$70 Million in Art at MoMA to Be Sold to Extend Museum’s Digital Reach

Pablo Picasso’s 1919 Cubist “Guitar on a Table,” which once hung above the fireplace in Mr. Paley’s Manhattan bedroom, will be offered up for at least $20 million on Nov. 14 in New York. Francis Bacon’s 1963 small-format triptych, “Three Studies for Portrait of Henrietta Moraes,” will be offered for at least $35 million on Oct. 14 in London, Sotheby’s said.

The move underscores the extraordinary lengths that museums and their biggest donors feel they must take to extend museums’ influence online as cultural institutions are struggling to recover from a pandemic-driven drop in attendance.

MoMA director

Glenn Lowry

said the museum typically gets three million visitors a year, but last fiscal year its attendance topped out at 1.65 million visitors. Mr. Lowry said he hopes foot traffic will return to prepandemic levels by 2024, but the outlook online is brighter.

Last year, he said the museum’s online content on its own website and YouTube channel as well as via its social-media followings on sites like Instagram and Weibo swept in 35 million people, up from 30 million before the pandemic.

“We’re growing our digital audience, not losing any, so we realize we need to increase our capacity off-site and online,” Mr. Lowry said.

He said the museum is posting virtual walk-throughs of its exhibits and creating video chats with its curators, but it wants to increase the output and possibly launch its own art-related streaming channel. It may also team up with a university to offer degrees in art fields. MoMA already teams up with online course provider

Coursera,

where since 2012 around 1.6 million people from 250 countries have taken its art classes. Mr. Lowry said he thinks MoMA can enroll far more.

“We’re just beginning to dream,” he said.

The museum might even ply some of the sale proceeds into buying art, including digital art attached to nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, he said. MoMA didn’t jump into last year’s NFT art bonanza, aside from contributing museum data to an NFT project by digital artist Refik Anadol last fall. Mr. Anadol, a popular artist on the NFT scene, funneled the museum collection’s meta-database into his artificial intelligence algorithm to create cloudy, colorful morphs later sold as NFTs. Mr. Lowry called Mr. Anadol brilliant, but said MoMA didn’t buy any of the works at the time.

The museum initially adopted a wait-and-see approach to NFTs, but Mr. Lowry said the museum has a team of people monitoring the digital-art landscape to look for potential artists to team up with on bigger artistic projects or potential purchases.

“We’re conscious of the fact that we lend an imprimatur when we acquire pieces,” he said, explaining why MoMA didn’t buy NFTs at the outset, adding, “but that doesn’t mean we should avoid the domain.”

Mr. Paley’s son, Bill Paley, who now serves as the foundation’s vice president, said in an email Tuesday that the foundation will ultimately defer to the museum on where it needs to spend next, digitally. “It’s open-ended,” he said.

When his father joined the board as a rising broadcasting executive in 1937, MoMA was only eight years old and collecting modern art was considered radical among New York’s elite. The younger Mr. Paley said his father remained committed, eventually serving as MoMA’s president, chairman and chairman emeritus. He added that his father was “always keen on learning about and adopting new technologies,” so the museum’s desire to extend its digital clout dovetailed nicely.

He said his father flexibly designed his foundation’s arrangement with MoMA so that the museum could weigh in decades later on how his collection could be shown or sold. He said the foundation worked with curators to select which works would be sold. A portion will also go to his father’s other philanthropic causes.

The sale is the latest reminder that the art donated or lent to museums may not stay there permanently. The foundation’s consignment to an auction house lets MoMA raise funds without stepping into the controversial terrain of deaccessioning, or selling works it already owns, which has caused uproars at other institutions.

Mr. Lowry said none of the works the foundation consigned to Sotheby’s are currently on view in the museum’s galleries. Mr. Paley’s best-known piece at MoMA—Picasso’s 1905-06 “Boy Leading a Horse”—isn’t going anywhere, he said. Neither is Mr. Paley’s iconic Henri Matisse from 1927, “Woman with a Veil.”

But the sale will include other “gems,” Mr. Lowry said, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s 1905 still life of strawberries, an early Fauve view of André Derain’s hometown and a 1901-02 bouquet by Henri Rousseau that Mr. Paley bought in 1937, the year he joined MoMA’s board. Small sculptures by Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol will also be in the sale, which the house expects to collectively fetch between $70 million and $100 million.

All of these pieces were considered “off limits” to the art marketplace until now, said Brooke Lampley, Sotheby’s chairman and worldwide head of sales for fine art. Ms. Lampley said the auction house competed with other houses to win the consignment and has guaranteed the foundation will reap an undisclosed sum for the sale of the works. But marketing Mr. Paley’s pieces should be a breeze, given their pedigree, she said.

“He’s the holy grail of provenance,” Ms. Lampley said.

Write to Kelly Crow at [email protected]

Pablo Picasso’s 1919 Cubist “Guitar on a Table,” which once hung above the fireplace in Mr. Paley’s Manhattan bedroom, will be offered up for at least $20 million on Nov. 14 in New York. Francis Bacon’s 1963 small-format triptych, “Three Studies for Portrait of Henrietta Moraes,” will be offered for at least $35 million on Oct. 14 in London, Sotheby’s said.

The move underscores the extraordinary lengths that museums and their biggest donors feel they must take to extend museums’ influence online as cultural institutions are struggling to recover from a pandemic-driven drop in attendance.

MoMA director

Glenn Lowry

said the museum typically gets three million visitors a year, but last fiscal year its attendance topped out at 1.65 million visitors. Mr. Lowry said he hopes foot traffic will return to prepandemic levels by 2024, but the outlook online is brighter.

Last year, he said the museum’s online content on its own website and YouTube channel as well as via its social-media followings on sites like Instagram and Weibo swept in 35 million people, up from 30 million before the pandemic.

“We’re growing our digital audience, not losing any, so we realize we need to increase our capacity off-site and online,” Mr. Lowry said.

He said the museum is posting virtual walk-throughs of its exhibits and creating video chats with its curators, but it wants to increase the output and possibly launch its own art-related streaming channel. It may also team up with a university to offer degrees in art fields. MoMA already teams up with online course provider

Coursera,

where since 2012 around 1.6 million people from 250 countries have taken its art classes. Mr. Lowry said he thinks MoMA can enroll far more.

“We’re just beginning to dream,” he said.

The museum might even ply some of the sale proceeds into buying art, including digital art attached to nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, he said. MoMA didn’t jump into last year’s NFT art bonanza, aside from contributing museum data to an NFT project by digital artist Refik Anadol last fall. Mr. Anadol, a popular artist on the NFT scene, funneled the museum collection’s meta-database into his artificial intelligence algorithm to create cloudy, colorful morphs later sold as NFTs. Mr. Lowry called Mr. Anadol brilliant, but said MoMA didn’t buy any of the works at the time.

The museum initially adopted a wait-and-see approach to NFTs, but Mr. Lowry said the museum has a team of people monitoring the digital-art landscape to look for potential artists to team up with on bigger artistic projects or potential purchases.

“We’re conscious of the fact that we lend an imprimatur when we acquire pieces,” he said, explaining why MoMA didn’t buy NFTs at the outset, adding, “but that doesn’t mean we should avoid the domain.”

Mr. Paley’s son, Bill Paley, who now serves as the foundation’s vice president, said in an email Tuesday that the foundation will ultimately defer to the museum on where it needs to spend next, digitally. “It’s open-ended,” he said.

When his father joined the board as a rising broadcasting executive in 1937, MoMA was only eight years old and collecting modern art was considered radical among New York’s elite. The younger Mr. Paley said his father remained committed, eventually serving as MoMA’s president, chairman and chairman emeritus. He added that his father was “always keen on learning about and adopting new technologies,” so the museum’s desire to extend its digital clout dovetailed nicely.

He said his father flexibly designed his foundation’s arrangement with MoMA so that the museum could weigh in decades later on how his collection could be shown or sold. He said the foundation worked with curators to select which works would be sold. A portion will also go to his father’s other philanthropic causes.

The sale is the latest reminder that the art donated or lent to museums may not stay there permanently. The foundation’s consignment to an auction house lets MoMA raise funds without stepping into the controversial terrain of deaccessioning, or selling works it already owns, which has caused uproars at other institutions.

Mr. Lowry said none of the works the foundation consigned to Sotheby’s are currently on view in the museum’s galleries. Mr. Paley’s best-known piece at MoMA—Picasso’s 1905-06 “Boy Leading a Horse”—isn’t going anywhere, he said. Neither is Mr. Paley’s iconic Henri Matisse from 1927, “Woman with a Veil.”

But the sale will include other “gems,” Mr. Lowry said, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s 1905 still life of strawberries, an early Fauve view of André Derain’s hometown and a 1901-02 bouquet by Henri Rousseau that Mr. Paley bought in 1937, the year he joined MoMA’s board. Small sculptures by Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol will also be in the sale, which the house expects to collectively fetch between $70 million and $100 million.

All of these pieces were considered “off limits” to the art marketplace until now, said Brooke Lampley, Sotheby’s chairman and worldwide head of sales for fine art. Ms. Lampley said the auction house competed with other houses to win the consignment and has guaranteed the foundation will reap an undisclosed sum for the sale of the works. But marketing Mr. Paley’s pieces should be a breeze, given their pedigree, she said.

“He’s the holy grail of provenance,” Ms. Lampley said.

Write to Kelly Crow at [email protected]