Modigliani, “Portrait of Manuel Humbert Esteve,” also known as “Portrait of Manuello,” oil on canvas.

* By Giacometti, “Head,” 12 inches high, and “Standing Woman,” 24 inches high, bronzes.

* By Beckmann, “View of Landwitz and Marienfelde” (oil on canvas) and “Still Life With Cat.”

* By Max Ernst, “The Sea,” oil on canvas.

* By Pissarro, “La Mere Gaspard,” oil on canvas.

* By Sisley, “La Station de Sevres,” oil on canvas.