Patrons Sue County Museum, Seek Return of Japanese Art

A long-smoldering dispute over the treatment of a $30-million collection of Japanese artworks promised to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art by Joe D. and Etsuko Price has erupted in a lawsuit.

In a complaint filed on Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the Prices are seeking the return of an unspecified number of artworks that have been placed on loan at the museum but are not part of the collection they have promised to the museum. They claim that the museum refuses to return the works.

Museum Director Michael Shapiro is on vacation and could not be reached for comment. Jessica O’Dwyer, the museum’s press officer, said Thursday morning that the suit had not yet been served and therefore could not comment.

The Prices in 1983 promised a gift of about 300 Japanese screens and scrolls to the museum, which they value at $30 million, and also donated $5 million in seed money to build the museum’s Pavilion for Japanese Art. Their donation is said to be the largest single gift of money and art in the museum’s history.

The Pavilion for Japanese Art opened in 1988, but relations between the museum and the collectors became strained even before the building was complete and have been troubled ever since.

In addition, the Prices in 1991 loaned an additional group of artworks, which they say are worth $20 million, and it is these works that are the subject of the suit. The Prices are charging that the works have been endangered through inadequate storage facilities at the museum, claiming also that works not from their collection in the same facility have been stolen or lost.

The Price’s loaned works have been housed at the museum as part of an arrangement that, in exchange, has allowed the collectors to house part of their promised gift to the museum in a facility near their residence in Corona del Mar.

At the crux of the ongoing dispute and the current lawsuit is a specialized storage and study center for Japanese scrolls, which was planned for the Pavilion for Japanese art but never built.

Construction of the center was initially delayed because of a need for further fund-raising, according to the complaint. But instead of building the center, the allotted space was turned into a curator’s office.

In their suit, the Prices contend that the museum has refused repeated requests to remove the office and build the planned study and storage center, and that the lack of adequate facilities now endangers the collection. Becoming “exasperated” with the museum, the couple in 1989 developed and constructed, at their own expense, the study facility adjacent to their home, the complaint says. In exchange for the loan of works to the museum, the museum has allowed the Prices to temporarily keep works from the promised gift in their personal study center.

According to the suit, the Prices became alarmed that Japanese artworks housed at the museum are endangered by dust and insect infestation in inadequate storage facilities. In April they sought to terminate the loan arrangement and take back the loaned artworks, but in a letter prior to the suit, the museum responded by saying that there is no “reasonable cause” for termination, and they would not return the loaned works “until the Prices return the scrolls in the promised collection to the art museum,” the suit says.

“The Prices have been exasperated with the museum’s obstinate refusal to honor its contractual obligations and have tried for years to amicably resolve their differences with the museum, but are now resigned to ask for court intervention,” a summary of the lawsuit says. “The museum is holding the Prices’ screens . . . hostage pending the resolution of the dispute.”

The Price collection of Edo period art (1615-1865) is widely regarded as the best and largest of its kind outside of Asia.