Met to Sell Picasso Sculpture for $30M to Fund New Acquisitions

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is selling Pablo Picasso's bronze sculpture 'Tête de femme (Fernande)' (1909), one of the artist's earliest Cubist works, at Christie's New York in May 2022. Estimated at $30 million, the sale is part of the museum's deaccessioning strategy to raise funds for new acquisitions. The Met already owns another version of the sculpture, recently donated by major Cubist collector Leonard Lauder. The piece being sold had been in the museum's collection for over 35 years, donated by collector Florene M. Schoenborn. The decision follows guidelines from the Association of Art Museum Directors. Last autumn, the Met sold 219 prints and photographs, all duplicates. Separately, the museum received a $125 million donation from Oscar Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang to renovate its modern wing, adding nearly 7,500 square meters of gallery space for modern and contemporary art. Max Hollein, the Met's director, praised the donation, stating the renovation will allow the museum to approach 20th- and 21st-century art from a global, encyclopedic perspective.